Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
It’s not just your imagination. Robocalls have gotten more intense in recent months and weeks in North Carolina.
One of the tactics scammers often use these days is something called spoofing. It’s when they assume a number you’re familiar with (like your employer or sibling or friend) to disguise the real number they’re calling from.
What’s happening: These robocalls tend to pick up before the holidays because scammers want to take advantage of people’s generosity, as well as the fact that people are doing a lot of shopping from home, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein tells Axios.
- Combating robocalls has been a significant priority for Stein’s office.
- Common themes of these scams include offers of credit card/auto loan relief and home mortgage insurance.
Additionally, there’s been a pickup in scam calls touting student loan relief, Stein adds. That’s because repayments are expected to start back up in February.
“People need to be aware that the scammers absolutely will exploit whatever is the news of the day to try to rip people off,” Stein says.
Driving the news: The Federal Communication Commission recently mandated that big phone companies require each call on their network that displays on your caller ID actually be from the number that the call is originating from. This effectively makes it very hard or impossible for scammers to…
