A spoofed phone call is a call that claims to be from a specific phone number, person, or company when it appears on your phone screen, but is actually coming from a completely different phone number. It can be difficult to determine whether or not a phone number is spoofed, and it can be nearly impossible to figure out the real digits of a spoofed phone number.

Spoofing is relatively easy for individuals and businesses to perform, which means you can’t always rely on what the caller ID says when the phone call is received. Often, a reverse caller ID check will simply redial the number that the spoofer is displaying, not the actual number behind the call.

While there is no completely accurate way to detect a fake number, there are several techniques that can give you a pretty good idea of what is going on. This may help you catch a counterfeiter or scammer more quickly.

Google the phone number. Doing a simple internet search for the number that called you and comparing it to the one the caller claims to be can be a quick way to spot a scammer. While this won’t help if they claim to be from a business and spoof the business’s number, it can help spot people who spoof local numbers while claiming to be someone else. This scam strategy is called “neighbor spoofing.”