Falsifying a phone call to make it appear as though another person is calling you is far more accessible than you might assume.

Your phone rings and a familiar name and number shows up on the screen, you answer the call but instead of your friend on the other end of the line you hear strange sounds, voices do not sound quite right and the content of the phone call makes no sense to you.

You’ve likely been the target of a spoof telephone call, where someone has used the name and number of a person you know or trust and taped it over phone software that masks the real caller’s identity.

On Wednesday morning, the police were called out to MP Jason Azzopardi’s house after receiving phone calls from a source impersonating his mobile number saying that he was in distress. The home of a high-profile journalist was also visited by the police for the same reasons.

While just a couple of years ago achieving something like this might have required specialised knowledge in telephony, modern software has made the facility quite accessible and easy to achieve quickly and cheaply, experts who preferred to remain unnamed have told Times of Malta.

What is white-labelling?

Voice over internet protocol or VoIP software that allows users to make telephone calls over the internet is readily available on most app stores.

Unlike communication apps like Messenger or WhatsApp, which have a function that allows users to make calls to each other using their accounts, VoIP allows users to make calls to telephone numbers.

While used infrequently on a consumer level, on commercial level companies often make use of this, particularly when it comes to mass communication with its client base.

Such practice happens daily: when you receive a text message from your bank, for example, or a delivery service letting you know there’s a parcel behind your door, you often don’t see a number but the name of the company on your screen.

This practice is known as white-labelling and it’s when a telecommunications company allows a client to replace its caller ID with a name instead of a number.

While perfectly harmless as a business solution, when provided to bad actors it gives an opportunity to set the caller ID to whatever name or number that person chooses, allowing them to impersonate a trusted contact and mask the origin of their calls.

While some apps try to prevent abusive behaviour by requiring users to verify ownership of the phone number they are setting as caller ID, there are nonetheless ways to get around it and it remains possible to acquire the caller ID of your choosing without further verification.

In March, telecommunications service provider GO had to warn customers that scammers were making use of such software and calling up customers asking to download software or personal banking details.

The company would never ask for sensitive information of this nature over the phone.