'Phone spoofing' scammers disguise as local callers

Phone spoofing scammers use simple software to disguise their calls as local numbers. (CBC News)

Phone scammers are using software to mask their real identities by displaying a fake telephone number.

The trick is called 'phone spoofing.' It's a tool used by fraudsters to mislead people into thinking the call is from a reputable business or person. 

'They do not quit. It's about driving me to the brink of sanity,'- Mike Boychuk

Sometimes the number the scammer uses already belongs to a real person. 

Mike Boychuk, a real estate agent in Saskatoon, has been a victim of phone spoofing.

It all began last year when Boychuk started getting suspicious calls with the Saskatchewan 306 area code coming through on his work cell phone, personal cell phone and home number. When he would answer, an automated voice would inform him he had won a cruise or offer an exclusive deal on air miles.

"I'd get a call from a local —what appeared to be — cell phone," Boychuk said.

Mike Boychuk, a Saskatoon-based real estate agent, is a victim of phone spoofing. (Mikeboychuk.ca)

?Boychuk told CBC News he tried to ignore the calls, but a couple days after the calls started, regular people started calling him.

"I started getting people phoning me... they'd say 'I'm just calling you back', and I'd say 'who is this?'" Boychuk said. "I thought it was really strange because I hadn't made any calls."

After these sorts of calls persisted, Boychuk contacted his cell phone carrier, Telus Mobility.

Boychuk said Telus told him he was a victim of phone spoofing and assured him that the scammers usually used a particular number for only one or two weeks before they'd move on to another.

Chris Gerritsen, a spokesperson for Telus Mobility, told CBC News it is difficult for the company to actually help its customers who are repeatedly victims of the popular phone scam.

"It's very, very difficult to trace," Gerritsen said. "These spoofing applications are software that an individual loads onto their computer to use...it can't really be discerned which company is providing the spoofing service."

Telus Mobility said it is concerned about phone spoofing and has asked its customers to take precautionary measures against the scam.

"Don't give out your cell number to anyone other than those you trust," Gerritsen said.

However, precautionary measures won't help people like Boychuk. He said the calls still come on a regular basis.

"They do not quit ... It's about driving me to the brink of sanity because they call every number I have, my two cell phone numbers and my home number, maybe, at least twice a week," Boychuk said.

Canada's Anti Fraud Centre said victims of phone spoofing should immediately call their phone company when they realize what is happening.

"Your telephone or internet service provider may have the ability to determine the true IP address or telephone number but they must be informed quickly before this information is overwritten on their database," Canada's Anti Fraud Centre explains on its website.

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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 search crowdsourced by U.S. firm

A U.S. company has put crowdsourcing to work in the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner, inviting internet users to comb through satellite images of over 3,100 square kilometres of ocean for any sign of wreckage, the company says.

Colorado-based DigitalGlobe Inc. used two of its satellites to collect imagery from an area between the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea where the Boeing 777-200ER with 239 passengers and crew on board was at first believed to have crashed after it went missing early on Saturday, the firm said on its website Tuesday.

The effort by DigitalGlobe was launched just before Malaysia's military indicated the flight might have gone way off course, which could place its last known location hundreds of kilometres from where DigitalGlobe collected satellite imagery for its crowdsourcing project.

The company placed the images on its crowdsourcing website Tomnod on Monday and invited the public to join in the search for any sign of the plane, whose disappearance has become one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history.

The flight last made contact with civilian air traffic control roughly midway between Kota Bharu, a town on Malaysia's eastern coast, and the southern tip of Vietnam while flying at an altitude of 10,670 metres.

"If there is something to see on the surface [of the water], we will see it," Luke Barrington, DigitalGlobe's senior manager for geospatial big data, told the Denver Post. "But the question is if we are looking in the right area," he added.

A Malaysian military officer told Reuters that Flight MH370 from Malaysia's capital of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing appears to have turned around and made it to the Strait of Malacca, to the west of peninsular Malaysia, instead of to the northeast of the country where initial search efforts were conducted.

Navy ships, military aircraft, helicopters, coast guard and civilian vessels from 10 countries have crisscrossed both coasts of Malaysia in an effort to find the plane, deepening the mystery over its disappearance.

The DigitalGlobe imagery collected for the crowdsourcing project covers over 3,100 square kilometres where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea, the company said on its blog.

DigitalGlobe said in a statement that it was working to best handle "an unprecedented level of web traffic" and interest in supporting the search.

DigitalGlobe is asking web users to tag any clues that may help locate the missing plane. If users start tagging some regions in large numbers, DigitalGlobe plans to use a computer algorithm to detect that, Barrington earlier told ABC News.

DigitalGlobe used a crowdsourcing campaign when Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in November, as the company relied on thousands of volunteers who tagged over 60,000 objects of interest to help tally the destruction, according to the firm.

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Mysterious Windsor Hum gets Ottawa review

A federally funded report on the mysterious Windsor Hum has been submitted to both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Natural Resources Canada.

For years, residents in west Windsor and the neighbouring town of LaSalle have been complaining of a mysterious rumble or hum that is often described as an idling truck or locomotive.

Both ministries are reviewing the results of the $60,000 report, said the University of Windsor’s Colin Novak, one of the authors of the report.

Novak said the report was submitted in January and that the final review has not yet been conducted.

A spokesperson for Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse, who has been keeping tabs on the issue, said the two ministries have additional questions and are seeking clarifications on some points.

University of Windsor professor Colin Novak has been one of the leads on the Windsor Hum research.

Masse’s spokesperson said officials are trying to arrange a meeting between the ministries and researchers, including Novak and the University of Western Ontario's Peter Brown.

Masse wasn’t available for comment Wednesday but a spokesperson said the federal government needs to make the report public.

In 2012, a different federal study suggested the hum may originate from the U.S. side of the Detroit River, in the general area of Zug Island, an area of concentrated steel production and manufacturing in River Rouge, Mich.

Zug Island is directly across from the western edge of Windsor.

The mayor of River Rouge said at that time that his city doesn't have the funds to investigate further.

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Elephants can identify dangerous humans from their voices

Thomson Reuters Posted: Mar 11, 2014 11:26 AM ET Last Updated: Mar 11, 2014 1:14 PM ET

The big ears are not just for show.

Elephants can tell whether a human poses a threat by listening to his voice and sussing out subtle clues about his age, gender and ethnicity, according to a study released on Monday.

Researchers from the University of Sussex and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants played recordings of human voices to wild elephants in Kenya and watched how they reacted.

"Our results demonstrate that elephants can reliably discriminate between two different ethnic groups that differ in the level of threat they represent," the authors said in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study said an elephant herd was more likely to bunch up in a defensive position following playbacks of voices of Maasai people, an East African ethnic group that has hunted elephants for centuries, than other groups.

"Moreover, these responses were specific to the sex and age of Maasai presented, with the voices of Maasai women and boys, subcategories that would generally pose little threat, significantly less likely to produce these behavioural responses," according to the study.

The researchers said the findings provided the first proof elephants can distinguish between human voices, and suggested that other animals seeking to avoid hunters may also have developed this skill.

"Considering the long history and often pervasive predatory threat associated with humans across the globe, it is likely (this ability) could have been selected for in other cognitively advanced animal species," it said.

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