Caller ID Spoofing - History

History

Caller ID spoofing has been available for years to people with a specialized digital connection to the telephone company, called an ISDN PRI circuit. Collection agencies, law-enforcement officials, and private investigators have used the practice, with varying degrees of legality.

The first mainstream Caller ID spoofing service, Star38.com, was launched in September 2004. Star38.com was the first service to allow spoofed calls to be placed from a web interface. It stopped offering service in 2005, as a handful of similar sites were launched.

In August 2006, Paris Hilton was accused of using caller ID spoofing to break into a voicemail system that used caller ID for authentication. Caller ID spoofing also has been used in purchase scams on web sites such as Craigslist and eBay. The scamming caller claims to be calling from Canada into the U.S. with a legitimate interest in purchasing advertised items. Often the sellers are asked for personal information such as a copy of a registration title, etc., before the (scamming) purchaser invests the time and effort to come see the for-sale items. In the 2010 election, fake caller IDs of ambulance companies and hospitals were used in Missouri to get potential voters to answer the phone. In 2009, a vindictive Brooklyn wife spoofed the doctor’s office of her husband’s lover in an attempt to trick the other woman into taking medication which would make her miscarry.

Frequently, caller ID spoofing is used for prank calls. For example, someone might call a friend and arrange for "The White House" to appear on the recipient's caller display. In December 2007, a hacker used a Caller ID spoofing service and was arrested for sending a SWAT team to a house of an unsuspecting victim. In February 2008, a Collegeville, Pennsylvania man was arrested for making threatening phone calls to women and having their home numbers appear "on their caller ID to make it look like the call was coming from inside the house." Some companies even feature voice changing and call recording features.

In March 2008, several residents in Wilmington, Delaware reported receiving telemarketing calls during the early morning hours, when the caller had apparently spoofed the Caller ID to evoke the 1982 Tommy Tutone song 867-5309/Jenny.

In the Canadian federal election of May 2, 2011, both live calls and robocalls are alleged to have been placed with false caller ID, either to replace the caller's identity with that of a fictional person (Pierre Poutine of Joliette, Quebec) or to disguise calls from an Ohio call centre as Peterborough, Ontario domestic calls. See Robocall scandal.

In June 2012 a search on Google returned nearly 50,000 consumer complaints by individuals receiving multiple continuing spoofed VOIP calls on lines leased / originating from “Pacific Telecom Communications Group” located in Los Angeles, CA (in a mailbox store) in apparent violation of the FCC. Companies such as these lease out thousands of phone numbers to anonymous voice mail providers who in combination with dubious companies like “Phone Broadcast Club” (who do the actual spoofing) allow phone spam to become a greater and greater problem, if not huge at this point.