Scammers use spoofing to spoof caller ID and trick victims

A new scam is using fake caller ID numbers to trick victims. Criminals can make the name and number of a relative, bank or public agency appear correctly on the cell phone screen of the person receiving the call — even without having access to that number.

The technique is called spoofing, a type of caller ID spoofing. According to Renato Bobsin Machado, professor of Computer Science, scammers hire a telephone exchange with malicious software and manage to edit the number that appears to the victim.

"Being in a fake telephone exchange, the scammer can edit the number he is going to call", explains the professor. As the displayed number is saved in the victim's contacts, the call appears legitimate.

Person using cell phone — Photo: Liz Bravo/Pixabay

According to Machado, to obtain victims' data, scammers also use data leaked over the years — through social networks, companies and credit information. In addition, they cross-reference the phone number with public profiles, where it is easy to identify friends, relatives and co-workers through comments and tags.

"In rarer cases, the victim may have installed applications from untrusted sources. If they are malicious, these applications may obtain phonebook data and share them," explains Machado.

Self-employed Cláudia Simone da Silva de Oliveira discovered that her own number was used in the scam after a relative received a call with her name and phone number on the screen. When he answered, he heard music and then a message saying he had won a prize.

Suspicious, the relative took a screenshot of the screen and looked for Cláudia to confirm if she had called.

"I didn't call him. He sent me the printout, and it's actually my number there, my name", he says.

Cláudia's cell phone was not cloned and continued to work normally, only the identification displayed on the relative's screen was falsified.

The case is not isolated. Earlier this month, RPC, a TV Globo affiliate, showed an alert from the Foz do Iguaçu Civil Police about scammers using the police station's official number to make fake calls.

According to the professor, the use of artificial intelligence can make fraud even more effective, allowing you to imitate a person's voice from existing audio. According to him, combined with an emergency story, such as an accident or a Pix request, the scam is designed to not give the victim time to think.

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How to protect yourself

Renato Bobsin Machado, professor of Computer Science, recommends being suspicious even when the number seems known. The main guidelines are:

If you receive a request for Pix or money, disconnect the call and confirm via another channel, such as WhatsApp;

Arrange a key question with family members, which only the real person would know how to answer;

Never provide Pix, SMS code, CPF, passwords or bank details over the phone.

In case of an attempted scam, the advice is to file a police report.

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