Tracing a Spoofed Phone Number With Updated Technology – The whole world is facing cyber attacks all around. Not even at individual levels, but cyber attacks are happening at the organizational levels as well. It won’t be wrong to say that the numbers are rising day by day.
Here, in this post, we will discuss how to trace a spoofed phone number. Spoofing is one of the techniques used to get access to the personal information of people. It can be done in different ways including through emails, phone calls, website, IP, text message, DNS, etc. But our focus here will be tracing a spoofed phone number.
Before we dive deep into this topic, let us have a look at what spoofing is and what does a spoofed phone number means.
What is Spoofing?
Spoofing is a way of acting as a trusted source to get sensitive information of a person by communicating through different means. For example, calling someone to get his/her credit/debit card details by portraying yourself as an employee from the service providing company. Not only by phone call, but spoofing can also be done using emails, text messages, and by other means.
What is a Spoofed Phone Number?
A spoofed phone number can be defined as the number that flashes on your screen when someone calls you, but that is not the actual number from which the call was made. We must say that it is not easy to identify whether the number is spoofed or not by just looking at it. There are several ways of tracing a spoofed number and we will discuss that in this post.
Now, you might be wondering what the need to trace a spoofed phone number is. The answer is simple and that is to stay alert and prevent any mishappenings. If you don’t know about tracing a spoofed phone number, you might end up being in big trouble. Don’t worry, we’ll help you with this.
How to Trace a Spoofed Phone Number?
- The first thing you could do is search that number on Google and identify whether the number is of the same company as mentioned by the caller. Here’s a catch, if you use web research then it won’t help you if the person calling you is spoofing the company’s number. This technique is only helpful to trace local number spoofing. In that case, the caller spoofs a local number and presents himself/herself as someone else.
- The second technique you can try here is by calling the number you’ve received a call from. This should be done simultaneously while you are on call. Dial the number from another phone and see if it is engaged. If you hear a ringing sound, then this will be the proof of spoofing.
- One more thing that we could do is directly call the company and ask whether the number belongs to them. For example, if you get a call from someone who claims to be from ‘ABC’ company, then you can directly call on company’s number to confirm whether the number you got the call from belongs to that company or not.
- Besides all this, there are also many applications like TrueCaller that you can use to identify the real identity of the number. Such apps alert you by displaying ‘Spam’ when you receive a call from a spoofed number. They also tell you the correct identity of that number and you can identify when the person calling claims to be from a company.
What Action Should be Taken after Tracing a Spoofed Phone Number?
Everyone wants to expose cheaters, whether they have cheated on them or have tried to do so. Now, as you already know that spoofed calls are made to fool someone and get sensitive information. So, the action after tracing a spoofed number should be to expose the caller.
Here’s a catch, if you think of exposing the spoofed number on your own, then this might not help you. To get the job done you will require the help of the service provider and also the law enforcement agencies.
Exposing a spoofed number could be time-consuming and you might also not come up with the result you’ve wanted. So, it is advised not to get disappointed. This is because, even if you find someone who can trace the correct number, he/she might not tell you the right number for security reasons. While on the other hand, the one who wants to stay in touch with you might tell you the actual number.
So, the next step after tracing a spoofed phone number should be to uncover that. Remember, it will require a lot of patience and courage.
What to do When You Get a Spoofed Call?
When someone tries to get access to your personal information by acting as authorized personnel, become alert. This is because no company asks for personal information or any sensitive data from its customers. Even they advertise as well that we don’t ask any personal information from our clients. So, here’s all you need to do when you get a spoofed call:
- The first thing you must consider is to avoid sharing any sensitive information. What we mean by saying sensitive information is your card details, OTP that comes to your phone number, and bank details.
- You might have or might not have got a spoofed call saying that you’ve won a lottery. The caller says to deposit a certain amount of money in his/her bank account for you to get the lottery money. So, if you ever get such type of calls, don’t ever give any money to the caller by any means.
- If you find that you are repeatedly getting a spoofed call from the same phone number, just block it.
- If you receive any text from the spoofed number, don’t reply. Plus, don’t click on the link if present in the text.
- As we have discussed above, you can also report the number to the law enforcement agencies and they’ll do the rest.
Read More- Most Useful Apps from Google Play Store Which We Use Regular
The Bottom Line
The spoofed call is not always bad as some companies use it for legit reasons. They might be calling you from a personal number but the number that flashes on your screen will be the company’s local number. Fraud people are making fools of people using this technology.
We hope that this post would have helped you know what a spoofed number is. Besides this, we have also discussed tracing a spoofed phone number. So, stay alert, stay safe, and keep all sensitive information to yourself.