One of the phones in my stable (I change the one I carry) seems to get several spam calls a week, with at least half of them being apparently spoofed phone numbers that appear to be in my locality. I know this is the norm.
Some come through with a "Likely Spam" identifier, and I'm usually offered a chance to block the number or report it as spam. But the number shown on my phone isn't the real number, and doesn't belong to the spammer. So, what happens when the person who really has that number tries to make calls, and especially if they should happen to need to call me? If you're such an unlucky individual, isn't this is the worst presentation of a 'toxic' number? What's the recourse for a legitimate number holder who's had theier number spoofed by spammers?
Most of the numbers are from voip lines that these spammers do hack into them. In cases like these I look up these numbers here You are being redirected.... It will tell you basically the company that owns the number.
My understanding is that it's less often "hacking" and more often just spoofing. I used to have a SIP service set up to provide my Google Voice number as my apparent outbound number. Google was not involved in this configuration. I also used to get lots of calls on my OBi that appeared to come from numbers like 100001, 11111, 6666, 99999999...depending on what's placing the call and what's receiving it, it is surprisingly simple to tell the receiving end whatever phone number you pick. Or at least it used to be.
Thanks-- at least for the last 4 calls I've gotten, you're correct. All the numbers were registered to Peerless or Neutral Tandem/Intelliquent, both large VoIP number providers. I guess the fact that they're VoIP doesn't necessarily mean they haven't also been 'hacked', but likely not.
Any number VoIP, cellular or traditional landline is easily spoofed (no hacking of any kind required), so it's entirely possible the calls aren't actually coming from the numbers one sees as Caller ID. That said, the two referenced VoIP CLECs are notorious for doing business with spammers, so it's also quite possible the calls are indeed coming from those networks.