What are Rensselaer County Area Codes?
There are two area codes covering Rensselaer County. These are area codes 518 and 838. Area codes are three-digit designations for numbering plan areas (NPAs). The creation of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in 1947 led to the introduction of NPAs and area codes. These unified call switching systems in participating countries in North America and made routing calls easier for phone carriers. In a 10-digit American phone number, the area code is easily recognized as the first three digits.
Area Code 518
One of the original 86 area codes created in 1947, area code 518 serves the northeastern part of Upstate New York and covers 24 counties. This area code serves all of the cities, towns, villages, hamlets, and census-designated places in Rensselaer County. Some of these include Rensselaer, Troy, and Nassau.
Area Code 838
Area code 838 was introduced in 2107 in an overlay plan that unlocked additional phone numbers for the 518 NPA. It covers the same areas served by area code 518.
What are the Best Cell Phone Plans in Rensselaer County?
Most of the residents of Rensselaer County and New York State use both landline and wireless phone services to meet their communication needs. In a 2018 wireless substitution survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, the results showed that 38.8% of adults in the state relied exclusively on wireless phones while 6% of them still used landline phones only. The survey also revealed that 45.9% of minors in New York State were exclusive wireless phone users while 2.9% of this demographic only used landline phones for making calls.
National and regional carriers offer phone services in Rensselaer County. AT&T has the widest network coverage in the state. Its network covers 95.3% of the state while Verizon and T-Mobile have 87.2% and 84.3% coverage respectively. Sprint’s network only covers 50.9% of the state before it was acquired by T-Mobile.
Regional carriers offering phone services in Rensselaer County are smaller telephone companies that rely on the network services of major carriers and buy network services in bulk from them. These smaller operators (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) repackage those services into low-cost plans meant to appear to people living in their areas of service.
VoIP service providers also offer phone plans in the county. VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a communication technology that enables voice communication over the internet. VoIP transmits voice and video signals as data packets over high-speed networks. VoIP phone services require that subscribers have broadband internet access. With this, they can place calls from their phones, computers, and tablets from anywhere.
What are Rensselaer County Phone Scams?
These are telephone frauds committed in Rensselaer County or against residents of the county. Phone scammers contact their targets by calls and text messages. They may also employ sophisticated phone tools such as caller ID spoofing, spam calls, voice phishing, and robocalls. The aim of any scam is to defraud the target and/or steal confidential information to use in identity theft. Residents of Rensselaer County are not without protection against the deluge scam calls and scammers. They can use tools like call blocking and reverse phone number lookup to avoid phone scams and identify scammers.
In addition to such tools, these residents can fight phone scams by learning about common phone scams in their communities and how scammers trick their victims. The New York Attorney General’s Office identifies the following as the most common phone scams in the state: IRS scams, grandparent scams, jury duty scams, lottery scams, and utility scams.
What are Rensselaer County IRS Scams?
In IRS and tax scams, fraudsters call residents of the county claiming to be officers of the law or agents of the Internal Revenue Service or New York’s Department of Tax and Finance. They ask their targets for overdue taxes and threaten them with arrest, prosecution, deportation, or revocation of driver’s or business license if they do not pay up immediately. They ask for this payment via wire transfer, gift card, or prepaid debit card. In a twist of the IRS/tax scam, a fraudster may call their victim to tell them they are due for tax refund but need to provide their Social Security number to confirm their identities. Scammers using this second tactic steal their victims’ identities.
Knowing how the IRS and the state’s tax agency operate can help residents of Rensselaer County avoid these scams. These tax agencies do not call to threaten taxpayers, request owed taxes, or announce refunds. They correspond with tax payers by mail. IRS scammers often use caller ID spoofing to make their calls appear to be coming from the IRS or the NY Department of Tax and Finance. For those calling with regular numbers, it is possible to confirm their identities using free reverse phone number lookup. Such searches will show that their phone numbers are not registered to law enforcement or federal and state tax agencies.
What are Rensselaer County Grandparent Scams?
Also known as emergency scams, these target elderly residents of the county. Scammers using this tactic call and claim to be the grandchildren of their victims. They request urgent financial help to get out of named emergencies. These fraudsters may claim to be in an accident, in jail, or stuck in foreign countries. They usually claim to need money to pay for hospital bills, legal fees, or plane tickets. Before sending money to anyone calling to be a loved one and requiring financial assistance, make sure to call the loved one directly to confirm what you heard. Even if the caller asked for secrecy, contact other family members to confirm the caller’s story. A quick phone number search can also reveal that the caller is not who they are or where they claim they need help.
What are Rensselaer County Jury Duty Scams?
Scammers impersonating court and law enforcement officers call their targets and accuse them of missing jury duty. They demand that victims pay certain fines to avoid immediate arrest. They usually ask for such payments to be made with prepaid debit cards or wire transfer. A suspicious phone number lookup can help reveal a jury duty scam attempt. The phone numbers used by these fraudsters are usually not registered to local courts and law enforcement. Even if your phone’s caller ID shows the name of a local court or law enforcement agency, know that these organizations do not call to request fine payments and do not ask for payments by gift cards, debit cards, or wire transfers.
What are Rensselaer County Lottery Scams?
In these scams, fraudsters call to congratulate unsuspecting residents on winning foreign lotteries and sweepstakes. In most cases, these are lotteries and sweepstakes the scam victims have never heard of or entered in. However, the scams make them excited with promises of huge winnings but insist they have to pay some money to cover taxes and processing fees before receiving their prizes. Legitimate lottery and sweepstakes organizers do not ask winners to pay anything before collecting their winnings. All taxes and associated fees are taken from the amounts won.
