Caller ID spoofing

It is way too easy to fake caller id so that the person you are calling sees a number of your choosing on their caller-id display. When the telecom experts setup the new phone system at my place of employment, I thought it odd that when I called my cell phone from the office phone that the caller id show up as 1026 (my work extension). After I bit of struggling with the system, I was able to correct the phone number that appeared to the destination party and in doing so realized how simple it was to send a false number. Wow, what a shocker I thought. The phone companies designed the caller-id system long before we the consumer would ever have our hands on a way to falsify our callerid. This Wikipedia page describes some more difficult ways to spoof caller-id, but I can tell you that if you have your own isdn connection or T1, your phone provider will allow you to send anything as the caller-id. Of course your providers can still track what you are sending, so don’t run out and start trying to spoof your own caller-id. Yeah you might be able to get a few laughs, when you call grandma from the white house’s number, but is it worth it?