InBoxRevenge KS Forum

We are currently seeing a large scale vishing attack spoofing the following numbers:
858-812-9342
482-381-2300
703-496-1820
610-734-2734
858-817-9342
1-800-630-2686

Does anyone have any information on these numbers, or their actual originating source? Please note they are all spoofed don't bother calling them. The numbers request consumers press one and enter their credit card information to re-activate their card.

Thanks for any help,
Helly

610-734-xxxx would be Verizon, Upper Darby, Delaware County, Pennsylvania (just outside Philadelphia).

By spoofed you mean the caller ID shows a random number unrelated to the carrier where the call originated?

Yeah, unfortunately the caller-id number is almost always falsified for recent vish. What I am getting from law enforcement and just about everyone else is that I need to have a phone provider do a trace on a number that receives a vishing call. Unfortunately telephone providers require tons of paperwork and other red tape to do so, not great for getting these stopped in a timely manner.

There are a variety of free/legal programs to fake your caller id information. Scammers seem to have latched onto that one pretty firmly unfortunately.

A sidenote....
Not that I expect that the spoofing will stoop if it's outlawed, but Caller ID spoofing may become a federal crime in the USA. See
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1258

Seriously, that could be worse than nothing. It won't stop criminal spoofing, because you can't tell who they are.

But there are legitimate uses that it might outlaw. For instance, I have to take night call for my job, and currently I block caller ID so I am not handing out my personal home/cell phone numbers to everyone who chooses to page me. (A coworker thought that was unnecessary, and now he gets calls whether he is on call or not, every time someone is drunk and lonely late at night and doesn't want to go through the page operator.) Some people have their phones set up to reject anonymous calls, so it's a problem returning their calls.

If I could have my phone show my job phone number for job-related calls, it would let the recipients know who is calling while protecting my personal phone numbers.

From the vishing type perspective, its good to see it is going to become illegal. Although I agree that it probably won't stop the fraud, maybe it will give law enforcement additional leverage to pursue these particular fraudsters.

But given my recent experiences with telephone providers, even if it is illegal, for your average end user nothing will change. It is way too difficult for a legit business to get assistance in a caller-id spoofing case, telephone service providers seem largely disinterested in pro-actively addressing the fraud. So your basic end user is basically subjected to whatever trash someone can program into an auto-dialer. It will take more than this law to provide an effect tool to combat vish.

On the flip side, it is going to be a very peculiar law to enforce, as there are TONS of legit purposes to spoof your caller-id. They are almost certainly going to have to include more exemptions than just law enforcement, but that might take the teeth out of the law too...

If I recall there is a "star" access code (for example, similar to *69, *67 etc) which sends a trace alert to the telephone company I remember reading about....but unsure if it even works, or if they'd take any action.....as mentioned, lots of red tape...and like with the diploma mill spams, we've seen how hard it is to take down their voicemail VoIP drop boxes.....

It's called Call Trace. I think it's *57.

You dial that number as soon as you hang up and the phone company will record the number that called you. If someone calls from the same number and harasses you at your same phone number a certain number of times, the phone company will forward it to law enforcement. (I think for our phone company, they won't do anything unless you have them trace 3 obscene/harassing calls or 5 heavy breather calls.) You are charged a fee each time you dial it. You then have to go to your local police and file a complaint.

AFAIK, they still can't identify a spoofed number, though.

See point 22 at http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs19-cid.htm
Call Trace.