A: Similar to spam emails, spam calls are a pervasive problem, affecting users across the telecom industry. Freshphone takes measures to help address this problem through the Privacy Manager, Blacklist, and CallerID monitoring. Although these features are effective to limit spam calls, they cannot eliminate them.
Spam callers use a tactic called "Number spoofing". Through this tactic, spam callers imitate or "spoof" a number that is local to your own. They know that people and businesses are more likely to answer if a number is local. Spoofing is illegal, as you cannot legally display a phone number you do not own when calling out.
Spammers will typically dial multiple numbers at once, spoofing to match a number local, then speak with the first person who answers. They then hang up on other calls that were ringing. You may have experienced this if a call simply stops ringing or no voicemail message is left after a call.
Have you ever called a number back only to find out the the number is disconnected, or the answering party has no knowledge of ever calling you? This may have been a result of number spoofing!