Investigators work to track down unknown callers and fake numbers

COLUMBUS and STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Columbus Police Chief Fred Shelton said it’s not impossible to track down unknown callers, but it does take time.

He said even though there are many ways to make these types of calls, there are also several techniques investigators can use to track them down.

When you hear a phone ring, you answer.

Sometimes, you might not know the person on the other end or recognize the number and if you don’t, and the calls turn into harassment, police step in and work to track down the person behind that fake number.

“Spoofing, where they disguise the number through an IP address, using the internet to disguise it and with that, we’re also using technology to locate that IP address and find out the provider of the internet service provider for that and then, we will subpoena that company for the records for the person that was using the internet at that time using that system.”

Shelton said investigators hope by doing that, it will lead them to the computer where the calls came from.

“The same technology they’re using to disguise themselves is the same technology we’re going to use to find them.”

Starkville Computers President Patrick Linley said there are several platforms people can use to generate fake numbers that show up on people’s phones.

“Every device on the internet has to have an IP address in order to communicate on the internet, so there will be some attachments to some degree for every call that is made over the internet protocol.”

Both Shelton and Linley said although there are ways to track down the mysterious callers, it can be difficult.

Linley said the tricky part is tracking down if whether calls were made on public or private networks.

“At somebody’s house or at somebody’s business, so you know, really a lot of it depends on the access that you have to the records and whether or not those people are using it from one location or faking their internet connection and spoofing their IP address.”

Shelton said these calls could be ringing in from anywhere.

He also said if you have harassing calls ringing in from unknown callers to call police and try to record the conversation so officers will have evidence to work with.

“Keep a log of the time that they called, the duration of the call, and that helps us in our investigation so when we do our subpoena, we subpoena the address that the call is coming from. We can look at the time frame, a time in the day and the places to see who was online at that time, or who was using that system at that time.”