In a version of lottery scams, the fraudster does not request upfront payment but the victim’s banking information. They claim to need this to wire their winnings. However, they steal the victim’s identity as well as drain their bank accounts. To unmask a scammer running a lottery scam, submit their phone number to a reverse phone lookup search. This may reveal that they are not who they claim to be or where they claim to live.
What are Rensselaer County Utility Scams?
Another popular impostor scam, a utility scam involves the fraudster impersonating an employee of, or a debt collector, for a local utility company. Like all convincing impostor scams, this fraudster has their target’s account number and sounds genuine on the phone. They demand that victims pay their outstanding bills to avoid the utility company disconnecting their homes and businesses. Residents of Rensselaer County should know that utility companies do not call to demand their customers pay outstanding bills. They send notices of overdue bills before disconnecting their service. A reverse cell phone lookup can help identify a stranger calling with claims to represent a local utility company. Hang up the call and call the utility company directly using the phone number printed on your last bill to enquire about overdue bills.
What are Robocalls and Spam Calls?
Robocalls and spam calls are unwanted calls sent out to large groups of users. A robocall is an automated phone call that delivers a message pre-recorded by a voice synthesizer. A spam call is usually an unwanted call placed by a human agent delivering a message according to a prepared script to a long list of phone users.
When they were first introduced, robocalls were commonly used by political campaigns, telemarketers, and organizations delivering public service announcements. These entities have auto-dialers place robocalls to minimize the effort required to make large volumes of calls. The ease and cost-effectiveness of robocalls have also made them appealing to scammers who use them to fish for more targets for the fraudulent schemes.
With the huge number of robocalls and spam calls received annually by Americans, governments, consumer protection agencies, and phone companies are taking increasing interest in curbing these unwanted and unsolicited calls. Before the proposed measures take effect, residents of Rensselaer County can stop or limit robocalls and spam calls by following these steps:
- Hang up on a call as soon as you realize it is a robocall or spam call
- Do not follow prompts given during robocalls and spam calls on how to remove your number from their call lists. Such prompts only serve to confirm active lines to be targeted with more robocalls and spam calls
- Let calls from unknown numbers go to voicemail. Review such calls later and determine which ones you should return
- Set up your phone to block calls from unknown numbers or a blacklist of flagged numbers. Modern smartphones have such call filtering features built-in. Some carriers and third-party communication apps also offer this feature and rely on regularly updated blacklists to filter incoming calls
- Register your phone number on the National Do Not Call Registry. This signals to legitimate telemarketers that you no longer wish to receive calls from them. Robocalls received 31 days after joining this list are most likely from scammers and spammers
- Use reverse phone number search to find out who called when contacted repeatedly by the same number. Such searches can help you identify scammers, spammers, and stalkers and provide useful information for reports submitted to law enforcement
How to Spot and Report Rensselaer County Phone Scams
To stay ahead of law enforcement and the public, scammers need to keep evolving their fraudulent schemes. As long as their aims are to defraud their victims and steal confidential identity and financial information, there are only so many ways they can change their tactics. Therefore, it is easy to spot phone scams if you know what to look out for. Residents of Rensselaer County should look out for these red flags when speaking to strangers on the phone:
- Scammers pretending to be authority figures are quick to use threats to get their victims to pay up or release the information they want. Legitimate law enforcement officers do not threaten the public with arrest and jail if they fail to send them money
- Scammers request for payment via unofficial channels like cash, prepaid debit cards, gift cards, cryptocurrency, and wire transfer. Only pay fines, bills, taxes, and debts with credit cards and from the official website of the organizations receiving the payments
- Scammers cannot provide written documentation supporting their identity and claims. If a stranger peddling a business or investment offer or seeking charity donations refuse to provide these, they are most likely a scammer
- Scammers pressure their victims to act immediately. They claim their offers, discounts, opportunities are only available for a limited time
When in doubt about the identity or claims of a caller, investigate them with a quick reverse phone number lookup. It is important that residents of Rensselaer County report phone scams whether they are successful or not. Law enforcement and consumer protection agencies use such reports to identify scam trends and find and prosecute scammers. These reports also contribute to increasing public awareness about prevalent scams and how scammers trick their victims. Rensselaer County residents can file complaints about scams to the following agencies:
- The New York Attorney General’s Office - as the chief law officer in the state, the Attorney General protects consumer interests and prosecutes telephone frauds as well as consumer scams. Report this to the Office of the Attorney General by calling (800) 771-7755
- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) - this federal tax agency accepts reports of IRS scams. Report someone impersonating an IRS employee by calling the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1-800-366-4484. Residents can also file complaints about IRS scams online at irs.gov/uac/report-phishing
- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - this federal agency protects consumer interests by safeguarding the public from unfair and deceitful business practices. Residents of Rensselaer County can report scams involve consumer transactions to the FTC by calling (877) 382-4357 or submitting a fraud complaint online
- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - the federal agency that regulates all communication in the country also oversees the telecommunication sector and monitors the activities of phone carriers. Its duties include investigating and prosecuting illegal use of phone technologies. Report all illegal robocalls, spam calls, phishing, and caller ID spoofing as well as scams employing these tools to the FCC’s Consumer Complaint Center