Don’t recognize the number on your Caller ID? It could be a scammer.
Phone scams continue to plague taxpayers as fraudsters try a number of tricks to try and steal your money and possibly, your identity. The scams run the gamut from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) impersonators demanding money over the phone to those asking you to file a new return. In all cases, the IRS warns taxpayers to be diligent as they work to “protect taxpayers from the ongoing trend of phone scams pretending to be the IRS.”
Callers may claim to be from the IRS but have routed calls from all over the country.
Today, Whitepages, the leading provider of contact information for people and businesses in the U.S., announced the top 10 area codes used by spam callers (note that these area codes include all spam callers, not just those engaging in tax-related scams).
White pages found that, other than toll free numbers such as 800, 866, 877, 888, and 855, the top 10 area codes Americans are receiving as spam are:
- 313 – Detroit
- 713 – Houston
- 954 – Fort Lauderdale
- 404 – Atlanta
- 484 – Eastern and Southeastern Pennsylvania
- 407 – Orlando
- 214 – Dallas
- 202 – Washington, D.C.
- 972 – Dallas
- 205 – Birmingham
Whitepages created theses lists using real-time analysis of billions of calls, texts, and phone lookups from Whitepages’ 50 million users. The company uses patterns that identify potential spammers or scammers to analyze more than 2.5 billion calls and texts every month.
Calls may be identified on caller ID as originating from IRS: by “spoofing” the source, callers hope to trick taxpayers into believing that the call really is from IRS. Some caller ID systems can help catch those fake or spoofed numbers, allowing call recipients to identify and report those numbers. Since Whitepages launched it spam tracking system three years ago, its users have reported more than 10 million numbers. Today, an enhanced version of the Whitepages Caller ID app provides users with a spam score, number of reports and comments from the Whitepages community for incoming calls identified as suspected spam. That kind of information may help consumers make better choices about picking up the phone – and possibly getting taken by scammers.
“While spam may be annoying, they’re much more than that – scams are illegal and cost US citizens billions of dollars every year,” said Lori Roth, director mobile products at Whitepages. “Many people fall victim to these phone scams because they’re receiving calls from area codes familiar to them, often times seemingly from their backyards. We’re on a mission to help consumers dodge those calls entirely.”
How much money are those calls costing taxpayers? Millions. As of August of 2014, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) estimated that victims have lost as much as $5 million to the most recent IRS phone scam alone.
For more information about IRS impersonation scams, check out this information provided by TIGTA.
