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0 pointsmark-r7y ago0 comments

Exactly. With phone number spoofing, all the scammer needs is the phone number of someone on your list. With social media how long do you think it would take to generate such a list, and to get propagated to every scammer?

0 comments

10 comments · 4 top-level

wittedhaddock7y ago· 3 in thread

Can you explain phone number spoofing to me? Is there truly phone spoofing that is more than faking the dialer on the client?

emerongi7y ago

There is no way for you to verify whether the caller's phone number is actually the real source. Anyone can impersonate anyone. It's like the source address in an IP packet. You can put whatever you want in there.

This is mostly a US problem though. In Europe, the operators tend to be more strict on this, AFAIK.

umvi7y ago

You should read the book "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. It will really open your eyes as to what is possible with phones.

wittedhaddock7y ago

can I borrow your copy? I will pay shipping to and fro' :)

1 more reply

magduf7y ago· 2 in thread

How is a spammer going to figure out phone numbers of people on my list from social media? I don't know about you, but I don't have my Facebook friends publicly viewable.

And that's an awful lot of work just to cold-call someone to try to sell them insurance or whatever.

ryanlol7y ago

With a handy-dandy facebook bug that allows them to scrape such data at scale?

This has happened multiple times before, at least two separate incidents have made the news.

magduf7y ago

This doesn't seem like a reliable way of running a business: just hoping that you can exploit a bug in Facebook (which will surely be fixed before long) so you can grab people's friends, try to figure out their phone numbers, then spoof them, then cold-call them trying to sell them crap insurance.

I'm sorry, this just sounds far-fetched to me. History seems to have shown that when hurdles are just a little too high, the spammers just don't bother.

1 more reply

balabaster7y ago· 1 in thread

This would need to be spoofed for every individual though. I imagine this would be cost prohibitive enough that it would at least in the short term kill most spam phone calls.

mark-rOP7y ago

On the contrary, it represents a revenue opportunity for the first person who can generate a list of matching pairs of phone number and friend phone number. I wouldn't expect the list to be prohibitively expensive because it will be resold thousands of time.

pbhjpbhj7y ago

In UK some of the call centres use a fake local number.

It seems to me that phone companies can detect that, but they don't want to reduce the number of calls, do they?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

10 comments · 4 top-level

wittedhaddock7y ago· 3 in thread

Can you explain phone number spoofing to me? Is there truly phone spoofing that is more than faking the dialer on the client?

emerongi7y ago

This is mostly a US problem though. In Europe, the operators tend to be more strict on this, AFAIK.

umvi7y ago

You should read the book "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. It will really open your eyes as to what is possible with phones.

wittedhaddock7y ago

can I borrow your copy? I will pay shipping to and fro' :)

1 more reply

magduf7y ago· 2 in thread

How is a spammer going to figure out phone numbers of people on my list from social media? I don't know about you, but I don't have my Facebook friends publicly viewable.

And that's an awful lot of work just to cold-call someone to try to sell them insurance or whatever.

ryanlol7y ago

With a handy-dandy facebook bug that allows them to scrape such data at scale?

This has happened multiple times before, at least two separate incidents have made the news.

magduf7y ago

I'm sorry, this just sounds far-fetched to me. History seems to have shown that when hurdles are just a little too high, the spammers just don't bother.

1 more reply

balabaster7y ago· 1 in thread

This would need to be spoofed for every individual though. I imagine this would be cost prohibitive enough that it would at least in the short term kill most spam phone calls.

mark-rOP7y ago

pbhjpbhj7y ago

In UK some of the call centres use a fake local number.

It seems to me that phone companies can detect that, but they don't want to reduce the number of calls, do they?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse