[NA]Robocall Insanity [NA]

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
20,769
Location
west Texas
Display Name

Display name:
Dave Taylor
I am now getting calls (IRS-jail,SS-violation, CarWarranty expiry, til recently lots of political calls) every 20 minutes!
My number has been on the DoNotCall registry since 2004 (I just checked it)
Do I have to pay to have my number left alone? Service provider has no answers.

iPhone SE, 1yrold
Ios 14.2
StraightTalk
Verizon network
 
Many many times a day. Most ironic thing is most don't say anything and just hang up. I block them all. Been on the do not call registry since it opened.
 
My provider ATT has a pretty effective spam blocker for cell phones. Not so for the VOIP Phone. Do Not Call registry is only effective for reputable companies. Spammers and Scam Artists just ignore it.

Cheers
 
Kept getting calls from the same city in WI. Finally accepted a call without saying anything. Dead air for several seconds. Hung up. No calls since.
 
and recently I'm getting hit with spam sms texts from full phone numbers... most of them similar to "your package delivery is ... changed/updated/pending ..." and a link
AT&T has a method to report SPAM texts (forward to 7726, reply with the sending phone number when the forward is acknowledged) but I assume it's a futile as blocking voice phone numbers ... they roll to another number and keep sending

and still getting robo calls with voicemails re: "extended car warranty" or "this is the irs ... your account is under investigation" at least 2-3 times a week...
 
I get 3 or 4 everyday, usually mid morning and within 10 minutes of each other. Friday I answered but didn’t say anything, no robocalls today.
 
I've taken some pretty extreme measures to stop the onslaught of SPAM and scam calls. I used to run my own Asterisk PBX, with heavy filtering. Our VOIP carrier made their pricing far less attractive, so a couple of years ago I switched our home phone number to Ooma. Ooma lets you use Nomorobo to filter out some calls, which is good, but it's an arms race with the a$$wipes making the calls.

I started out by blocking numbers. They started using random numbers.
I started blocking entire area code and prefix blocks, or occasionally an entire area code (like, most of FL). They started using random local numbers.
I finally just sent anything not in our contact list to voicemail. Known spammers (Nomorobo) get a disconnected number recording.

We still have a few slip through, but only when I allow unknown calls through temporarily -- like when we're expecting calls from an office or someone whose number we don't know in advance. The rest of the time it's blessed silence, no scams, no robocalls. This last election was the final straw. We were getting probably a dozen political calls per day. That's when I started simply dumping any call not coming from an existing contact.

My personal cell phone never gets call like this. My company issued phone has started getting an occasional scam, phishing, or porno text message, and once in a while gets a scam call. I know they're scam calls, because it's always a local number, usually the same prefix. II have ZERO work calls from my own area code. So, I'm going to give them back their phone and just keep my own since it's now useless to me and just attracting flies.
 
There was a similar thread where we talked about this, but it still blows my mind that carriers allow this to happen. Is it like the Post Office where they're getting paid per item delivered, so there's no incentive for them to put a stop to the garbage?
 
My provider ATT has a pretty effective spam blocker for cell phones. Not so for the VOIP Phone. Do Not Call registry is only effective for reputable companies. Spammers and Scam Artists just ignore it.

Cheers
Spammers and Scam Artists love the Do Not Call list! All those numbers, just sitting there for taking. And spamming.
 
Each time you get a spam call, email and/or call your local Congress person and complain. They're getting this crap, too. Make them understand that their voters are not happy, and remind them there's less than 23 months to the next election.
 
Each time you get a spam call, email and/or call your local Congress person and complain. They're getting this crap, too. Make them understand that their voters are not happy, and remind them there's less than 23 months to the next election.
I don't even want to think how badly our Congress-critters will eff up any regulation intended to stop this. I mean, look at how effective they've been so far with the "CAN-SPAM" Act for email, and the Do Not Call list for phones. Have you noticed any decrease in spam email or calls? No, because the laws are largely unenforced within the US, and totally unenforceable outside the US.

I don't think we'll see a fix until there is a financial reason for the carriers to do something about it. If it cost them 1/100th of a cent to ring your phone, I guarantee you we'd see robocalls screech to a halt within a week.

OK, I take that back... they'd start charging you an extra fee every month to turn that into another revenue stream. Never mind.
 
If it cost them 1/100th of a cent to ring your phone, I guarantee you we'd see robocalls screech to a halt within a week.

There's got to be some financial reason they don't implement such a thing. I tend to think people would fall over themselves to pay extra per month to stop the madness.
 
I went down a YouTube rabbit hole last week of videos where folks scam-bait the scammer call centers. Sometimes they're actually able to get into the scammer's PC and lock them out of their own PC or at least delete a bunch of files from their PC. One group even physically confronted a scammer that was using an on-shore mule to ship cash to the off-shore scammers.
 
Clearly you shouldn't have bought a fruit phone.
 
I think its almost impossible to stop it. the callers are mostly off shore where they can't be touched. The technology allows them to look like they are calling from anywhere in the world. Our landline is bundled with comcast. They have been proactive in stopping it. Not perfect, but we get less than we used to. Mobile is T-mobile, again they have been proactive. after signing up for their no spam service, we get much less of it. But some still get through, just less of them. I feel your pain, we all do!
 
There was a similar thread where we talked about this, but it still blows my mind that carriers allow this to happen. Is it like the Post Office where they're getting paid per item delivered, so there's no incentive for them to put a stop to the garbage?

Yes. The protocols in use don’t give enough information to trace anything back unless the call costs that carrier something.

Calls are so cheap over Voip backbones they literally don’t make enough on them to employ anyone to care.

