Cache County Reverse Phone Lookup

What are Cache County Area Codes?

The single area code serving Cache County is area code 435. An area code is a numeric designation for a numbering plan area (NPA). Area codes and NPAs were introduced along with the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in 1947. AT&T NANP simplified call routing across North American phone networks and switch exchanges. In addition to replacing conflicting phone numbering systems in use prior to its introduction, the NANP also made it easy to allocate phone numbers and network resources. In a regular 10-digit American phone number, the area code is represented by the first three digits.

Area Code 435

Split from area code 801 on September 21, 1997, area code 435 is only the second area code for Utah. It covers the entirety of the state except for the densely populated Wasatch Front in the northern part that includes large metropolitan areas including Provo and Salt Lake City. Area code 435 serves all of Cache County including the cities of Logan, Smithfield, Providence, and Hyrum.

What are the Best Cell Phone Plans in Cache County?

Most of the residents of Utah and Cache County have made the shift from landline phone services to wireless phone services. The results of a 2018 wireless substitution survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics confirmed this shift. In that survey, 69% of adults in the state indicated they solely used wireless phone services for their telecommunication needs. In contrast, only 2.6% of this demographic still indicated that they only used landline phones. The proportion of wireless phone users among minors in Utah was even higher. About 71.1% of residents under the age of 18 were exclusive wireless phone users while only 1.6% of them indicated they were landline-only phone users.

Residents of Cache County enjoy phone services provided by national carriers as well as smaller regional carriers. Among major phone carriers, AT&T has the widest network coverage in Utah. It covers 83.4% of the state while Verizon and T-Mobile cover 78.3% and 66.1% of Utah respectively. Most regional carriers are mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that rely on the network infrastructure of big carriers and buy network services from them in bulk. They can offer cheaper cell phone plans because they pass on some of the savings from their bulk purchases to their subscribers. While an MVNO may offer cheaper phone plans in Cache County, national carriers usually provide better services especially for residents that travel out of Utah regularly.

Besides major carriers and MVNOs, Cache County residents and businesses can also sign up for VoIP phone services. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a network communication technology capable of transmitting voice signals over the internet as data packets. Therefore, VoIP phone services require fast internet access. For residents and businesses with broadband internet access, VoIP phone services are cost-effective. These customers can enjoy lower phone bills and pay less for long-distance calls and long calls. VoIP is also a better fit for telecommuting needs. Unlike landline and cell phone services, VoIP phone services allow subscribers to call from the computers and tablets in addition to their phones.

What are Cache County Phone Scams?

These are telephone frauds perpetrated in Cache County or targeting its residents and businesses. Phone scams are fraudulent schemes conducted using phone services and tools. Scammers often use calls and text messages to contact their targets and turn them into victims. In order to find new targets for their scams, fraudsters may use spam calls and robocalls. To earn their trust and trick them, scammers employ caller ID spoofing and phishing.

Not all phone tools and services are useful for perpetrating scams. Some of them are important for fighting and avoiding telephone frauds. Such tools include call blocking and reverse phone number lookup. Besides these anti-scam tools, residents of Cache County must also learn to recognize phone scams. The first step to spotting telephone frauds is knowing the ones most prevalent in their communities and how scammers use them to defraud unsuspecting residents. The Division of Consumer Protection of the Utah Department of Commerce identifies the most common phone scams in the state. These are grandparent scams, IRS scams, jury duty scams, romance scams, and tech support scams.

What are Cache County Grandparent Scams?

Also referred to as family emergency scams, these mostly target elderly residents with fraudsters pretending to be their grandchildren in trouble. In a grandparent scam, the scammer calls their target while impersonating their grandkid. They use information gleaned from the grandkid’s social media accounts to appear legitimate to the victim. The impostor asks for urgent financial help to get out of trouble. They may claim to need the money to pay bail money to get out of jail or need to pay urgent medical bills or buy flight tickets to get out of a foreign country where they are stuck. Fraudsters running grandparent scams also ask their victims to keep the help a secret from other family members.

