Phone Spoofing and What You Can Do About It

Our phone has been ringing off the hook for the past 2 days. We have received over 200 calls. And we are not happy.

Unfortunately, our phone number has been spoofed. What IS that?

We had never heard of such a thing until it happened to us. As it turns out, thousands of people have already been victims of this.

In our case, calls are being placed to people from what appears to be our phone number, except we aren’t making the calls. How is that possible you ask? Well, scam artists have hijacked our phone number and through special technology, our number shows up on the recipient’s caller ID.

Most people have never heard of this and so they don’t accept the idea that the number they see on their caller ID is not the one being used to harass them.

As a result, we have had a host of irate people calling us, threatening us in not so nice language, because they believe we are the ones behind the relentless phone calls.

Unfortunately, we are as much a victim as they are. Everyone has heard stories of people who lose money to scammers but this is another side to some of the scams, a side that no one talks about. Innocent businesses or people are at risk of having their names sullied by frustrated individuals who try to exact misguided revenge for the harassment they experienced.

From the messages that have been left on our voicemail, it seems that the nature of the calls is quite varied. Some of the callers say they are being bothered by people who claim to be from the IRS requesting owed money. One woman even thought she had won $9000. What seems to be the common thread is that the calls are incessant.

This experience has been extremely disruptive to us because we don’t know which calls could be coming from people who are interested in booking our villa. The volume of calls is such that for the time being, we are routing all calls to voicemail as we cannot keep up with the number of people calling our number. Phone messages about a stay at Mais Oui Tennis and Spa villa will be returned as quickly as we can.

We have changed our recorded message to inform everyone that our phone number has been “phone spoofed” and are directing people to contact us through our website – www.MakeItJamaica.com.

Despite the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, which makes it a crime to use a fake number to commit fraud or cause harm, there aren’t adequate laws or mechanisms to prevent this from happening. As surprising as it is, if you google “phone spoofing” or “caller ID spoofing”, you will see that there are actually companies that provide this service! How could this be, you might ask. Well, phone spoofing itself is not illegal. It is only illegal if it is done with malicious or harmful intent.

We have reported the matter to the FCC. In response, we got an email thanking us for reporting the issue but there is nothing they can do. The phone company cannot help either because the culprits are not using their actual phone lines.

We appreciate the understanding of those callers who actually took the time to listen to our voicemail message and left us encouraging and sympathetic messages.

Our good name is on the line by activity beyond our control. We run a legitimate Jamaica villa rental business and have nothing to do with these unscrupulous people. If you ever decide to take a trip to Jamaica please know that we will deal with you honestly because that is who we are and have always been.