Robocalls getting out of hand.

I say ban all telemarketing...it's bad now with some local elections, but the politicians exempted themselves. :(
  • The polls were all messed up last year, people lie to them, so they are just an annoyance
  • Politicians....'nuff said
  • Scammers- no protection of free speech for them!
  • Do not call list...a joke!
May as well just ban them. I just get the message and call back if needed.
 
Since I switched to VOIP and nomorobo, one ring and that's it. I also use the do not disturb function on my iPhone.

Cheers
 
I've been getting tons of these calls the last few months and only answer if I know the caller. They even try to do the trick where they use a local number to call me, only the joke is on them because my cell # is still the area code of the last state I lived in. So numbers from there are not "local" to me.

I thought about changing my number, but I think that would only stop them for a little while.
 
X3 Skier said:
Since I switched to VOIP and nomorobo, one ring and that's it. I also use the do not disturb function on my iPhone.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Went to Obitalk VOIP using Google Voice. Same thing, one ring and that's it. Been a ehile since we've gotten any at all. Been great, plus not paying VZ $80 month for a landline ain't a bad thing either.
 
Who buys their crap anyway?! I mean people must be forking over dough or these telemarketers wouldn't be calling all the time


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have no add-on apps on my Android phone. . .Nada, none. And rarely get a marketing or robo call. Just saying. . .

Landline, I do get them. Niw that area codes/numbers are spoofed, we just fon't answer anymore.
 
I've definitely noticed an increase in the last year on three different phone numbers I receive calls on.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
luvflyin said:
So it's been getting worse over the last few months. Wonder why........
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Keep in mind that Congress just made it legal for ISPs to sell both your browsing history and associated phone number. So those ads that keep following you from site to site... is now going to start calling you as well.
 
I started getting occasional calls on my iPhone a few months ago, and then it became at least one a day. I installed RoboKiller about a week ago and the calls stopped.
 
Which is why I have no browsing history to track. . .
 
Robocalls must be easy and cheap. And they often come from other countries.

So I'm just curious -- what if an unfriendly country just wanted to harrass, confuse, or terrify millions of Americans -- what's to keep them from launching a deluge of billions of threatening robocalls?

If Rachel with account services can bombard us with unthreatening calls by the millions, why can't Kim Jong Un make our phones ring incessantly with calls that threaten to turn us all into a sea of fire? I

And if her friend Heather at cardholder services can use millions of calls to trick people, why can't Putin use even more calls to trick voters around the country with bogus info at midnight before an election?
 
NoHeat said:
Robocalls must be easy and cheap. And they often come from other countries.

So I'm just curious -- what if an unfriendly country just wanted to harrass, confuse, or terrify millions of Americans -- what's to keep them from launching a deluge of billions of threatening robocalls?

If Rachel with account services can bombard us with unthreatening calls by the millions, why can't Kim Jong Un make our phones ring incessantly with calls that threaten to turn us all into a sea of fire? I

And if her friend Heather at cardholder services can use millions of calls to trick people, why can't Putin use even more calls to trick voters around the country with bogus info at midnight before an election?
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Mainly because there's still choke points where the national carrier's would simply drop such an "attack". Plus they'd know the foreign phone company was never going to pay the interconnect bill.

There's also considerable overselling of the available circuits. There's a finite limit to the number of outbound calls a particular group could make without a large and physically diverse infrastructure to handle all of them at once, and there'd still be bottlenecks along the way and at the far end. Even in VoIP.

High high density stuff is still fairly expensive and it takes a boatload of circuits to feed even if it's VoIP. Not cheap at the calling end.

Heather at Cardholder Services, on the other hand, pays her bills... and only makes some number of thousands of calls at the same time. Much easier for the gear to deal with than simultaneous calls to millions.

It used to be that carriers planned their build out engineering by a single day of the year. Mother's Day. It was the highest traffic day and the goal was not to oversubscribe so much as to cause reorder or "Due to the high number of calls" intercepts on that day of the year.

Every other day of the year was a piece of cake, barring natural disasters, compared to Mother's Day.
 
I just received a call on my iPhone. Caller ID said it was me and for some reason, I answered it. Nobody there and the connection failed after I said hello twice.
The "recent" call list shows my contact info, including phone number, email and home address.

I assume this was spoofed, but I am wondering if I need to do anything. They may be calling others spoofing as me.
 
JOhnH said:
I just received a call on my iPhone. Caller ID said it was me and for some reason, I answered it. Nobody there and the connection failed after I said hello twice.
The "recent" call list shows my contact info, including phone number, email and home address.

I assume this was spoofed, but I am wondering if I need to do anything. They may be calling others spoofing as me.
Click to expand...

No you're fine. You're in your own address book, and all they spoofed was your phone number. Your phone provided the rest from your own contact in its internal database.
 
