Last week Vice Motherboard ran an article on the continuing increase in robocalls from scammers. The article places the blame squarely on new and cheaper spoofing tech that’s outpacing technical and legal solutions.

Caller ID spoofing – and it’s spawn, neighbor spoofing – involves the use of tech that causes a fake telephone number to appear in your caller ID. With neighbor spoofing, the area code and 3 digit exchange would be the same as yours. The idea is to trick you into answering the call because you think the caller is someone local or someone you might trust.

According to Vice, 3.4 billion robocalls were made to Americans last year. This works out to an average of 10.4 calls per “person affected” and resulted in 4.5 million complaints being filed with the FTC. The most common call types involve credit card (promises to reduce interest rates or eliminate balances), student loan (same) and IRS scams (IRS agents and government employees don’t call consumers and demand money or account information). Unfortunately, it keeps getting worse.

The article uses the term “robocalls” to refer to calls from scam artists who try to trick people into giving them financial and personal information they can use to drain bank accounts and run up credit card charges. But scam robocalls should be distinguished from telemarketing calls that are made by businesses trying to sell products and services. We have some legal recourse against certain types of telemarketing calls, including calls made to numbers registered on the national Do Not Call Registry. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about robocalls from scammers, apart from trying to block the calls (e.g., nomorobo.com ) or hanging up immediately. To protect yourself, you should never give out or confirm personal or financial information (like bank account or credit card numbers), wire money or buy or send a gift card to someone who calls you. And never allow yourself to be pressured or threatened into taking action.

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