Robocalls have triumphed over the Do Not Call list
slate.com
slate.com
Every once and awhile I get nervous that I'm missing something important but the few times I have given in and answered an unknown call it is always unimportant (car warranty companies, comcast, etc).
Edit: Oh neat! Apparently it's illegal in the US, but legal in Canada (where I am currently located). So it's not the robocall not bothering, it's it being flat-out illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing
I still answer most calls from my area code, but if I suspect it's a robocall I just pick up without saying hello. If it's a robocall, there's generally a lengthy pause and then you can here someone connect (at which point I hang up).
(He ended up surviving ventricular fibrillation with no organ or brain damage because they got an AED on him within a minute.)
Some hospitals are stricter about cell phones than others.
Anecdotal, but I now get complete "text message coverage" for all incoming calls.
If it's important enough that someone needs to get a hold of me they should be having a human calling that can follow through with that simple request.
We get a LOT of people who do something similar to you, or just leave their voicemail box full, or don't bother to set up voicemail at all. Then they get angry at us: "Why didn't you call me to let me know my system was finished?" "We did, and you didn't answer." "Oh, I don't pick up calls from random numbers." Well, I don't know what to tell you, then...
I can't text you, because we don't have a business cell phone to text with. Yes, I suppose I could set up some fancy integrated-with-our-POS system to text you from some number that we could then read replies to, but that both would cost time and money to develop, and would open up yet another vector for us to be contacted by (we already have a phone number, Yelp messages, Facebook messages, and email as it is.)
We can (and do) email customers, but email presents its own issues: People like to reply to them and we don't always have time to respond quickly, and people don't check their email often, or it goes into a spam filter...
It's not just us. It's your doctor, your pet groomer, anyone who has a local business. My suggestion here is to pick up calls from your local area code, and/or program into your phone the businesses you do business with.
Text messaging with or without email is easy to access online[0] and no longer required an ancient "business line" - you don't need to "integrate" it into your p.o.s. POS either. If you have fb, then there's surely no reason other than will that you can't use SMS.
[0] for example, https://www.twilio.com/
It's worked so nicely since I got it, I'm surprised we ever did without it. I think it also auto-disconnects calls from numbers that a sufficient-amount of people have flagged as spam.
The only problem it doesn't solve is when a business decides to do it's surveys/telemarketing through the same number it attempts to contact clients on. This is especially rife with SMS spam, where they use the same number to SMS you valid "updates" that they use to send promotions/ads and other spam.
This only weeds out lazy robocalls, I get plenty of calls with (presumably spoofed) caller id from my exchange. It would be trivial to add that into a spam script.
You can set up a virtual number to receive incoming - and so do 2 way email - SMS, and (not sure this applies in the US) if you don't need 2 way can spoof your number to show text alert instead, eg the text shows as from "1Up Repairs".
In your position it definitely sounds worth exploring. There's a lot of other places than Twilio too.
One last hint, if they're "too cheap" they'll be using grey routes and should be avoided like plague.
When a business, local or otherwise, asks me for a phone number I regard it as a spam-vector and decline. It's the businesses that need to adapt, not the customer.
A phone number is a very personal piece of information given the intrusion it permits into one's life, and many people are hesitant to share it with one-off requestors for that reason.
Why aren't you tweeting 'job #3327 complete'?
I really only communicate via phone if it's scheduled in the calendar.
- Don't answer private numbers ( where i don't see the number)
- Don't answer unknown numbers on landlines ( except Android lookup a business name and says which one -- then i handle it depending the bussiness)
- Pick up depending a mobile or landline. If it's a landline with our city code in front. I pick up. If it's not ( or from a big city), i don't pick up. If it's a mobile phone, chances are to big it's someone who referenced me.
Had no junk calls, except one. Where a telemarketeer seemed to use a mobile number... Which was akward
Which isn't really useful beyond getting them to only call once every few months instead of once every few days or whatever.
Everything but political crap and surveys seems to go like this, answering a call and saying no firmly ends that stream of calls.
For the surveys I answer and ask how much they are paying people to take the survey. Then when they say they aren't paying I say I'm not interested and hang up. My hope is that this is superficially annoying for the person doing the survey. Not antagonistic, just enough to remind them exactly what it is they are doing.
I believe you but I can only say that your experience is different than mine. Very different. My experience is that it seems to encourage them to call more often.
Until you hit 200, anyway.
