Caller ID Spoofing: Yardley Police Warn Residents To Beware

YARDLEY, PA — Police in Yardley are urging residents to be careful of scammers using caller ID spoofing to target unsuspecting victims.

"Most people have known the frustration of a call from someone who falsified the caller ID information," the police department posted via its official Facebook page.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, spoofing is when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity. Scammers will often use "neighbor spoofing" so it appears that the incoming call is coming from a local number, or spoof a number from a company or a government agency that you may already know and trust.

But don't fall for it, Yardley police warn. Here are some tips from the FCC to help keep you from becoming the next caller ID spoofing target:

• Don't answer calls from unknown numbers. If you answer such a call, hang up immediately.
• If you answer the phone and the caller (or a recording) asks you to hit a button to stop getting the calls, you should just hang up. Scammers often use this trick to identify potential targets.
• Do not respond to any questions, especially those that can be answered with "Yes" or "No."
• Never give out personal information such as account numbers, Social Security numbers, mother's maiden names, passwords or other identifying information in response to unexpected calls or if you are at all suspicious.
• If you get an inquiry from someone who says they represent a company or a government agency, hang up and call the phone number on your account statement, in the phone book, or on the company's or government agency's website to verify the authenticity of the request.

Spoofing calls as well as robocalls are the biggest consumer complaint the FCC receives every year—that's more than 200,000 complaints annually to be exact, according to the agency.