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I think a much better question is, why can scammers spoof a phone number? We hear lots of excuses from the carriers about how this is out of their control, this is how the system works, etc. Why don't they feel like they have a fire lit under their asses to fix the issue?

My immediate guess is that they must make money off of scam calls somehow. A scam call is still a call.

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The same principle is applied when you use call forwarding on most SIP providers. They "spoof" the real caller's Caller ID when forwarding the call, so that the forwarded call reaches your phone with the number of the actual caller, not some random number assigned to your account or the provider. If they didn't do this you wouldn't be able to call the original caller back directly from your call log.

This would be a legitimate use case for Caller ID spoofing.

Yeah, no, not buying it. I mean, not buying that's the only way it could be done.

Yeah, and the net effect is that they're shooting themselves on the foot: I don't even pick up phone calls anymore. And I don't think I'm alone in this: most families and friends claim only to answer calls of close contacts. Legitimate services nowadays just contact you in WhatsApp instead.

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