They’re in the data business now. Voice is an afterthought. The expensive part of voice is now wiretapping (legal) so they automated it and bought themselves legal immunity at the same time from some politicians with their hands out.

Unless international regulations change to force carriers to care who owns a trunk and how they use it, it’ll continue down the path of cesspool entropy.

And if they get forced to do anything about it, they’ll jack up rates to cover it. Of course. Act like they’re losing money. LOL.
 
There's got to be some financial reason they don't implement such a thing. I tend to think people would fall over themselves to pay extra per month to stop the madness.
The financial reason is that it would cost them money to do it, and there is risk that they’re not willing to take... because there isn’t a ton of money to be made.
 
It must be very profitable for the scammers, or they would not do it.
 
I think its almost impossible to stop it. the callers are mostly off shore where they can't be touched. The technology allows them to look like they are calling from anywhere in the world. Our landline is bundled with comcast. They have been proactive in stopping it. Not perfect, but we get less than we used to. Mobile is T-mobile, again they have been proactive. after signing up for their no spam service, we get much less of it. But some still get through, just less of them. I feel your pain, we all do!
Pakistan and the Phillipines. One of the scammers admitted they were in Pakistan. Wait....CenturyLink’s customer service center is in the Phillipines, too.
 
I have this as VM message..

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking to sell me something, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."
 
I have this as VM message..

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking to sell me something, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."
I used to do things like that. Then the spammers all figured out that it's EVEN CHEAPER to use a crappy text-to-speech program to deliver their message than it is to hire destitute people in whatever backwater third world den of thieves they use to place the calls. We never get live calls. The only exception are the 2-3-4 times a day calls from the lowest of the low life uncollectable debt collectors, asking for some person we've never heard of (and we've had this number since the very early 1990s). They used to leave callback numbers we could use to hunt them down; now they cover their tracks much better. I don't know if it had anything to do with the written complaints we filed with the CFPB, FTC, FCC, and the state AG and bar association in every state where the scumbag lawyer running the thing was licensed.

But I like to think we made it at least a little bit uncomfortable.
 
We just need to find a few dozen cell phone numbers of key people in Congress and mercilessly spam them with texts and calls.
 
I used to do things like that. Then the spammers all figured out that it's EVEN CHEAPER to use a crappy text-to-speech program to deliver their message than it is to hire destitute people in whatever backwater third world den of thieves they use to place the calls. We never get live calls. The only exception are the 2-3-4 times a day calls from the lowest of the low life uncollectable debt collectors, asking for some person we've never heard of (and we've had this number since the very early 1990s). They used to leave callback numbers we could use to hunt them down; now they cover their tracks much better. I don't know if it had anything to do with the written complaints we filed with the CFPB, FTC, FCC, and the state AG and bar association in every state where the scumbag lawyer running the thing was licensed.

But I like to think we made it at least a little bit uncomfortable.


I typed it into the note app on the iPhone and had SIRI read it as I recorded it.
 
Spammers and Scam Artists love the Do Not Call list! All those numbers, just sitting there for taking. And spamming.
I wish there was some way of getting off the do not call list.
 
Get a new number, but get a number from a different area code, then you’ll know any “local” call is scammer.

I think you can set up iPhone to ignore calls not in your contact list.

When you pick up, don’t say anything, a human will say hello, but a robot will wait for you to talk.
 
It must be very profitable for the scammers, or they would not do it.

On one of the YT videos I saw, the scam-baiter did a reverse connection to the scammer's PC and started downloading his files. He found a list of folks they had scammed and the amount of money taken from them. It was more than $500k in a couple of years of work. I would imagine $500k US goes a long way in India..
 
I finally found a fix that works well for me with caveats.

On the iPhone can send any call that’s not in your contact list straight to voicemail. But toggle this feature off if you’re expecting a call back from a business (for example, one you were on hold with and gave them a call-back number).

To turn this on (iPhone only):

Go to Settings—>Phone—>Silence Unknown Callers—On
 
I did the ignore unknown numbers thing. Problem is a lot of real calls come from numbers not in my contacts. So it had to go.
 
I did the ignore unknown numbers thing. Problem is a lot of real calls come from numbers not in my contacts. So it had to go.
Same here. Many times businesses will call you back using a different number than their public number because they have multiple lines. Yes, they can leave a message, but phone tag is frustrating too.
 
I finally found a fix that works well for me with caveats.

On the iPhone can send any call that’s not in your contact list straight to voicemail. But toggle this feature off if you’re expecting a call back from a business (for example, one you were on hold with and gave them a call-back number).

To turn this on (iPhone only):

Go to Settings—>Phone—>Silence Unknown Callers—On


Good tip - down on both iPhones
 
When you pick up, don’t say anything, a human will say hello, but a robot will wait for you to talk.

This. If I do answer a number I do not recognize, I do not say anything.

My phone stops a lot of spam calls. I get a few messages a week: call blocked, possible spam.

I have a Texas phone number, so if I get a call from Texas I know it is spam, because my Texas friends are on my contact list. I also know that Millican, TX is a small village and does not have Fortune 500 companies offices there.
 
As alluded to higher up, blocking individual numbers no longer helps. They are spoofing numbers. If you can safely stop all calls except those in your contact list, that mostly works. The odds of them spoofing a number in your list is small (but not 0). For anyone who uses their phone for business, it probably is a non-starter.
 
Yes you can. But then you can never get a call from other people you may really want to talk to, like your Doctor if he uses his cell....

not quite. You can still see the notification and have the call go to voicemail. You just don't have to have it ring.
 
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