U.S. Congress passing law banning Caller ID spoofing, pranksters weep

Look, we’re pretty sure most of you out there have tried this a couple times or are at least familiar with the concept — you use a VoIP service which routes your call through a server that’s usually using Asterisk — you can have any number show up on the outgoing caller ID. Unfortunately for you malicious and deceiving individuals out there, Congress has just passed the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010, and it makes it 100% illegal to use a service like this. Here’s the breakdown:

To cause any caller ID service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information, with the intent to defraud and deceive.

There are exceptions for blocking your own caller ID and for law enforcement usage. In the past, as we’ve understood, this was a grey area, but it was still considered against the law to spoof someone else’s number. Though, we had heard that if you spoofed your own number, it wasn’t illegal (say you’re at the beach drinking a Mojito and need to call a client, you can spoof your office phone number from your cell phone), so we’ll have to see how this pans out. Sorry, SpoofCard.

[Via Ars Technica]

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