Situations like a global health crisis
For example, it’s only natural for everyone’s guard to be lowered when they are working from home unexpectedly, because home is a place identified with safety. It feels like the most secure place you know…
But perhaps you don’t even realize that you have walked too far down the garden while on a call, and your personal mobile has defaulted over to the Wi-Fi at the pub over the road, which is completely unsecured with no password at all. Suddenly, the advice you followed from your office IT guide to secure your own router and Wi-Fi connection is completely invalid, and despite the Ringover end of the call being securely routed via encrypted servers, the last few yards of the connection via your own handset is wide open to the world.
Another thing to bear in mind, is that sadly, bad actors are opportunists.
Situations like a global health crisis are a gold mine for them, and in 2020 Covid-related scams proliferated: Click this link to see who you’ve been exposed to as a risky contact, enter your date of birth here to book your vaccination. High-speed PCR testing for travel? Enter your bank details now (a tiny proportion of the millions who got that SMS had just booked emergency travel for compassionate reasons, and were distracted enough to assume that message had come straight from their airline).
Nearly half of illegal calls rely on VoIP technology. That’s because non-fixed VoIP numbers are generated easily—sometimes requiring nothing more than email confirmation—and don’t need to be linked to an account holder’s address.
Caller ID information can be spoofed, offering anonymity or aiding impersonation. A non-fixed VoIP number is the perfect tool for chain-dialing with a basic script while masking the identity of the caller and costing the spammer little to nothing.
Prolific spam calls have given rise to the development of countermeasures. APIs now exist that identify what type of number an individual is calling from based on multiple data points that are combined to form a reputation score. Numbers that are likely to represent a spam call are flagged and blocked.
More info: entry level network engineer