If You Get A Call From Yourself, Hang Up!

This Caller ID scam uses your own phone number against you. Scammers have a new way to get at you over the phone. It's called "spoofing," and it involves using your own phone number to call you.

Scammers are now using your own phone number to call you and perpetrate their frauds.  The ID scheme is called "spoofing," and it works like this: Callers can deliberately falsify the telephone number and/or name relayed as the Caller ID information in order to disguise who they are.

Robert Siciliano, fraud expert with BestIDTheftCompanys.com, says, "This is just the latest tactic being used by illegal telemarketers. They hope that if you see your own number displayed on the caller ID, your curiosity will get you to pick up the phone."

Phone scammers are hoping to get around call-screening services, as well as the government's National Do Not Call Registry.  NBC News reports that at PrivacyStar, a free service to stop annoying telemarketing calls on wireless devices, they've spotted another new twist: spoofing the phone number so that it's nearly identical to yours, with only the last digit or two being different.

Bikram Bandy, head of the Do Not Call program at the Federal Trade Commission, says, "Fighting illegal telemarketing calls is a cat and mouse game, and these telemarketers aren't giving up easily. We didn't think they would."

Has this happened to you?