#caller-identity

#caller-identity

"In many major metropolitan areas and small towns, copper theft has escalated to levels that can only be described as systemic," Alcutt writes.

The ease of use means the ease of stealing. There are pieces of software and devices that are doing exactly the same thing that a point of sale does and it's transacting on your phone or on your credit card and if you don't have a thumbprint or a biometric on your phone, they can walk up and if you're not paying attention in a crowded area, they get close enough and they touch your phone they can do a transaction.

QR codes are two-dimensional images with glyphs of various sizes that store not just numbers, but text. When scanned, your phone extracts the encoded information and can act on it. For example, QR codes often embed URLs, allowing you to scan, say, a parking meter to launch a webpage where you can pay online.

Calls where no one responds are rarely accidental. In many cases, they are automated reconnaissance events. Fraud operations run at industrial scale, and before they invest human effort in a target, they validate that a number is active and answered by a real person.

Over the past five years, annual robocall volume has consistently remained between approximately 50 billion and 55 billion, according to the YouMail Robocall Index. Robocall volume for 2025 totaled 52.5 billion, down a little over 1% from the 2024 total of 52.8 billion. December's 4.1 billion robocalls were up 6.4% from November but down 5.7% from December 2024. YouMail noted that robocalls increased in November and December 2025 after reaching a multi-year low in October.

To understand the strategy at work here, you likely need only look at your recent phone calls and text messages. Mobile channels are a mess. As a result, many consumers refuse to answer calls from numbers not listed in their contact list. This poses a significant problem for organizations across industries, including financial services, healthcare and the public sector, which often need to use the phone to reach people and relay critical information.

The phone rings at 2:47 AM. Your heart pounds as you fumble for the receiver. "Grandma?" The voice is shaky, desperate. "I'm in trouble. I got arrested. Please don't tell Mom and Dad." The voice sounds just like your grandson. He uses the nickname only family knows. He remembers that trip you took together last summer. Everything about this call feels real because, in many ways, it is.

The links are sent to people seeking a range of services, including those offering insurance quotes, job listings, and referrals for pet sitters and tutors. To eliminate the hassle of collecting usernames and passwords-and for users to create and enter them-many such services instead require users to provide a cell phone number when signing up for an account. The services then send authentication links or passcodes by SMS when the users want to log in.

According to TechCrunch's previous coverage, the feature enables Ring users to recognize visitors' faces and locate lost pets by connecting with neighbors who also use Ring devices. Amazon also rolled out an Alexa+ feature that acts as a smart doorbell assistant, alerting users to a visitor before they open the door. As reported by TechCrunch, Amazon stated that the Familiar Faces feature allows you to create a catalog of up to 50 people by tagging them in the Ring app.

There are people on the Internet who want to know all about you! Unfortunately, they don't have the best of intentions, but Google has some handy tools to address that, and they've gotten an upgrade today. The "Results About You" tool can now detect and remove more of your personal information. Plus, the tool for removing non-consensual explicit imagery (NCEI) is faster to use. All you have to do is tell Google your personal details first-that seems safe, right?