Yup these are like the basics: Scammer.info is a forum to find/post/ scammer numbers and collaborate with research. BobRTC is a calling platform mainly which you can use to safely call the scammers + some extra features. It also contains a phonebook with scammer numbers. TextNow.com is another calling service which isn't scambaiting focused but easy to use. Apart from those, I'd say popupdb.org is growing in popularity. It's a website that always has the latest tech support scam popups listed and you can contribute by submitting the ones you've found yourself. That way we try to create a database and also automatically report the popups to the hoster and get them removed. The more contribute the better it gets
About the scam call you received: that sounds like the typical Social Security Administration scam. Basically they do a lot of robocalls using callerID spoofing (they appear to be calling from a number which they don't really own hence when you called back you reached the real owner and not the scammers) and when you press a number the system will transfer you to a live agent. Maybe they got suspicious because of your voice or something, maybe their line was bad and the call dropped. What they're also doing is they are validating the Social Security Number with the help of websites so your year of birth has to match the SSN. A tool to create a legitimate looking SSN can be found here: I don't think a name matters but sometimes I heard that they are robocalling a list of people and then they try to match you with that list to avoid random 3rd party prank callers but that's pretty rare I think. What they also do is they run your phone number through Google to see if your name pops up in these phonebook websites and if that doesn't match they also may hang up.
After that they'll proceed to tell you that you're in big trouble because they have found a white Toyota Corolla with Cocaine in Texas and it was rented under your name. Once you start protesting and saying it wasn't you they will be like "yes we understand but we have to suspend your social and create a new one". That's when they ask for iTunes cards as a payment for the creation of a new SSN.
yeah the technique is called CallerID spoofing. That can be only done if you don't have a regular phone line but an internet telephone / Voice-over-IP
When doing a VoIP call, there is several information being transmitted to the call recipient, one of them being the callerID which is your own phone number. However, that field can be edited/set by yourself so you yourself can decide what will be transmitted to the call recipient. There's no cross-check if the number you've set actually belongs to you or not.
So scammers often use it to disguise their real number or to appear as someone/something else. E.g. SSA scammers could spoof the real number or the real SSA in order to appear legitimate as the victim just would see that spoofed number which is also the real SSA number.
Since the number is spoofed, they can only do that with outbound calls. When you call the same number back, you'll reach the real owner of the number. That's how you can spot if a number has been spoofed or not: by calling them back to see if the number leads to the person/organization it claims to be
We use(d) this callerID spoofing technique with BobRTC which allowed us to call the scammers anonymously and also because every call was made with a randomized callerID, it was impossible for the scammers to block the calls
There's some change in regulations and laws recently so we're using a different strategy now
try this one however I don't know how well that works