Are you getting less spam calls today?
It's probably too soon to notice, but as of June 30, all phone carriers had to implement new technology that is supposed to cut down on scams by concentrating on "spoofing."
Spoofing is disguising caller IDs to appear local, even if the caller is overseas.
It changed the game for scammers.
"A lot of times, it's a ploy to get you to respond that it's a valid phone number," says Data Doctors' Ken Colburn.
Nothing prevented scammers to spoof numbers and apps to disguise caller ID are still readily available.
With so many scam calls and texts, I send all calls to voicemail unless they're a contact.
The government has been slow to make any impact.
"The ability to use any phone number you want will be much more difficult," Colburn says.
As of June 30th, all phone carriers had to implement STIR/SHAKEN, acronyms for caller ID authentication technology.
It means carriers would verify caller ID when calls are made and before they're received by consumers.
"These scammers can no longer pretend to use a phone number," Colburn says.
It won't solve all the issues.
So, continue only answering calls from people in your contacts.
Don't reply to unknown texts so you can stay off scammers active phone number lists.
"One way to get on that list is to respond in any way to that text message," Colburn says.
He says don't even respond "STOP."
Check with your carrier for any free spam help.
And forward any suspected scam text to 7726 which spells "SPAM".
If enough people forward the same text, Colburn says the system can stop it from going to others.
Many of the big carriers had this caller ID technology in place.
There are hopes this new step will make a big dent in these spoofed calls.
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