A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized auto-dialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public-service or emergency announcements. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call.
If you get one of these calls, they’re not actually from the IRS — as the IRS itself explains, if you owe taxes, the agency will mail you an official notice, rather than shaking you down over the phone — they are scammers, and for them, business is booming. That’s because advances in technology have allowed scammers to place billions of calls a month, and they can even disguise their phone numbers in the process. The two tools that have made this all possible are robocalls and number spoofing.
The issue is the ease of becoming a robocaller. Anyone with a minor amount of technical ability can run their own system by downloading the relevant software. “The technology is widely available,” Barlow says. “There’s basically no barriers to entry in this market.”
Which are the bad robocalls?
Illegal robocalls generally contact recipients with the intention of stealing something from them. And that something might be your contact number, your financial information, or even your identity.
Here’s a rule of thumb: If you receive a call you didn’t consent to or does not contain emergency or critical information, then the robocall can be considered illegal.
Take note of the list of purported sources of robocalls below. Robocalls that claim to come from these organizations certainly do not. You can be sure that they’re always, always a scam:
IRS
Social Security Services (SSS)
Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)
Cruise companies
Tech support
A new trend in illegal robocalling involves the use of numbers closely resembling those they are contacting. Ailsa Chang, a correspondent for NPR’s Planet Money podcast, documented her experience with this when she received a call from a number with the same area code and first three digits of her own contact number. This is known as neighbor spoofing.
The psychology behind neighbor spoofing is that recipients are more likely to pick up the call should they see a familiar-looking number because they believe the caller might be someone they know, like a colleague or their child’s school.
In this underground, lucrative business, scammers have become more creative, thanks to technology that has made it easier for them to make unwanted calls and more challenging for us to accurately detect and block.
SPOOFING: PHONE NUMBERS IN DISGUISE
One of the strangest things you may have noticed about robocalls is that they come from numbers that look a lot like your own. The area code and even the first three digits might match yours, leading you to think you’re getting a call from someone nearby, like a local business or coworker. Then you answer, only to hear a prerecorded message or human scammer on the other end.
This is called “spoofing,” a process by which a caller ensures that their number shows up differently on caller ID. The technology itself is legal, and has legitimate uses (for instance, if you need to make a business call on a personal phone and want your office number to show up on the other end). However, when it comes to telemarketing, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) states that companies must use their own phone numbers.
In November 2011, the investigator served RackNine with a production order for records and had the account holder associated with the bogus calls quickly identified.[2] Investigators have also examined the Conservative Party's CIMS voter database and showed that "Pierre Poutine" used the Conservative voter database to select who to call. Investigators have blank entries for one specific login, leading to speculation that evidence has been deleted. PayPal has also surrendered their records to investigators since "Pierre Poutine" has used a PayPal account to pay for the bill for the automated calls. The cost for these May 2, 2011, calls was $162.10, Elections Canada said in court filings. This expenditure was never reported to Elections Canada, as required for legitimate political spending.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF?
It's nearly impossible to be 100% robocall-free, so adopt a few (if not all) of these tactics to see results:
Add your name to the FTC's "Do not call" registry, and report the calls you get anyway.
Use your phone's Do Not Disturb mode so that you only get calls from people in your contact list.
If you don't want to block all new numbers, block them as they come by going into the callers' contact information in your phone.
Buy a iphone, or Google Pixel phone that lets you know it's a scam so you don't have to answer to find out.
If you have any other phone, ask your carrier about caller ID options that help identify callers that aren't legitimate.
Use third-party apps like Nomorobo, Hiya, and RoboKiller.
And if you really want to scam a robocaller, take David Cogen's approach: He carries around a recording of static sound with a message that tells your robocaller that your number is no longer available. Play on repeat until they hang up.