From the previous page:

re: #172 Eclectic Cyborg

It’s called spoofing. They make the calls look like they are coming from semi legit, non 1800 numbers so you’ll be more likely to answer them.

The advantage of living in a town where our telephone book is one page.

My wife as librarian sent out a circular to everyone in town on this subject (since we have many elderly people here) on how to recognise spoofed numbers.

Every allocated number in town’s last four digits are 01xx (government and business), or 9xxx (residences). Any other number is spoofed.