Targets of family emergency scams should not be quick to send money and should not keep the requests for financial help a secret. If called by a loved one asking for emergency help, call the loved one back with their number saved on your phone. Call other family members to confirm their claimed emergency. It is also possible to unmask a scammer using this tactic by trying to identify them with reverse phone number lookup.

What are Cache County IRS Scams?

These are also impostor scams but in these cases, fraudsters impersonate employees of the Internal Revenue Service. There are two major types of IRS scams: those in which fraudsters call to ask for owed taxes and those in which they call to offer tax refunds. When IRS scammers call to demand back taxes, they are rude and use threats to scare their targets. They threaten dire consequences if their targets do not send payments immediately. When IRS impostors call to offer tax refunds, they sound friendly and aim to steal their targets’ personal information such as their Social Security numbers.

Residents of Cache County should be immediately wary of strange callers claiming to work for the IRS. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by phone nor call to demand owed taxes or offer refunds over the phone. They communicate with taxpayers by mail correspondences. If contacted by an IRS impostor, use a phone number lookup to confirm that they do not work for the IRS and report them promptly to the appropriate authorities.

What are Cache County Jury Duty Scams?

Another type of impostor scams, jury duty scams involve fraudsters posing as law enforcement or court officials. They inform their targets that they must pay fines for missing jury duty. To force compliance, these impostors threaten their victims with immediate arrest. Cache County residents should know that impostors running jury duty scams may provide bogus identity information and call out badge numbers that appear legitimate. They may also employ caller ID spoofing to make their calls look like they are coming from legitimate law enforcement.

It is important to know that no law enforcement officer will call to threaten you. If you receive threats on the phone from an authority figure, it is likely the caller is a scammer. Use a suspicious phone number lookup to identify the caller if they do not hide their numbers. Report such scam attempts to local law enforcement immediately.

What are Cache County Romance Scams?

While these often start on dating and social networking sites and apps, fraudsters keep romance scams going with calls and text messages to their victims. These scams target lonely hearts. After getting the confidence of their victims, romance scammers then ask for money. They may claim to need money to buy plane tickets to come visit their love interests or are in dire financial straits. Unlike most phone scams, romance scams can go on for a long time with fraudsters extracting money repeatedly from their victims until they catch on. Some romance scams may also end with extortion and blackmail as fraudsters threaten to reveal sensitive photos and conversations of their victims.

To avoid romance scams, Cache County should avoid sending money and sensitive information to anyone they meet online. Insist on meeting a potential love interest in person and dig deeper to find their true identity with a free reverse phone lookup.

What are Cache County Tech Support Scams?

These impostor scams involve fraudsters posing as tech support from major tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft. When they call, these fake tech support representatives claim to have discovered some malfunctions on their victims’ computers or need to secure their online accounts. Tech support scams may charge their victims for bogus and unneeded computer fixes and computer security software. They may also demand remote access to fix the made-up problem. Once granted access, these scammers may steal sensitive information and files from their victims’ computers. Alternatively, they may install viruses on these machines or ransomware that lock their victims’ out of their own computers.

Cache County residents should never give remote access to their devices to strange callers or provide confidential information on the phone. Tech companies do not provide unsolicited support and do not scan users’ computers for viruses. If contacted by an unknown caller offering customer support, hang up and call the company they claim to represent to confirm their claims and identity. It is also possible to confirm that such callers are scammers by submitting their phone numbers for reverse phone number searches.

What are Robocalls and Spam Calls?

Robocalls and spam calls are unwanted calls placed in bulk to lots of phone users. While they are similar, there are differences between these unsolicited calls. Robocalls are placed by auto-dialers sending out pre-recorded messages while spam calls may come from actual human agents reading from prepared telemarketing scripts.

