What are Johnson County Area Codes?
There are five area codes serving residents of Johnson County. These are area codes 469, 682, 817, 945, and 972. Area codes are three-digit designations assigned to numbering plan areas (NPAs). When AT&T introduced the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in 1947, it unified call routing protocols across North American telephone networks. The country was divided into NPAs and a total of 86 area codes were created for them. The area code in a 10-digit American phone number is designated by the first three digits. It signifies where the telephone code was assigned.
Area Code 469
Area code 469 covers most of the eastern part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. It was put into service on July 1, 1999 in an overlay plan of area code 214. Area code 469 only covers a small part of Johnson County and serves a few communities such as Venus.
Area Code 945
This is the fourth and most recent area code in the Dallas overlay. It was introduced in mid-2021 to accommodate rapid population expansion in the communities around Dallas.
Area Code 972
Created in 1995 as a split off of the 214 NPA, area code 972 was converted into an overlay code in 1999 upon merging the 214 and 972 NPAs. Notable for being the area code for the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, area code 972 only serves a few communities in Johnson County such as Venus.
Area Code 817
Put into service in 1953, area code 817 was created from area code 915, one of the original 86 area codes created in the country in 1947. Its NPA was reduced in a 1997 three-way split that also produced area codes 940 and 254. Communities in Johnson County covered by area code 817 include Alvarado, Burleson, Cleburne, Grandview, Joshua, Keene, and Rio Vista.
Area Code 682
Introduced on October 7, 2000, area code 682 is an overlay code covering the central part of Fort Worth suburban areas. It serves some of the municipalities covered by area code 817. Locations in Johnson County served by this area code include Alvarado, Cleburne, Grandview, Keene, and Lillian.
What are the Best Cell Phone Plans in Johnson County
Over half of Texans have substituted their landline phones for wireless phones. This is the conclusion of a 2018 survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. The results of the survey showed that 67.9% of adults living in Texans used wireless phones exclusively while 2.5% of them still relied exclusively on landline phones. This trend was also observed among minors living in the state. For residents under the age of 18, 76.6% reported using only wireless phones for telecommunication while 1.4% were landline-only phone users.
Texans living in Johnson County can sign up for cell phone plans from national and regional carriers. Among these telephone service providers, AT&T has the widest network in the state. Its network covers 96.6% of Texas while Verizon and T-Mobile have 91% and 86% coverage of the state respectively. Residents of Johnson signing up for phone services from regional carriers usually enjoy lower rates. Regional carriers or MVNOs rely on the network infrastructure of bigger carriers and buy network services in bulk from them. These Mobile Virtual Network Operators then pass on some of the savings to their subscribers.
Texans in Johnson County can also enjoy phone services provided by VoIP operators. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a communication technology capable of transmitting voice signals over the internet as data packets. For businesses and residents with broadband internet access, VoIP phone services end up cheaper than landline and cell phone plans. VoIP phone services are also easier to set up and more flexible than traditional alternatives. They cost significantly less for long-distance calls and telecommuting needs.
What are Johnson County Phone Scams?
Johnson County phone scams are telephone frauds committed in the county. They can also be phone scams targeting those living in the county. When fraudsters contact their targets, they initiate communication by calling or texting them. They may also employ sophisticated phone tools and services such as robocalls, spam calls, caller ID spoofing, and phishing.
To avoid losing money and confidential information to phone fraudsters, residents of Johnson County should learn how to spot and block phone scams with tools like call blocking and reverse phone number lookup. Along with these, they need to be aware of common phone scams in their communities and how scammers trick their victims. The Attorney General of Texas identifies the following as the most common phone scams in the state: advance fee scams, overpayment scams, IRS scams, and shopping spree scams.
What are Johnson County Advance Fee Scams?
When calling their victims, fraudsters running these scams promise them big financial benefits for small upfront fees. These benefits range from inheritance from distant relatives, government grants, loans, prizes, lottery winnings, and job opportunities. To convince their targets, scammers may claim they represent organizations providing these benefits. Residents of Johnson County should be wary of strange callers promising them windfalls. They should investigate such callers with free reverse phone number lookup searches before they get too excited about the news.
Advance fee scammers cut communication as soon as they victims send them money. However, some may request confidential records rather than money. They would claim these are required to verify identity but steal their victims’ identities.
What are Johnson County Overpayment Scams?
In these scams, fraudsters send counterfeit cashier’s checks to the victims in excess of the amounts they promised to pay for tasks completed, free prizes, or lottery winnings. They then ask their victims to wire back the difference while they wait for their banks to clear the bogus checks. Victims only realize they have lost money when their banks call to tell them the checks are forgeries. Some victims are arrested for presenting fake checks.
Do not trust persons you only recently know to present real checks. If contacted and asked to return an overpayment, make sure to delay sending money until their check clears. Those contacted about overpayment should be skeptical and run the numbers used by these callers through suspicious phone number lookup searches. These may reveal that the numbers were previously flagged for scams or that the callers are impostors.
What are Johnson County IRS Scams?
These are impostor scams in which fraudsters pretend to be employees of the Internal Revenue Service on the phone. They accuse their victims of owing back taxes and demand they pay immediately to avoid arrest, deportation, or other bad consequences. IRS scammers may also call their victims to offer them tax refunds. In such cases, they will demand personal information, such as Social Security numbers, claiming to need these to verify identities and process refunds.
