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03/15/2025
⚠️ Multiple instances have been reported to the Santa Rosa County Animal Services administration wherein scam callers, showing up as the correct SRCAS shelter phone number, elicit payment information from residents to pay fees or fines.
Santa Rosa County Animal Services will never ask anyone to submit payments over the phone. Residents should hang up immediately and call the shelter line to report the fraudulent call if such a request is made.
If residents dial the shelter line (850-983-4680) from their own device, it will connect them to the correct SRCAS front desk number.
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the process is called Caller ID Spoofing and is defined as "when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity. Scammers often use neighbor spoofing so it appears that an incoming call is coming from a local number, or spoof a number from a company or a government agency that you may already know and trust."
Here are some tips from the FCC for how to avoid spoofing:
🔵 Don't answer calls from unknown numbers. If you answer such a call, hang up immediately.
🔵 If you answer the phone and the caller - or a recording - asks you to hit a button to stop getting the calls, you should just hang up. Scammers often use this trick to identify potential targets.
🔵 Do not respond to any questions, especially those that can be answered with "Yes" or "No."
🔵 Never give out personal information such as account numbers, Social Security numbers, mother's maiden names, passwords or other identifying information in response to unexpected calls or if you are at all suspicious.
🔵 If you get an inquiry from someone who says they represent a company or a government agency, hang up and call the phone number on your account statement, in the phone book, or on the company's or government agency's website to verify the authenticity of the request. You will usually get a written statement in the mail before you get a phone call from a legitimate source, particularly if the caller is asking for a payment.
🔵 Use caution if you are being pressured for information immediately.
🔵 If you have a voicemail account with your phone service, be sure to set a password for it. Some voicemail services are preset to allow access if you call in from your own phone number. A hacker could spoof your home phone number and gain access to your voicemail if you do not set a password.
🔵 Talk to your phone company about call-blocking tools and check into apps that you can download to your mobile device. The FCC allows phone companies to block robocalls by default based on reasonable analytics. More information about robocall blocking is available at fcc.gov/robocalls.
