Caller ID Spoofing Gets Popular: See How It's Being Used

WSJ:

Applications that let users change or "spoof" their Caller ID are gaining in popularity in mobile phone app stores, even as Congress considers stalled legislation to outlaw particular uses of the technology, and criminals use it to engage in nefarious activity.

Caller ID spoofing technology allows a user to change the caller ID to show any desired number on a recipients caller ID display. There are currently a handful of companies that offer this service including SpoofCard (and it's mobile application called Spoof App) and Spoofem, among others.

Read the whole story: WSJ

Comments

[eddiestardust]

03:43 AM on 02/09/2010

According to The Telecommun­ications Act of 1991 which states that phones, faxes and any other equipment that can show names and telephone numbers, owners of such equipment MUST program their Names or Company Name and Telephone Numbers into these machines.

Such Applicatio­ns are in direct violation of this FEDERAL LAW.

I know this because I was a Technical Support Rep for Panasonic and I had to quote this law to customers.

[Eris23]

12:56 PM on 02/08/2010

"There are useful and legitimate applicatio­ns of the software: A doctor who has to call back a patient late at night and doesn’t want them to have his home or cell phone number, for instance; "

False. *67 blocks informatio­n from being passed to caller ID and is free.

[wilray]

02:55 PM on 02/08/2010

A couple of considerat­ions. Many people have blocking services - no caller id means you are blocked. So unless you want to be blocked you wouldn't call *67. Yes, there are reasons that you may want to have a different caller id. One easy example is battered women. A caller id can lead the batterer straight to them.

I use my Google voice number for everything­. So my Google voice # is what is displayed no matter what phone I call from. My Google voice # is also the number that reaches me anywhere I am. It has blocking capabiliti­es so I am not concerned about nuisance callers. There are other call forwarders that have similar capabiliti­es. They are not the same as spoofing i.e. the phone number is attached to you, and it is a lot cheaper than spoofing. Spoofing allows you to plug in any number you want to. So you could even involve an unsuspecti­ng party by using their number as a spoof number. That's not something you could do with a call forwarding service.

[Eris23]

03:01 PM on 02/08/2010

I'm not really following you. *67 will show "private caller" or other similar messages on the Caller ID unit of anyone you call. So, in the case of a doctor that wants to keep their number private, they certainly don't need to pay for a spoof service. The same would apply to a battered woman.

[jsgaetano]

12:46 PM on 02/08/2010

I heard Palin uses it to pretend she won the presidenti­al election.