Yous hear your telephone ringing and you look down to run into who it is, when you notice that your own name shows upwards as the caller ID. Is it yourself calling from the future? Maybe only a glitch with your phone? The latter is far more than possible, but there are besides several other possibilities.

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It's Probably a Spam Caller

Here's the almost likely scenario: it'due south simply a spammer or telemarketer spoofing the caller ID.

Instead of showing their own phone number on your caller ID, it shows your own phone number every bit a mode to hide theirs. Information technology seems counter-intuitive because it might raise more eyebrows, but they're betting that you're more likely to option upwards the phone if the caller ID says "unknown", "private caller", or even your own phone number than if it says "Telemarketing, Inc".

In addition, while their phone number might be on a blacklist, your own phone number nigh definitely isn't, and so information technology's a clever way to get around that roadblock.

You might have even seen phone numbers calling you that are very like to your own number, and it might be off by just i or two numbers. This is also some other method of spoofing and information technology's likely a spammer or telemarketer on the other end.

It Could Only Be a Bug, Though

Of course, in that location could also be any number of ways that your phone could call itself by accident, and sometimes information technology could just be a bug in the software.

I user says that someone called him while he was on the phone with someone else and instead of switching to the new call and putting the electric current caller on hold, he ended the call, which prompted his ain phone to call itself.

This tin also happen with VoIP phones, where if you punch a number and so hang upwards, the phone call can go haywire and the telephone volition call itself instead, well-nigh probable because the phone knows that information technology needed to make a phone call, but didn't know who to call, then it just calls itself.

If you lot have an iPhone, Siri has the ability to identify a telephone call to your own phone. Yous tin practise this on purpose past telling Siri to "call myself". So, it's ever possible that Siri might mishear something you say and phone call your ain phone, especially if you have Hey Siri enabled, where it'due south always listening for a control.

In Whatsoever Case, Simply Don't Answer It

Whatsoever the cause may exist, the best course of action to take is simply only non answering information technology. After all, it's probably non you from the time to come, so you won't be missing an important phone call by leaving information technology unanswered. Nothing good or worthwhile volition come from answering your phone that shows your ain number as the caller ID.

There are a few exceptions, of course. You might need to purposely call your own number when you fix up your voicemail or access certain carrier settings.

You can also phone call yourself to get out of a meeting or gracefully bail on a bad date by using a service called IFTTT, simply it uses its ain phone number to call your telephone whenever y'all need it to.

Image Credit: Jon Phillips/Flickr