Phone touts can impersonate your phone number, but there is a solution to stop them from doing so

2024-10-05 05:14:15

A technique regularly used by direct marketers allows them to impersonate their own phone number to harass potential victims.

Cold calling is a real nuisance for many smartphone owners. If you use the telephone, it is very likely that you have already received a call from an unknown person trying to talk to you about an insurance, a contract or an interesting sale. Obviously these proposals often border on scams and mainly drain your bank account for services that you will certainly never need.

But did you know that some telephone canvassers can also pretend to be an individual, especially a loved one? This technique has a name: phone spoofing. Allows a person, service, or company to hide their number to display that of another entity. This is especially useful when the person needs to call another number and does not want to see their number, so as not to be recognized or blocked. The worst thing is that sometimes it is your own number that is used by these unscrupulous callers!

Spoofing is mainly used by two types of people: scammers and telephone touts. We remind you that in France the telephone market is regulated, in particular by a law passed on 1 January 2023 which requires sales companies to use very specific numbers for their activities. Therefore, users can identify these numbers and choose to ignore them when receiving their requests via call or message.

But the spoofing technique bypasses this regulation by “borrowing” another person’s phone number. This is why some people are sent messages on their answering machine with orders not to approach them anymore or even called asking them not to call them again… As if these people were the origin of the propaganda calls!

Fortunately, spoofing may be living its last days. From 1 October 2024, telephone operators have been required to block calls whose number displayed on a telephone cannot be authenticated. In other words, if the operator cannot correctly associate the displayed number with the calling device, he must block the call.

Unfortunately, this law currently only regulates calls made to or from landlines. The Banque de France defends itself by estimating that the vast majority of recorded spoofing cases come from landline numbers. For smartphone owners there would therefore be few risks to fear.