I got a call this morning (from a 918 local number) just before my lunch time from a person claiming to be with the Social Security Administration, regarding an appointment I had made for today. When I replied that I had not made any such appointment, he said, “Ok, no problem, we’ll just correct our records. What is your date of birth?”

Big. Red. Flag.

He hung up the instant I told him that I would not provide that information.

The caller ID was spoofed. The number was not from the SSA. It appears to be currently unassigned. I filed a report with the fraud section of the SSA website.

About an hour later, I got another call from a TX area code, which I did not answer. The caller let it ring 4 times, and did not go to voicemail to leave a message. I’m getting lots of those these days. For some of them, I have seen reports on 800notes.com that they were spoofed calls pretending to be from either Social Security or the IRS.

My current practice is whenever I receive a phone call from a number I don’t recognize, I let it got to voicemail. If the caller does not leave a message, the number gets put on my auto-reject list.

Just a word to the wise. If you get a call from ANYBODY who asks for personal identifying information of ANY kind, including such things as your address, your full name, date or place of birth, and (of course) your SSN or a credit card number, you are speaking to a thief. Guaranteed.