Spoofing

This is a new word for me ... "spoofing".

Learned it just yesterday shortly after receiving a call from a young woman who said she was calling me back, because my number showed up twice as calling her phone. When I said I’d not called her, she was nice about it – not like the woman who’d called a few months ago and insisted I was lying because my number was right there on her phone, and the only way that could happen was that I or someone using my phone had called her.

I had no idea what she was talking about, how it could have happened, did not appreciate her attitude but whatever.

Now that a different individual was saying my phone called her, I became curious enough to type in a search “Calls saying my phone called them” and the result came up as “call spoofing … a not uncommon practice wherein technically savvy people can place a call and make it seem to come from any number they like, and is usually done for malicious purposes".

That’s pretty scary because what happens if my is number is used to harass someone?

Do I get a restraining order filed against me?

Do police show up at my door?

And why was my number chosen?

How did someone even get my number?

Maybe it’s time for a new phone, and a new number.

Have you ever been spoofed?

At least I now know what to tell people if it happens again, but I’m serious about a new number.

Friday afternoon’s Bingo was a waste of my time. I didn’t win, never do, and the prizes weren’t that great – soap, shampoo, toothpaste, items the hosting organization appropriately feels seniors would need, but not my brand of soap, shampoo or toothpaste so, even if I had won, would not have wanted the prize.

While we were playing, Fire and Rescue pulled up right in front of the Community Room entry doors. The guys walked through a side door to an area just outside the pool.

Of course, we halted in mid play to see what had happened and to whom.

All I saw was an elderly resident on the ground. Don’t know if she fell or passed out from the heat, but she was cognizant.

Apache informed me, “That’s the resident who escaped”.

“What do you mean escaped?”

“She approached two residents a few weeks ago and said she was escaping her unit because she was being abused.”

“By whom?”

“She said her daughter.”

“The residents called the police. They came and talked to her, but she told them she wasn’t being abused.”

I’m thinking it might be dementia.

I remember as a kid, when my grandmother was no longer able to care for herself, mom went to Texas, closed grandma’s house and brought her to live with us in Los Angeles. Grandma tried to run away from mom during the journey, telling anyone who would listen she was being kidnapped. Mom said of course people would stop stare decide if they should intervene but, when they saw my mom and grandma looked so much alike they decided mom wasn’t a kidnapper and tried to comfort grandma that this is your daughter, you’re okay.

Looking at the resident being attended to by Fire and Rescue, she seemed to be enjoying the attention, so who knows what’s really going on. She was taken away on a gurney and, in situations such as this, Social Services is called in. Once she returns to the complex, she’ll be getting checked up on.

That’s one thing that enticed me to the Inland Empire. I’d heard, “It’s a county that takes good care of its old people”, and they do.