My z3 doesn't. I'm running marshmallow. Where are you finding the option? On previous phones long pressing the contact gives you an ignore option but not this one.
Edit: I just discovered the option to send all calls from a contact to voicemail which is great but then I'll have to dial in and delete the voicemail otherwise there will be an icon there forever. Ideally there would be a button to dump the call and silently reject all further calls from that number. I suppose I could attach all numbers to the same contact.
My approach is a little different than to hang-up as quickly as possible, as this is a behaviour that the telephone solictors use to their advantange. In short, I try to soak a call for as long as possible. The best tactic is to be a little bit dumb, but fean interest in whatever the person is calling about. I generally find that getting them to explain each sentance they say about 3 times is about right, before moring on to the next sentance.
Anyway, I answer all calls, and press the button to talk to a human, then try to keep the human on the line for as long as possible.
The cost centre for these automated calls is for a human to talk to me. On at least 4 occasions after being an affible fool for about 20 minutes, without the sales person on the other end, they have said "okay, I get it, you don't want us to call you, and we will put you on our 'do not call list'". At which time they promptly hang up in a huff.
I my numbers, work, cottage/holiday home, mobile, work mobile, and work line now only get about 1 call a month, of which I am more than happy to take, and generally ends with the above result. Previously I used to get 4 or so random unknown calls a day.
I also notice that after calling for a taxi, the number of unwanted calls goes up.
These calls are using an anti-pattern of most people who are disinterested will hang up, but those who are interested will continue to talk to the person.
Their economic model depends on uninterested parties hanging up as quickly as possible. To disrupt their economics, take their call.
I know things are a bit different in the US and Canadia where the mobile/cell call receiver also pays for minutes. Here in the UK, and the rest of Europe, only the call initiator pays for the call. If you are calling from a land you will pay a higher rate to call a mobile (an 07 number).
You're right, though in all fairness, your solution doesn't scale fast enough. Most people won't altruistically do something like you did. We could use something that would be easy to set up and that would start generating significant costs for the callers without bothering callees much.
RE Lenny, how is one even supposed to use that? :o.
You could transfer calls to a SIP extension (or via a number of PSTN numbers in different locations). Unfortunately the original service is now defunct, but I'm sure there are some private closes in operation.
There's an archive of recordings on youtube linked from https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ -- some are hilarious and sure to brighten anyones day.
That has changed in recent years. My postpaid cell plan (Verizon) now offers "unlimited talk" and "unlimited text". The only variable is how many GB of data a month you want to pay for. AT&T is similar. Just choose the amount of data.
Just talk over their opening spiel. 15 seconds, no more calls from that caller.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11793483
I continue to get calls. Still. Sometimes several times a day. This means two things to me. First, their dialer software sucks. Second, they do need to put people on a DNC list. It would improve their odds of scamming people.
I get a lot of calls from Indians. Any solution has to take into account the international nature of the annoyance. I'm perfectly happy with a whitelist system, or where anyone who has not called me before needs to sign up with my phone company using verifiable credentials.
I love trying get to the PPI callers to explain to me what bank accounts, insurance, credit cards are, finally saying that I might have had a bank account, or credit card, then try to get them to explain to me what the PPI is. I had a guy on the phone for about 40 minutes one day while I was waiting for the ferry.
The best thing you can do is get connected to a human as quickly as possible, so you can soak the call.
The other day I didn't really have time to take one of these calls, but I pressed 3 to be connected to someone, and left the phone. After about 5 minutes of being on hold, leaving the phone off the hook, I then heard someone going hello for about 2 minutes.
Another tactic I have is to claim some interest, but that I have to call them back as I am changing phone numbers/jobs/houses, or that I don't have time in the next few weeks, but when I find a moment I will call them back. I refuse to give a 'good time to call' because I am so busy, but when I have a moment I will return the call. This is an amusing tactic because most of the they claim they can only make outgoing calls, and that I will have to give them a time. I generally suggest that them must have an incoming phone number for other purposes, so surely they could give me that number. Usually they decline, so then finally I try to get the persons phone number on the other end of the call. They generally say that is their private number number, to which I say that this my private number, so it really would be quite fair for me to contact them on their 'personal' number.
This seriously works, as I only get one call every month or two. I have also gotten a bit of a reputation at work for these types of calls and my co-workers have not end of amusement that I engage with these callers in this way.
I only ever get one type of unsolicited phone call from a robot voice asking if I've recently had an accident, then transferring me to a human to get details.
