I've received those stupid "Last Chance! Your Car Warranty Has Expired" mailings. And I've received the Car Warranty Renewal telemarketing calls. I once asked them why they were calling me since I was on the National Do No Call list and they said: "Well, you pressed 2 when we called so you must have wanted our call"! I've reported them, each time, to Do Not Call and have listed them on one of the many telemarketer-number posting sites like  whocallsme.com and 800notes.com. Finally, it looks like justice is happening.

According to  the San Francisco Chronicle. one or more of these firms has been busted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  Here's another look at the consumer aspect by (fellow Syracuse University alumnus) Herb Weisbaum at MSNBC.

Phaking Phone Numbers
This ability to "spoof" the Caller ID text (just like spammers "spoof" the FROM: text in their emails), as displayed on your phone and mine, is not something new to Voice Over IP calling. Caller ID text editing has been a feature for digital business trunk line (known in-the-biz as PRI lines) users for some time and this ability is useful because a business using one of these trunks might have several sub-entities each requiring its own CallerID text; some phone systems can even display the private DID number for each employee when that employee makes a call. And very strong laws need to be made to punish abuse of this capability.

The reason that The Nefarious prefer VoIP accounts is that the editing is easier to do and, like a Hotmail email account, these accounts are much cheaper, more
disposable, and harder to trace. Folks like you and me, with landlines
and cellphones, cannot edit what shows up when we call someone - we can
tell the phone company how we want it to appear and, if they think it's
legit, they will comply. They also now have a RECORD OF IT.

One argument for allowing the unsupervised editing of CallerID text, as mentioned in the SF Chronicle article, is for people who NEED to obfuscate their numbers. The example provided (by a company who provides software to allow this!) is a doctor who calls patients from her cell phone but doesn't want the patient to know the cell phone number. My surgeon had no problem giving me his cell phone number, so I guess it's an individual issue, but it can be handled easily by a smart entrepreneur who offers a service allowing doctors (e.g.) to call in, then dial out again - the CallerID will be that of the service. The doctor's own office can easily install a modern phone system allowing him to call in and then back out again; his office CallerID will be displayed - which is ideal - and not his cell phone number. Seems to me that the outbound phone can have CallerID blocking turned on. CallerID can be blocked per-call or globally on your landline (see this article by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse), As for cell phones, the PRC says (see item 12 in the article) that, in most cases, you cannot block your CallerID. I called Verizon Wireless today and they said they CAN do this so it's possible for a doctor (e.g.) to get a cell phone that shows RESTRICTED on the called party's display.

The Bottom Line
is to not do business with telemarketers, to not assume that a caller ID is who/what it says it is (unless it's somone you already know - it's highly unlikely that a telesleaze firm will randomly happen to pick your mother's phone number to display), and to generally look at any phone call from someone you don't know with skepticism until you're SURE they're legit. And, as Herb Weisbaum says, if the seller pushes you to "buy now because the offer expires today!" and/or won't send you a proposal/contract/prospectus first, hang up on them. And no matter how legit they are, if they called you and you were registed with DoNotCall.gov (and they aren't an excepted non-profit, political, or polling organization), they broke the law. Log the call at DoNotCall.

Keywords: caller ID, telemarketing, callerID, Voice Over IP, VoIP, vishing, phishing, CallerID faking, Caller ID editing, spoofing, callerID spoofing, caller ID spoofing, PRI