Spam. A lot.

I use the Call Screening function on my Pixel to filter out a lot of calls.  If it's a genuine caller they will say what they want after being prompted, but 99% of the time they will hang up within 3 or 4 seconds, I then block these numbers.

Yes, seems to be a thing. It started for me last month. I've had a chinese restaurant in Cornwall, Transport for London and a burger restaurant in Nottingham this week. I'm in Glasgow.

I was worried something was going on with someone using my number but having googled it, this appears to be suspected number cloning of the business that look as though they're calling you. I never answer these calls, but some people have called the numbers back and they have no knowledge of phoning the person. Some say when they answer the line is silent, no doubt trying to connect you to some scam call centre somewhere

It's (relatively) trivially easy to fake the phone numbers displayed by Caller ID. Your garage in Cambridge is more likely to be an ambulance chaser in Mumbai.

I assumed something along these lines. The caller ID is a new one on me though.

Caveat: I Am Not A Telephone Engineer.

My understanding is that "caller ID" is actually two numbers.

The actual real origin number is hard-coded into the system and can't be changed. This is what is presented to, say, emergency services when you dial 999. It cannot be withheld, they know who you are.

What you see on a regular Caller ID display is the other number. It's usually the same, and generally should be the same, but it's the origin going "hi, this is who I am!" and that could well be lying. Domestic Caller ID is a convenience service, not a security service.

(How all this translates into the world of VoIP I don't have a scooby, I haven't looked at this stuff in years.)

It’s (relatively) trivially easy to fake the phone numbers displayed by Caller ID.

It's very easy, and entirely legal too.

It's a huge problem with scams "it is Lloyd's, just look at the website/Google the number I'm calling from to check"

Indeed.

And if you're receiving that call on a landline then them telling you to hang up and ring back probably won't work either. A landline call doesn't end until the caller hangs up and something that generates a dial tone noise is simple enough.

I used to be of the mind "how does anyone fall for this stuff?" but they're getting increasingly complex. It's a minefield.

Indeed. Only this week my wife answered our land line, which even I couldn't tell you the number. They purported to be the Met police and her account had dodgy transactions. They told her to put phone down and call the bank herself. Obviously this is the phone still connected scam. She smelt a rat early on, but did worry me enough to ring my elderly parents to warn them of the tactic.

..... what's a landline?

😉

It’s (relatively) trivially easy to fake the phone numbers displayed by Caller ID.

It’s very easy, and entirely legal too.

The telephone industry has gone from not acknowledging the issue to saying they'll do something about it one day as a way of not doing anything about what would probably be a trivial issue to solve - they provide the means by which people can mask the origin of a call so a reasonably simple step to take would be not to make that provision.

All these spam calls do of course yield an income for the companies that carry the calls and connect them to you. When I still had a landline spam / scam call made up large the majority of occasions that phone would ring so telecoms companies are doubtless doing well enough out of them - the probably made more out of connecting those calls to me than I paid to make calls. But the source of the income they are receiving is of course largely an income from crime. But of course while this problem exists it also gives them an opportunity to up-sell various call blocking and screening services the protect us - which is basically demanding money with menaces.

Number cloning has been around for years.... Sounds like the op's contact information / number has been sold and put on a phishing scam call list. Almost impossible to get rid of unfortunately.

When I still had a landline spam / scam call made up large the majority of occasions that it would ring

Same. When mine died one day I realised that the only time it rang was either my mum or junk callers so I just ignored getting it fixed. I haven't had a landline in years now.

I tried to persuade my mum to get shut of hers and she was like "but what if someone rings it?!" Then later she'll be telling me that she was expecting a call from the hospital which didn't happen so she'd been sat at home all day for nothing when she wanted to go shopping.

Sounds like the op’s contact information / number has been sold and put on a phishing scam call list. Almost impossible to get rid of unfortunately.

They probably transferred 5k to their step mother in Algeria that they've never met a week or two ago.

Number cloning has been around for years

It has been but I think it's reasonably novel to clone random legit numbers rather than ones specific to a scam. It happened in the past with targeted scamming like a scammer pretending to be your bank and calling with what appeared to be your banks number. But this is something a bit different.  A lot of spammers and scammers just keep changing number so that they get around people's efforts to block them - all that matters it it appeared to be a UK landline. But a lot of folk also now commonly google cold caller's numbers before they answer and quickly report and  identify spammers and via services like whocalledme. So its maybe a new MO to use a number of a random reputable company as a caller ID (but not actually pretend to be calling from butchers in Southport to whoever answers)  rather than just a random geographical number on the basis that legitimates businesses number will have rank higher in searches than the spam reporting sites.

But a lot of folk also now commonly google cold caller’s numbers before they answer

What decade do you live in? My phone has been automatically doing this for ages. 01234567890 calls, despite never having a call with them before and them not being in my phone book, half a second later my screen shows "napoli pizza".

So its maybe a new MO to use a number of a random reputable company as a caller ID

Not just businesses - we've been on the other end of this, having had our landline number used by scammers. Cue lots of calls and messages saying "why did you call me?", some of whom were quite belligerent or unbelieving when we said we didn't. One of the more coherent callers told me what the original caller had said but I forget exactly what the scam was. Apparently they just choose a genuine phone number, use it until people get wise to it, then move on. There's nothing you can do about it, but I guess our number must now be blacklisted by thousands of blockers!

Following a car crash a couple of years ago I started getting load of spam calls to my mobile number.

Although these reduced over time I'm still getting a few, but since changing my provider (now on VOXI, was EE) they all get stopped before my phone rings by their own spam blocker, which I'm very impressed with. Had about 30 since April but only 1 has actually come through to me.

It used to provide a bit of entertainment in the office when I got one of these calls as I enjoy playing wit them when time allows and I'm kind of missing it occasionally, but the number I was getting was crazy.

As far as land lines are concerned, since switching to a VOIP phone with the same number I've not had one but there's still plenty of time for that to change. Perhaps the VOIP provider has improved spam filters as well?

It’s a huge problem with scams “it is Lloyd’s, just look at the website/Google the number I’m calling from to check”

Yeah, had that one day at work. I thought, “yeah, right!”, but just to be on the safe side, I phoned my bank. But instead of phoning their normal number, I have my account manager’s personal phone number, so I phoned her and left a message.

About three minutes later, she phoned me back, and told me she’d just checked my account, and there’d been a number of hits on my card around London, and to phone that number back immediately! 😳

Following a car crash a couple of years ago I started getting load of spam calls to my mobile number.

Yeah, I got those for some time after someone hit my car and I had to go through the insurance process.

They were the standard spam “About your accident injury claim…” Yeah, what injury claim was that, then? phük off!

I still have a landline, it’s what my broadband is connected to. Now I’m retired and spending more time at home, I get lots of spam calls, so I just unplugged the phone connection, leaving my broadband connection working. Anyone important has my mobile number, but there have been some occasions where I’ve needed to use a landline.

Anyone important has my mobile number

No I don't.
Oh you mean important to you. As you were.

Most spammers will be using some sort of auto-dialler, calling a whole list of numbers, then when someone answers connecting them to an agent or a recording. Trick is that answer isn't picking up the handset/accepting the call, its saying something, the auto-dialler is listening for someone before doing its next action.

So if you pick up the call but remain silent for a few secs, waiting for the caller to say something, then 90%+ of diallers will just hang up, if its a genuine call then you'll most likely hear someone speaking as they expect you to say hello. If you hear some sort of bleep/tone then it'll be the dialler followed by Kevin from British Telecom Calcutta saying they have spotted a virus on your line.   Love those as I can troll them to hell.