Help Mysterious Contact

[Gregory Chipman]

Perhaps one of you all can enlighten me here. This is my situation:
I have a phone of my own, an LG of some sort thru Metro PCS and so does my wife but hers is a slightly smaller model. Now, I had been receiving phone spam calls from a place in India claiming to be a car warranty extension service. They call everyday for months. I saved the number in my phone contacts as "scam likely". Now, down the road I see the same number pop up on my wife's phone. Now neither her now I log into my google account from her device, so its not likely a sync issue. It gets weirder though. I started a new job and I've finished my second month and they offered me a business phone for free for work. Its an LG v20. Now I've never used this phone before today. I've never signed into any personal accounts through it. Now low and behold, earlier this evening, I get a call on this new phone from "scam likely"! Same number and contact name! Now neither my work phone or my wife's phone show this contact in the contact list on the phones, but when the number calls, it shows up just the same.

I'm a bit bewildered and am wondering what kind of shenanigans are going on here. This could be quite a security breach. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanx!

 

[HighwayMtn98]

Some call blocking services recognize robocallers/telemarketers/scammers as "Scam Likely". It may be if you are using a call blocking service.

 

[Dannydet]

Nothing out of the ordinary here, phone scammers stop at nothing no matter what device.
Install a third-party call blocker and add those numbers to it.
End of calls....

 

[Gregory Chipman]

Some call blocking services recognize robocallers/telemarketers/scammers as "Scam Likely". It may be if you are using a call blocking service.

Thanks for feedback; however, I'm not using any blocking service, and I specifically saved that number in the past as "scam likely" so that I could recognise it. I've never heard of any service that would label a call as such. Especially, when it is only one such number and its from a local area code. There is something else going on here.

 

[Gregory Chipman]

Nothing out of the ordinary here, phone scammers stop at nothing no matter what device.
Install a third-party call blocker and add those numbers to it.
End of calls....

I disagree that this is nothing out of the ordinary. Its not the calls that I find odd, but rather the transitive nature of the user assigned caller ID for that specific number WITHOUT the use of a contacts backup service such as gmail . Wouldn't you find it odd to find the same number calling on any phone you happen to hold regardless of who owned it, and for that local number to have the exact same "less-than-flattering" caller ID assigned?

 

[Unforgiven]

Some manufacturers cross sync names and numbers to build out a better caller ID network other than just your own contacts. Verizon had some CityID (or something like that) app that did this back in the day that was free for 90 days or so, then they wanted you to pay Since these are all LGs, they may have some preinstalled app that does this, and if you were the only one to add a name to the number, or if others named it similarly, then voila.

 

[Dannydet]

Do you realize that spammers use number spoofing on a daily basis? So your caller ID is compromised, and that includes all of us, for that matter...

 

[tube517]

You didn't say if you have Metro on your work phone but the "Scam Likely" is through the network not through anything associated w/your contacts or google account.

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/metropcs-scam-block-scam-id

"Though the technology behind Scam ID and Scam Block is advanced, the experience couldn’t be simpler for customers. With Scam ID, when an incoming call is identified by the network as a possible scam, your phone displays a “Scam Likely” alert along with the phone number. You can then choose to accept or decline the call. And, if you prefer never to be bothered by likely scam calls, you can simply turn on Scam Block, and MetroPCS will terminate the call before it ever reaches you."

 

[svim]

Just the other day a report came out on how spam calling is increasing, the prediction approaching 50% of all calls are just crap:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...cellphone-calls-will-be-scams-by-report-says/
So yeah it's a pervasive problem and the morons doing them aren't just script kiddies playing around, these are well-trained and well paid morons so they're unfortunately pretty effective at this. I have a couple of daily-usage numbers and one of them gets several each week now. Luckily there's an integral call blocking feature in my phone's Phone app (tap on the number itself and in the resulting popup tap on 'Call Details', then tap on 'Block number'), and different services may implement this feature in a different way so check yours:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-block-a-number-in-android/
You can also contact your carrier to see if there's some kind of added call blocking service (they're probably going to charge an extra fee for it though). There's also a number of third-party apps on the Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=call blocker&c=apps&hl=en

 

[tube517]

You can also contact your carrier to see if there's some kind of added call blocking service (they're probably going to charge an extra fee for it though). There's also a number of third-party apps on the Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=call blocker&c=apps&hl=en

I recommend the Vlad Lee Call Blockers. Free and effective

 

[svim]

Just ran across this article, a really good analysis on how devious a typical phone call scam has become:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/voice-phishing-scams-are-getting-more-clever/