My mom got home today from work and looked at her caller id and had her own number on it. Can anyone explain?

Question

The caller id showed her name and her home # and when she calls it she just gets a busy signal.

Answer 1

These spoofers are easy to get, too!!!!

It must be one place just starting this, judging by how many questions about it all at once!

STRANGE  thing is, when I was looking at the answers, guess what one of the ADS was on my page?   yep, an ad to buy a spoofer card.

this happens a lot: Yahoo makes their money from advertising but they can't check how legal or helpful the products are. They get a lot of ads, then some software looks at the keywords we are using on the page we're on, then puts up an ad to match (called targetted marketing). every company does it.

it is worth looking at the ads though as sometimes they pretty much answer the question for you, especially the where can I get? type

Answer 2

I just had the same thing happen to me half an hour ago while I was making dinner. I had my hands full, glanced at the phone, and was surprised to see my name and phone number on the Caller ID. I did a little online research just now, and found out about something called "Caller ID Spoofing." The article is called "Confessions of  caller-ID spoofer". The paragraph most interesting to me reads like this: "You call a toll-free number, enter your Spoofcard account number, enter the 10-digit number you wish to call, and then the 10-digit number you wish to be displayed on the recipient’s caller ID."

My guess is that some enterprising telemarketer has figured out how to do this on a large scale, basically reflecting your own Caller ID info back to you. It had to happen eventually ... and it's not illegal. Yet.

I don't often answer telemarketing calls. It's why I have Caller ID in the first place. But I can tell you this: that happens to me again, I'll answer the phone and if it's a telemarketer, they'll get a piece of my mind. I can't think of anyone else who would have a reason to hide his or her name from my Caller ID.

There are a lot of potentially serious problems with this practice: people could access your voice mail, submit false police reports or 911 calls using your number, or possibly obtain credit card information.

On the other hand, until some law is written to outlaw this practice, the era of prank phone calls is back. "Hi, is your refrigerator running?"