The Attorney General of Texas warns residents not to believe anyone calling and claiming they are IRS agents. The IRS does not call to demand tax payments or offer refunds. They contact taxpayers by mail correspondences and will only call when such contacts are pre-arranged. Use reverse phone lookup to confirm the identity of a caller claiming to be an IRS employee. If your phone’s caller ID shows IRS, it may be because the scammer is masking their number with caller ID spoofing. Redial the contact to see if you can obtain the actual number used.
What are Johnson County Shopping Spree Scams?
In these scams, fraudsters call to offer their victims hundreds or thousands of dollars in vouchers to shop for certain products or services. They then ask for their victims’ banking account details to collect small fees they claim are for processing and shipping those vouchers. Such shopping spree offers are fake and callers are never from the companies or government agencies they claim are offering such sprees. The Texas Attorney General warns residents never to provide confidential financial information on the phone regardless of who the callers claim they are. Residents should try to verify the identities of such callers by running phone number searches to know who those numbers are registered to.
What are Robocalls and Spam Calls?
Automated phone calls that deliver pre-recorded messages are also known as robocalls. When they were first introduced, robocalls were mostly used by telemarketers, political groups, and public organizations delivering public service announcements. However, most robocalls received by American phone users today are from scammers and dishonest telemarketers. These fraudsters use robocalls to find new targets for their schemes. As mass communication tools, robocalls are very effective and cost little.
Spam calls are also unsolicited phone calls placed in bulk to large numbers of phone users. These are mostly placed by human agents in telemarketing companies delivering sales pitches according to prepared scripts. The deluge of robocalls and spam calls received by American phone users is prompting governments, lawmakers, and phone companies to take action. In the meantime, residents of Johnson County can stop or stem the flood of robocalls and spam calls getting to them by following these steps:
- Do not depend on your phone’s caller ID to correctly identify strange callers. Scammers trick their targets into picking up by using caller ID spoofing
- Hang up a call as soon as you find out it is a robocall or spam call
- Do not follow instructions given during robocalls about removing your number from their call lists. Spammers and scammers use such prompts to confirm active numbers and direct more unwanted and unsolicited calls to them
- Set up your phone to filter out calls from unknown or select numbers. Carriers also offer similar call blocking tools. You can also search your phone’s app store for well-reviewed call blocking apps
- Identify unknown callers by their phone numbers with reverse phone lookup. This can help discover scammers, spammers, and stalkers and provide useful information when submitting a police report
- Join the National Do Not Call Registry and Texas’ No Call Lists. Adding your phone numbers to these registries will stop calls from legitimate telemarketers. Any robocall received 31 days after joining the National list and 3 months after joining the state lists can be disregarded and reported
How to Spot and Report Johnson County Phone Scams?
To spot phone scams, Johnson County residents must know about the different types of telephone frauds and how scammers operate. Scammers change their tactics regularly to throw off wary targets. However, new scams are just variations of the same old tricks. All phone scams share certain traits and have the same objectives: to defraud their targets and steal other valuables such as confidential information. To spot phone scams, residents of Johnson County should look out for the following signs:
- Threats to obtain compliance - scammers posing as authority figures are quick to use threats to get their victims to comply with their demands. They threaten them with immediate arrest, prosecution, deportation, and revocation of driver’s, business, and professional licenses
- Request for payment by unofficial channels - even while impersonating law enforcement agents, court officers, government employees, IRS agents, creditors, utility company employees, lottery/sweepstakes organizations, financial houses, and other reputable entities, scammers demand to be paid in cash or with prepaid debit cards, gift cards, wire transfer, mobile app transfers, and cryptocurrencies
- Aggressive sales tactics - eager to close their bogus business and investment deals, scammers pressure their victims to commit immediately and give them very little time to closely consider the offers. They may claim their no-risk, high-reward offers are only available for a limited time or offer deep discounts only if their victims will sign up immediately
- Refusal to provide written documentation - scammers do not have written documents to back up their claims and identities. They ask you to trust them and namedrop well-known people as proof of their legitimacy
Residents of Johnson County should take every step to verify the identities and claims of strangers calling them to request money or information. They can do so with phone number lookup. If such reverse lookups confirm or deepen their suspicions, they should report these callers to the right authorities. Reporting successful and foiled scam attempts is important because it helps apprehend and comprehend fraudsters and increase public awareness of their tactics. Texans living in Johnson County can report phone scams to the following agencies:
- The Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the Attorney General - as the state’s consumer protection agency, the Division receives complaints about consumer scams. Check the scam complaints page on the Attorney General’s website for instructions on how to report a scam involving a consumer transaction
- The Public Utility Commission of Texas - the PUC maintains Texas’s No Call Lists and prosecutes businesses and telemarketers flouting its rules. Report an illegal robocall or other violations of the No Call Lists to this Commission
- The Treasury Inspector General Administration (TIGTA) - the IRS directs Americans to file complaints about IRS scams to the TIGTA. Residents of Johnson County can file complaints of IRS impersonation scams online
- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - this federal agency is responsible for protecting American consumers against unfair and deceptive business practices. Scams involving consumer scams as well as businesses and telemarketers misrepresenting their products and service can be reported to the FTC by calling (877) 382-4357 or submitting fraud complaints online
- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - this federal agency regulates all communication in the control including telecommunication services and providers. Americans are directed to report illegal robocalls, spam calls, caller ID spoofing, and phishing to the FCC. Residents can also report phone scams involving these tools to the FCC’s Consumer Complaint Center