More Phone Calls People By Itself

[bjhag]

Samsung G6 , Android Version 7.0, Patch: 2/1/2018
Service: Verizon
Antivirus: Norton

Today the phone decided to call someone on its own. It was right next to me, but I didn't see it as was using an app (that did not make the call as best I can tell).
First I knew about this was when the person called my phone and left a voice mail.

I have also observed in the last 18 months there has been a lot of spoofing of cell and other phone #s in caller ID which is exploited by telemarketers, but today's issue seems different.

I am unimpressed with the lack of response from Verizon. Are they selling a back door hack for telemarketers and just not telling us?

Norton tells me my phone is secure and my apps are well behaved. The description of this problem in the forum sounds like this is some kind of exploit that isn't picked up by Norton. I will grab a link to the forum and forward it to them. Note to anyone using Kaspersky - um, given the news in the last year about Kaspersky, ....well you may want to consider a different antivirus vendor, although these days, I really wonder if any of them are reliable.

 

[BEEFTECH]

Samsung G6 , Android Version 7.0, Patch: 2/1/2018
Service: Verizon
Antivirus: Norton

Today the phone decided to call someone on its own. It was right next to me, but I didn't see it as was using an app (that did not make the call as best I can tell).
First I knew about this was when the person called my phone and left a voice mail.

I have also observed in the last 18 months there has been a lot of spoofing of cell and other phone #s in caller ID which is exploited by telemarketers, but today's issue seems different.

I am unimpressed with the lack of response from Verizon. Are they selling a back door hack for telemarketers and just not telling us?

Norton tells me my phone is secure and my apps are well behaved. The description of this problem in the forum sounds like this is some kind of exploit that isn't picked up by Norton. I will grab a link to the forum and forward it to them. Note to anyone using Kaspersky - um, given the news in the last year about Kaspersky, ....well you may want to consider a different antivirus vendor, although these days, I really wonder if any of them are reliable.

-You are right ! This is Orwellian ! check if you linked your phone to...fb ! Then go in fb parameters and RESTRICT ALL APPS to access to your fb data...

 

[UglyStuff]

I smell malware here... See this article: Android malware makes calls and sends messages even when the phone is switched OFF | Daily Mail Online

 

[ManiacJoe]

Since you did not see the call actually get made, how do you know that it happened?

Like you said, spoofing the caller ID on a phone call is really easy to do. Some telemarketer could easily have picked your phone number at random to use as his caller ID info.

 

[UglyStuff]

There's that too, yeah... Or just a prank from a "friend"...?

 

[IamSlot]

These are all symptoms pointing to mallwear . There is 12 signs that may point to mallwear infested phone , and you have listed four of them. Lot of mallwear apps are downloaded from the PLAY STORE. I know it may sound crazy , but in 2016 google has detected and removed just short of 500.000 malicius apps. It will help if you check in the settings of the Play Store , if your device is Play Protect certified. Lot of devices are not. I would recomend not to try power downloading verius anti - mallwear apps , with the same result , or the lack of it. In my experince you will do much better trying to manualy delete files. However , I would not recomend that nighter if you don't know what to look for. Also , try disabling as many blotwear apps as you can ( you will find a list of once that are safe to disable just about anywear).

 

[B. Diddy]

It really doesn't have to be malware. This kind of spoofing is becoming very common. I just got two calls today from different numbers with the same area code and prefix as mine, which I know were spam. I've tried calling back a number like this, and it's usually some random person who is bewildered that I'm calling them back about something they knew nothing about. The idea is that if you get a number with the same prefix, you're likely to think that it's a local neighbor or business calling your for some reason. Nowadays, I just ignore calls from those kinds of numbers -- if it's a real person, they can always leave a voicemail.

Unfortunately, it seems that this kind of spam is harder to detect and block. Google's own Caller ID/Spam detector feature can't figure out that these are spammers as well, since they're coming from legitimate numbers.