This morning there was a message on my landline phone from someone who was obviously very upset about getting phone calls, perhaps multiple times from the same number.

After listening to this person exercising his command of four-letter-word English, I realized that he must have received a call, perhaps repeated calls, and the caller ID on his phone listed my landline phone number.

Translating the verbal abuse, he wanted to know who I was and why I was calling. Further realization — some person or organization that uses phone number spoofing of “local looking” numbers had used my phone number in one of their scams and called him.

I would have thought that by now everyone knew about this spoofing scam and simply ignored numbers they did not recognize.

There are many entries on our wonderful world wide web that talk about this practice and how to deal with it.

One last word here to the person who left the message on my phone. If you are calling a number that you do not recognize, be civil. It may be some honest person just trying to get through these very trying times by cold calling to generate some business.

It may be your neighbor calling to say you left your garage door open. It may simply be a wrong number.

John H. Kasten
Sun City West