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U.S. Congress passing law banning Caller ID spoofing, pranksters weep

Published Apr 15th, 2010 11:01AM EDT
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caller-id

Look, we’re pretty sure most of you out there have tried this a couple times or are at least familiar with the concept — you use a VoIP service which routes your call through a server that’s usually using Asterisk — you can have any number show up on the outgoing caller ID. Unfortunately for you malicious and deceiving individuals out there, Congress has just passed the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010, and it makes it 100% illegal to use a service like this. Here’s the breakdown:

To cause any caller ID service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information, with the intent to defraud and deceive.

There are exceptions for blocking your own caller ID and for law enforcement usage. In the past, as we’ve understood, this was a grey area, but it was still considered against the law to spoof someone else’s number. Though, we had heard that if you spoofed your own number, it wasn’t illegal (say you’re at the beach drinking a Mojito and need to call a client, you can spoof your office phone number from your cell phone), so we’ll have to see how this pans out. Sorry, SpoofCard.

[Via Ars Technica]

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Jonathan S. Geller
Jonathan Geller Founder, President & Editor-in-chief

Jonathan S. Geller founded Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR, in 2006. It became the biggest mobile news destination in the world by the end of 2009, and BGR was acquired by leading digital media company PMC in April 2010.

Jonathan is President of BGR Media, LLC., and Editor-in-chief of the BGR website.

What started as a side project at the age of 16, quickly transpired into 24-hour days and nights of sharing exclusive and breaking news about the mobile communications industry. BGR now reaches up to 100 million readers a month through the website, syndication partners, and additional channels.