I got a nice one today. 410 area code. Told me I "Had" to stay on the line or I wouldn't learn how to put $10,000 in my pocket in a month.

Considering that I've had numerous months in my life where I've done that, I decided I could hang up on it. LOL.
 
In a previous thread I related the story about the telemarketer that I reported to the B B B for calling my no call listed number and calling me a gay son of a *****. Their lawyer contacted me and I am to receive $500 for removing the negative review. I don't care much about the $500, so I did not push hard to get the review removed. Every week or two I got a follow-up from the lawyer.

Yesterday the review was removed. (took 20 seconds to write it and 5 phone calls to remove it)

Will be interesting to see how fast the check arrives.
 
We recently cancelled our land line.

1) Will save almost $500/yr.

2) About 3 out of 4 calls on our land line were either sales or political pitches. In spite of being on the DoNotCall list.
 
I was bored today so I answered one. FABULOUS offer for a vacation cruise, Timeshare, lobotomy or something equally stupid. The robot went thru the spiel then asked if I was interested. I said no and the robot asked if I was interested, "no" and this repeated 3 times so the nasty robot gave up and hung up.

Cheers
 
The answer is to get a 900 number. Let them pay dearly for calling you. Why don't the cellphone companies charge the landlines for airtime?
.
Can I get a phone line from any area or country code?
.
Scream a profanity laced tirade into the phone.
.
Never answer any question. Scammers are taping the calls and use your responses against you. All this without your Miranda warnings first.
 
X3 Skier said:
Since I switched to VOIP and nomorobo, one ring and that's it. I also use the do not disturb function on my iPhone.

Cheers
Click to expand...

I have that, as well. Not 100% effective, but it sure intercepts a bunch of them. I feel sorry for people who need to do this for a living, but I wouldn't mind making it illegal (with capital punishment for offenders).
 
I guess Rachel was fired. Now it's Lisa from cardholder services that's calling me constantly. Here's a question. How does she get straight to my cell vm w/o my phone ringing?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Are y'all experiencing a significant uptick in the number of robo calls you are getting?

It is 5-10 times a day. Its kind of rendering my phone useless because I have stopped answering it.
Wondering if maybe a law has changed or something because in the last couple months it increased by a huge margin.

Heather wants to consolidate my student loans. Greg wants to help me fight addiction, My car warranty is expiring soon, ADT wants to hook me up w/ a free security system, I'm getting a free vacation to Orlando, a Cruise to the Bahamas, and super affordable dental insurance.

Every. Single. Day.

WTH????
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Yes. It's good for business and other 'great' things. Be a good citizen, quit bitchin and answer the damn phone
 
On our home phone -- if it's not a number or person's name on the CID that we recognize or are expecting, we don't answer it.

Lately I've been getting a flood of calls on my corporate issued cell phone. Most have the same area code and prefix as my phone. Fakes. I know NO ONE with the same NPA/NXX, so it's easy to ignore those. I'd love to be able to silently send a range of numbers to voicemail, but that capability doesn't exist (at least not without an app I can't install). Lately I've been getting daily calls from some scammer with a Minneapolis number despite my very, very clear request to stop. They're trying to get me to let them sell my bike I have listed. At least they have the common decency to use the same number so I can block their calls.

All of the non-spoofed numbers and most of the spoofed calls get reported via complaints.donotcall.gov. Unfortunately, nearly all of the calls are clearly spoofed numbers. Probably futile, but even a blind pig occasionally finds whatever it is they are supposed to find.

I know it's trivially easy to fake CID on VOIP calls. What irritates me is every carrier's outright refusal to do anything toward helping to stop the flood of illegal and unwanted calls. They won't share detailed CDR with originating IP addresses, they won't implement filtering or blacklisting features. It's like we're living in the 1970s. Phone rings, you don't know who it is or where they're calling from, and there's no way to find out. I'm really missing all the filtering my Asterisk system did for me.
 
DaleB said:
On our home phone -- if it's not a number or person's name on the CID that we recognize or are expecting, we don't answer it.
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That's about all you can do, I guess. <sigh>

Lately I've been getting a flood of calls on my corporate issued cell phone. Most have the same area code and prefix as my phone. Fakes. I know NO ONE with the same NPA/NXX, so it's easy to ignore those.
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I think the scammers are catching on that we're catching on to that, so lately a lot of the spoofed numbers are only the first five digits of the victim's own phone (area code + first two of the prefix) instead of the first six, so it's not so obvious.

Luckily, my cell phone number is from a state 1500 miles away, and there's no one there I care to talk to. So ignoring those calls is easy.
 
Pilawt said:
I think the scammers are catching on that we're catching on to that, so lately a lot of the spoofed numbers are only the first five digits of the victim's own phone (area code + first two of the prefix) instead of the first six, so it's not so obvious.