While robocalls were introduced to provide useful information from political campaigns, telemarketers and public organizations, they are now mostly used by fraudsters intending to find new targets for their scams. Robocalls appeal to scammers because they are cost-effective mass communication tools that require little effort to run once set up. Residents of Cache County can stop robocalls and spam calls reaching their phones, or at least reduce the number of such unwanted calls received, by following these steps:

• Do not pick calls from unknown numbers. Let unknown calls go to voicemail where you can review messages left to determine which calls to return
• Hang up a call as soon as you discover it is a robocall or spam call. Do not follow instructions provided during such calls on how to stop receiving further unsolicited calls. Following such prompts will only lead to more unsolicited calls
• Set up your phone to block calls from all unknown numbers or blacklisted numbers. Call blocking and call filtering services are also provided by carriers and third-party apps
• Identify repeat unknown callers with a suspicious phone number lookup service. Such searches can help determine whether these callers are scammers, spammers, or stalkers. Provide the information gathered when reporting these calls to law enforcement
• Add your phone number to the National Do Not Call Registry. This will stop calls from legitimate telemarketers to your phone after 31 days. Illegal robocalls and spam calls received after this period should be reported to the FCC

How to Spot and Report Cache County Phone Scams

To spot phone scams, residents of Cache County must know how these telephone frauds unfold and what signs to look for. While they are different, all scams are aimed at defrauding their targets or stealing valuable information. Therefore, scammers are forced to use certain tactics that give them away to wary targets. Look out for the following phone scam red flags when talking to strangers on the phone:

• Threats - impostors claiming to be law enforcement, government official, debt collectors, and other authority figures often try to scare their targets by threatening them with arrest, jail, deportation, loss of their homes, and revocation of driver’s, professional, and business licenses
• Request for payment by unofficial channels - anyone asking you to send money for owed taxes, fines, utility bill, or payment of goods and services by prepaid debit cards, reloadable credit cards, gift cards, wire transfer, mobile app payment, cryptocurrency, or cash is most likely a scammer
• Aggressive sales tactics - scammers pushing bogus business and investment opportunities give their victims very little time to closely consider their offers by claiming they will miss out on their low-risk, high-yield offers. In addition to inspiring a fear of missing out on great deals, such scammers may offer unbelievable steep discounts on goods, services, and vacation deals for anyone that will sign up and pay immediately
• Refusal to provide backing documentation - fraudsters cannot provide authentic identification information and written documents supporting their claims. When asked, they redirect conversations and offer fake and paid testimonials and reviews to hoodwink their victims

If any of these signs makes you suspicious of a caller, report them immediately to the authorities. A quick reverse phone lookup may also be helpful to confirm your suspicions. Scam reports are useful for apprehending and prosecuting fraudsters. They also help the general public learn about prevalent telephone frauds in their communities. Residents of Cache County can report phone scams to the following authorities:

• The Division of Consumer Protection of the Utah Department of Commerce - the state’s consumer protection agency protects its residents from unfair business practices and fraudulent schemes. To report a scam or a fraudulent business, visit the agency’s File a Complaint page.
• The Treasury Inspector General Administration (TIGTA) - the TIGTA handles all IRS scams. It accepts reports of IRS impostor scams and investigates scammers defrauding taxpayers. Residents of Cache County submit IRS impostor scam complaints to the TIGTA online
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - the FTC is the federal consumer protection agency. Its responsibilities include protecting American consumers from unfair and deceitful business practices. The FTC investigates any scam involving consumer transactions. Residents can report consumer scams to the FTC online or by calling (877) 382-4357
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - the FCC regulates all communication in the country and its authority also covers the telecommunication industry. In addition to enforcing the National Do Not Call Registry, the FCC also monitors the use and misuse of communication tools and services. Therefore, it has the authority to prosecute telephone frauds as well as those found using illegal robocalls, spam calls, caller ID spoofing, and phishing. Report phone scams to the FCC’s Consumer Complaint Center