I tried asking them to put my on their do not call list (very calmly and politely) and they keep calling. So now I waste as much of their time as possible everytime they call, and then block their number. (And then report them to ICO).
Me, too. In the last few months, the calls ramped up to a frantic pace on my cell #. The difference, though, is the caller ID was very close to my number, sometimes most digits were the same. All the calls were from the same company, I'd bet. Free trips to Mexico were the #1 subject. There were others. I started keeping them on the line for 10-15 minutes each. At the end, I'd say "I'm not going to give you my CC# because I kept you on the like since you refused to put me on your DNC list."
I've given up doing that, since having done it 10 or so times, I'm tired of it. They won, but not before I wasted a lot of their time, too.
These boiler rooms are really a scourge on our society. I know they scam lots and lots of people. On one call, I heard clapping every few seconds and when I asked what that was, they dude said someone had just "purchased" the free vacation (see, you need to give them $99 to secure that).
I dead-seriously believe that telemarketing is a much less honourable occupation than prostitution. At least in the case of latter, you have two willing parties who need something from each other and voluntarily engage in exchange of value. Telemarketing lives of lying, deception and ruining people's lives in borderline-legal ways.
What currently tortures me several times a day is certainly some sort of legal grey area, but mostly legal. I have Indian IT recruiters calling me several times a day for positions irrelevant to my job role and also in remote locations (I am US-based and it's a very large country, the US, for leisurely moving from the coasts to the Midwest). Here's why I think there's something fishy going on:
* They are 100% Indian, sometimes with limited English skills, suggesting that the US number they are calling from is just a reroute. Conversations are strained and you can tell they read from a script.
* The emails they send before they call contain a specific template that, even though they represent numerous different companies/agencies, the 'This is not spam' type disclaimer (starts with Please allow us to reiterate we chose to contact you because you had your profile online..) is IDENTICAL. The other thing that is identical is the Unsubscribe link, which takes you to the same templated page, with yet another agency name filled in.
* The positions always say, US citizens and green card holders only.
My conclusion: H1B employers are utilizing phone and email spam via Indian call centers to justify having advertised the positions in order to be able to fulfill the legal requirement. What better way than to contact someone in Boston or New York for a low paying role in Lansing, MI or Dayton, OH or whatnot.
Am I the only one?
The legal requirement is usually fulfilled by ploacing an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper (preferably print only), asking candidates to submit their resume via the mail with a reference number.
Either the world has gone mad, or there's a business reason for the above discrepancy given how extremely widespread (I say, daily and via numerous agencies) it is.
Perhaps, they're phishing for more information to target scams? I've heard the IRS scams are more effective against immigrants, for example. The caller may not realize that's the purpose for the call.
Could also just be annoy 1000 people, get one positive response, and that's good enough?
It works pretty great. You get a single first ring, which I thought would be annoying, but every time I get a single ring and then nothing I actually feel a sense of elation.
Think about it. Someone can disrupt any moment of your life for any reason just by making a phone call. If your phone blinks, vibrates, or rings you are distracted. That's like an app you didn't install sending you push notifications. Taking this further... since you don't know anything about the app you have to judge on a case by case basis whether or not to engage further. Except in this case all you get as context is 10 digits. If you choose to engage further you hear someone's voice. Then you have to decide whether to remain civil and give the other person the benefit of the doubt or just hang up. It's all very gross.
Granted, it'd take awhile to get used to numbers like YheXuVtGf/sxxXFYxZD7bY5nI2Tf/ylNrgBf9b5IA5Q, but if it's combined with a petname system (where I just see names like 'Bill' and 'Bill's wife's sister Susan') then I think it could work.
Now I would very much appreciate if calling meant sending a lot more metadata. Like full name/surname and organization to which the number is registered. And then make phones capable of creating filters based on that data. Oh, and companies faking the metadata should be open to lawsuits.
I have found Cyanogenmod's built in call blocking to be essential; I have it set so all calls from withheld numbers and all that are not in my contacts are blocked. I let texts through, though they could also be blocked. If I expect anyone to call me who can't be persuaded to use email instead (e.g. a tradesman or shopkeeper) then I add their number to my contacts or ask them to call at a particular time when the blocking can be temporarily turned off. Only once has this latter tactic resulted in a spam caller getting through.
That's why I loathe telemarketers. Their tactics have made impossible to have a civil conversation because that's how they screw you over.
