Is this a scam?

[Stoobey]

Hello All,

I've had my phone number for many, many years now, over the past couple of years I've noticed an increase in spam / scam text messages, but that was it.

Over the past two weeks I've now had two calls, which I answererd, from two people asking why I keep calling them, when I said I haven't, they hung up.  Obviously I haven't called them, the numbers seemed legimate though when I searched them online.

Is it possible someone is falsely displaying my number when scam calling others?  I've looked online but I can't see this scam anywhere....  Or I wonder if it could be something new to trick me to calling back...

Has anyone else experienced this?

Many Thanks

[madasaf1sh]

@Stoobey 

Lots of people report this as its called "spoofing" where by spammers will use a random number to call people and then those who dont answer call back the real owner. 

OFCOM are supposed to be putting in some rules to block this... but nothing so far..

[Oxonian]

@madasaf1sh 

I am not sure how effective new Ofcom rules on this would be. 

Anecdotally, many calls with spoofed numbers originate from overseas and hence are outside of Ofcom's jurisdiction anyway. 

And you say "...nothing so far...". We are talking about Ofcom here ! 😀