Whose number is this?
An unknown number on your screen is a decision, not a mystery: answer, ignore, or call back. You can make that decision well in under a minute without knowing the caller's name.
Decide in three signals
Work from the pattern rather than the number. These three signals resolve almost every unknown call Canadians ask us about.
- Did they leave anything? Genuine callers leave a voicemail, a text, or try again. Silence is the signature of a dialler.
- What is the range? 900 is premium rate and never worth returning; 1-800 numbers are business lines; a local area code could be anyone, including a spoofed caller.
- What did others get? A page of matching reports settles it immediately.
Why your phone shows a number it cannot verify
Caller ID is data supplied by the calling network, not a credential your handset checks. That is why a call can display a bank's real published number, and why 'the number looked legitimate' is never a reason to trust a request for money, codes or device access.
Canadian carriers now use STIR/SHAKEN call authentication, which lets them mark some calls as verified and block clearly fraudulent traffic. Coverage is incomplete, so names and numbers on the calls that do arrive still deserve scepticism.
If it turns out to be unwanted
Block the number on your handset, register on the National Do Not Call List at lnnte-dncl.gc.ca if you have not already, and report the call to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at antifraudcentre.ca when money or credentials were involved. Then leave a report here, so the next Canadian who searches the number gets an answer instead of a blank page.