Caller ID and Spoofing

Below is the link to comments and recommendations at the FCC website about many of those telephone calls you get, even if you are on the "Do Not Call List," which was created by a law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2003, and implemented in 2004. You have to remember, the law exempts some callers from being prohibited from calling you: charities, political calls, pollsters, companies you do business with, or companies you have recently done business with. The thing is, unscrupulous and criminal elements have figured out how to circumvent the law, and/or how to fool you into answering your phone because of the number or name that shows up on your caller ID. There are lots of things going on with some of these calls, as the caller may not necessarily being trying to sell you something, but rather they may be trying to get information about you, which then can be sold, or used for identity theft. Some of these bastards use computers to dial telephone numbers in sequence, so the fact that you may have an unlisted number means nothing, as sooner or later the computer is going to call you. If you answer the call, there is often a lag time of a couple of seconds or so before someone answers you, if you get an answer at all, as there may not be a person available at that moment to talk with you. Understand, just because you get these calls doesn't mean the caller is illegal, as it may be a legitimate charity, for instance. To check on charities, here are two links:   http://www.charitynavigator.org/    or http://www.give.org/ 

It's important to remember, many charities do GREAT work and provide valuable help to people, animals and the environment, so please don't dismiss all calls as scams, but it might be better to mail a contribution to them, as many do have promotions on television which provide a mailing address, and some send solicitations in the mail, complete with an envelope, often postage paid.

Another thing about these calls is, if you answer a scam call, they now know that the number is an active number with a live person who answers the phone, and even if you ask to be put on their no call list, which they likely will agree to do, whomever it is they actually work for may have all sorts of numbers, and you may end up getting more calls; plus, they may also sell the information to others seeking telephone lists with active numbers, so asking them to put you on their no call list is not likely to end these calls; after all, if you were on the government "Do Not Call List," these scumbags were already violating the law and your privacy in the first place, and if you think by nicely asking them not to bother you will stop their calls, you're being naive. They're criminals!  

Getting people's personal information for sale or for identity theft is big business. As you'll see in the link below, technology has moved so quickly, it has been impossible to keep up with the tricks of the telemarketing and personal information business. They now can route calls from outside the country, making it far more difficult to trace the calls, or they may actually be set up and operating out of foreign countries. They also have figured out how to represent themselves as "pollsters," so as to claim they aren't in violation of the law. Further still, they can now "disguise" their number, which will show up on your caller ID as some other number, with the intent of getting you to answer the call. Believe it or not, I've been called BY MY OWN TELEPHONE NUMBER!!!

At this time, I have no idea what the answer to this problem is. Likely government needs more funding to specifically help advance technology to deal with the scam calls and telemarketing violations, but it may take more than that. You can't "un-invent" the technology the scam artists use, but likely inventions can combat it, but those inventions will have to be refined and updated to keep up with the scammers. You can go buy the latest locks for your home or vehicle, and they may be highly effective, FOR NOW, but the criminals are always working on how to breach any security device that has been invented. Look at all of the security breeches in several big stores' accounts in the last year or two, and even in the U.S. military! It's a never ending battle, but it's a battle that must be fought. Then there are those private drones buzzing overhead of all of us.  How long before one brings down an airliner? That's another subject though. Here's the link to the government site: 

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/unwanted-telephone-marketing-calls

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/spoofing-and-caller-id

WORD HISTORY:
Call-This word goes back to the Indo European root, "gal," which had the meaning "to shout, to call out." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "kall," with the same meaning. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "ceallian," likewise with the same meaning. This was then altered and reinforced by the related Old Norse form "kalla," which also had the same meaning.^ This then became "callen," before the modern version. The noun was derived from the verb circa 1300. The other Germanic languages have: Low German "kallen" (to speak), Icelandic "kalla" (to call, to name), Swedish "kalla" (to call out to), Norwegian "kalle" (to call, to name), Danish "kalde" (to call). Dutch has the archaic "kallen" (to talk), and German and Frisian once had similar words, now no longer used.

^ Old Norse was a Germanic language that was the forerunner of the modern North Germanic languages, the most prominent of which are: Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. There are two other branches of Germanic, East Germanic (now extinct, but which included Burgundian and Gothic) and West Germanic. English is West Germanic, as are Dutch, German, Low German and Frisian.