Can you spoof a phone number?

[FJRPilot]

Greetings! New to the forum and first post. Actually first smart phone.(Swore I'd never own one)
I just set up my lady's S5 for texting. Only 2 days later she got texts from people really mad accusing her of spamming. She has yet to send a text. There was more than a dozen numbers involved. This took place over 5 hours. I called one of them and the owner said he had been spam slammed by 19 numbers including ours. He said it came from Verizon. We are not on Verizon. Can you hijack a number for texting or do they spoof the numbers? I shut off her texting until we find out what's going on.

 

[Neo_ii_Droid]

Greetings and welcome to Android Central!

Just curious here, is this a new phone that you've purchased from one of the BIG name carriers other than Verizon?

 

[FJRPilot]

No. These were new and unlocked. We use limited data and texts with Consumer Cellular. They claim what happened can't happen.

 

[Neo_ii_Droid]

Sorry to hear about your situation. I've never heard of Consumer Cellular until now. I'm wondering if the cell phone number they assigned is a "recycled" one? Is there a way to contact them and probably change the number?

 

[FJRPilot]

No, I brought the number with me. I have had it for years. Consumer Cellular is for old farts like me. The rate are excellent. I use my phone for work and get 3000 texts and 500meg data for $10. Last month I used 100meg. Most of the time I'm using WiFi.

 

[VidJunky]

What happened wasn't from your wife's phone, it included her number. There's a setting in your SMS app that either breaks messages into individual threads or makes them group texts. What happens is whomever created the text left it as a group and whenever anyone in that group responds everyone gets it. Once everyone had stopped responding she'll stop setting the angry replies until then there's nothing you can do. Well except hope that she doesn't end up in another group like that. If I'm write she should've gotten the bogus text also.

Posted via the Android Central App from my HTC One M9

 

[FJRPilot]

I did not notice that text. I shut off texting for now. I'll give it a few more days and reactivate. Why this had to happen to her....... oh well.
Thanks for explaining.

 

[Bruce39]

Yes you can spoof a phone number. When I was working, all of our outgoing calls showed a different no. on caller ID & on callback option (*69??). This was so we would not be bothered with incoming calls. Our personnel email started going crazy for a spell about 2 yrs ago & we were getting a lot of spam; some of witch showed as coming from friends and/or relatives but the actual URL was from some other site - advertising, porn etc. After several weeks of spaming, we finally got most of it stopped & we are now back to normal. I assume if you can spoof email senders & phone calls it can be done on texts also. I would see if you can get a new number.

 

[VidJunky]

Your provider will hold texts up to one week, depending on your carrier. So one it's turned back on any pending texts will come through.

Posted via the Android Central App from my HTC One M9