Monthly Archives

April 2018

Consumer Alert: Caller ID and Spoofing

By | Consumer Alert
“Spoofing” occurs when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity. Spoofing is often used as part of an attempt to trick someone into giving away valuable personal information so it can be used in fraudulent activity or sold illegally. U.S. law and FCC rules prohibit most types of spoofing. Our office has been notified by PTC customers of scammers pretending to be PTC employees and asking for their personal information as making offers to sell them products. We work hard to protect your personal information by assigning every account a unique PIN number that only you and our company know. Some customers choose to add additional contacts to their account and share their PIN number with them so they can be authenticated as well. Did you know that you can authenticate the people that call you? If you cannot confirm a caller’s identity, simply hang up the phone and call the person back at a number that you can confirm as the number of the person or company. For example, you can hang up and call us at 800-522-3221 to confirm that you are speaking with a Pottawatomie Telephone Company employee. For more information on spoofing go to: http://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/spoofing-and-caller-id  For more information on Caller ID go to: http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/callerid.pdf