Luckily, my cell phone number is from a state 1500 miles away, and there's no one there I care to talk to. So ignoring those calls is easy.
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No one I work with has a phone number in the same area code. I'm a remote telecommuter, my team is spread thinly from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Minnesota to the Gulf. Anyone who would be calling me from my own area code is in my contacts, because they're family or friends. So the cell phone is pretty easy, it's just that up until a month or so ago I got a couple scammers a year. Now it's a few per week and getting worse.
 
Pilawt said:
Luckily, my cell phone number is from a state 1500 miles away, and there's no one there I care to talk to. So ignoring those calls is easy.
Click to expand...

Same for me, my cell number is still in Texas. I still have friends there and all their numbers are on my approved list. Anytime I get a call from that area code and I don't recognize it, I send it off to voicemail.

This morning at 7am the first spam call came in with my cell area code. ID said it was from Caldwell, Tx. First call last four numbers were 7400. Then the next one was 7401, and the next one was 7402, and the next one was 7403, and it continued up to 7409 before the calls stopped.
 
I'd like to just ignore anyone I don't already know, but then I'll miss a lot. Anymore a lot of people do this, if you aren't part of the person's inner circle of whatever they never answer the phone. I used to have a pay as you go phone, and I was pretty flaky about not answering it, since I paid every time I did. Now that I have a smart phone I don't like to be such a flake and never answer it.

Besides, we're paying out the nose for these things. Why have one if you aren't ever going to answer it?
 
steingar said:
Besides, we're paying out the nose for these things. Why have one if you aren't ever going to answer it?
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I'll turn your question around. Why would I answer a phone call from someone I don't know, or from whom I do not expect a call? I don't have a phone to make new friends.
 
steingar said:
Besides, we're paying out the nose for these <smartphones>. Why have one if you aren't ever going to answer it?
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Huh? What? Smartphones are capable of making and receiving phone calls? Who knew!

Anyway, I'm thinking maybe port your number to Google Voice for a year or two and then port it back out might get you off the spammers call list, at least for a while.
 
I get calls once or twice a week on my cell phone, which is also listed as my business phone, from a company wanting to sell me a way to upgrade my listing on Google. I've taken to interrupting the scammer up front telling him/her that I've been contacted a half dozen times already, I'm not interested, and to take me off their list of numbers to call. It doesn't do any good, they keep calling. And caller ID shows a different number (and area code) each time. Damned spoofers.
 
DaleB said:
I'll turn your question around. Why would I answer a phone call from someone I don't know, or from whom I do not expect a call? I don't have a phone to make new friends.
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I occasionally get calls from my students if they are having problems in the lab - and sometimes faculty if they need an answer and I am off campus.
 
Gerhardt said:
I guess Rachel was fired. Now it's Lisa from cardholder services that's calling me constantly. Here's a question. How does she get straight to my cell vm w/o my phone ringing?
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Two ways.

Either your coverage isn’t actually as good as the lying little bars on the phone say, and the phone isn’t ringing on inbound calls as consistently as you might think it is...

Or your carrier still has their old voice mail access number set up. Call it and enter any number in their system and leave a message.

There’s another possibility as well. If the scammer uses your own number as the CID, at least one US carrier will drop you straight into your own voice mail if you do that. Happens only if you never dialed into it and set a password. Most people have something like Visual Voicemail on iPhones, so on that carrier they probably have never called into the actual voice mail system and configured it.

I used to spoof a buddy’s CID and call his cell when I had access to gear that would easily do that, and leave him messages telling him his voicemail was insecure and he needed to get a real phone carrier. Hahaha.
 
I got 7 spams today, 4 of them while I was hiking. An average of one per hour. All but one were from my cell phone's area code plus first 3 digits of my phone number. All added to my blocked caller list. Heck of a lot of good that does of course, they're all spoofed numbers.
 
Yeah, I put it on mute and do my part to tie up the phone as long as possible. I've gotten the same call 17 times in a row telling me that my 16 year old car's warranty is about to expire. I know who it is and I'm gaming their system to try to help the rest of you. I'm kinda getting a kick out of tying them up.

A couple of months ago I tied up a service technician for almost 10 minutes as they tried to explain to me how to install software to check my system. They kept telling me to go to the start menu and I kept playing dumb and asking them where it was. I was on my Mac. I finally told them that for being a specialized computer technician, they didn't know very much about my computer.
 
Timely resurrection of this thread. My number is being spoofed (out of state). I’ve received probably 2 dozen calls and texts from people asking why I’m calling them. Frustrating to say the least and all I can say is “sorry, but someone is spoofing my number.” My only option is to change cell numbers; however, I’ve had this one 15 years!

I was reading the other day that people that do this get paid by the carrier whether you answer your phone or not. Why in the he!! is this crap incentivized?
 
"This is the investigation division of the IRS..."
 
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