Yeah, you hear about this with the people who get taken in by Grubhub or whoever that's spoofing a restaurant's phone number/ordering site. I would never take a third-party source as authoritative, but apparently people do it.
I never take restaurant phone numbers directly off of Google, I always check their (hopefully existent) website before calling, or at least crosscheck it against other sources. There is no way Grubhub or any of the other mediating greedholes will get even Caller ID data from me if I can help it.
Related. Finding real locksmiths has become so difficult that I have resorted to calling a business across the street and asking them to tell me if there is, in fact, a locksmith at the purported location.
Maybe there is a business in physically verifying a given business is the actually the real thing.
KeyMe are one of the perpetrators of this shady practice. They have vending machines for keys and put them all over the place and then their machines show up when you search for a locksmith. If you call the number their rep will act as middleman to connect you with an actual locksmith and they take a cut.
I've decided I will do my searches through https://www.findalocksmith.com/ which is from the associated locksmiths of America
When a small guy does something like this it's called fraud and heavily punished. When a VC-funded company does this it's called "growth hacking" and applauded.