But for now, I use the iPhone's Do Not Disturb option and allow calls only from contacts. I used to get harassed daily by shit companies selling me stuff, and I'd report them to the FTC, and it was a huge annoyance. Now I have to see the missed call from an unknown number, but at least my phone doesn't ring.
Free speech.
You may not agree, but that is at least the reason.
There is no meaningfuk distinction between political, commerce, and religion, and the First Amendment specifically prohibits granting special legal status to religious activity.
CAN-SPAM laws dictate and prevent e-mail communications that are distinctly for marketing purposes.
Yeah, I'm not super trusting that sending my name and address to marketing companies isn't going to somehow result in that same information getting passed on to companies who don't give a shit.
It only protects from government censorship, and even then, situations deemed harmful (such as death threats against individuals) are exempt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_v._United_States_Post_Of...
The consideration of a "captive audience" is relevant to the topic under discussion, prior restraint (in general) as well.
That is "people" "censoring". This really isn't as complex or difficult as you're trying to make it be.
Ahem - "You have a duck in a pond with a frog, and an elderly couple is throwing bread... Who threw the bread?" Lol.
This is very important for the discussion of human-selected censorship.
B: Free speech.
A: Freedom of speech isn't a blank check for communication. It only protects from government censorship.
B: Um...yeah, "illegal".
Life will find a way.
I believe they are. I believe they are using hacked PBX's and they move from location to location, so they authorities have a hard time catching them.
I talked with a lawyer who litigated against a company that did this, back in the the early 00's, and he indicated they are criminal organizations setup purely for the purpose of defrauding the people that play along with their pitches. What I don't understand is why the trail of money is so hard to follow and prosecute. I think the barrier to catching them is just too high. I once tried to get AT&T to help me catch someone that repeatedly called me and wouldn't stop. The process they had in place was so onerous that after a few days in I just gave up. It's clear they do NOT want to help catch them.
In the domain of e-mail spam, we have a law against unsolicited business offers. So what do companies do? They send you their offer, write below something that amounts to "we do stuff like that; if you want to learn more and get our offer, contact us", and then add a disclaimer at the bottom: "this e-mail is NOT a business offer, but only a question whether or not the recipent is interested in receiving one; as so, it does not fall under the regulation #somenumber....".
1. A “Google This Number” button when an unknown call comes in, or something that pulls the equivalent “is this a scam?” information that I always seek out.
2. Rather than only having the option to Accept or Decline, I want a “silently wait until they hang up” option. I don’t want them to know I am declining their call (as that sends information that I exist and am a valid person); I want them to sit there and wait for me to pick up. Really what I want is for the phone to return my display to me; I don’t want my entire screen covered with the incoming-call message.
I think every Android phone I ever had featured this option (and probably every phone before that too). On Android phones I used, you have to press one of the volume buttons - it silences the incoming call without declining it.
I use that feature very often, not just on telemarketers.
That would be all of them.
No ISP wants to support spammers, but without Jetsons robots to individually vet every single customer, having to deal with some is inevitable.
Any other caller would hear a message prompting for a touch-tone code to ring our phone. ( Critical people knew this code in case they called from a phone outside of the white-list ). If the caller couldn't enter the touch-tone, they went right to voice mail.
The phone wouldn't ring, but the voice-mail indicator would show if they had taken the time to leave a message.
I ditched the land line about 17 years ago. I'm now wondering, in an age where land lines and email is obsolete, a cell phone number is also obsolete because of so many other available forms of communication.
With just a google voice (or similar) number it might be possible. I just need a connected device that I can use to receive those 2-factor access codes, but other than that I am down to ditch my cell phone at this point.
I've got a tablet, WiFi only. It's possible for that to be used for various messaging and email, where necessary (though email is also badly polluted, and a sufficient surveillance / profiling / security risk I've all but abandoned it as well). A 4GL hotspot extends the tablet onto wireless services when needed.
There's voice chat systems. I've used Google's, which is good, though I usually remain logged out of that, simply because I hugely dislike any distractions.
I'm leaning to the idea that Google, Skype, and Apple iChat simply bite the bullet and interconnect. At this point they could take down the existing POTS and Mobile service in another few years.
I've a fallback phone message service through an organisation I've been associated with for some time. Absolutely crucial messages can come through that, though I don't make it easy.
The result is an exceptionally high level of nondistraction.
That's one of the benefits of the POTS and Cell networks that the various IP-only services have yet to provide. I'm just curious as to if you do without, or have a deactivated cell phone or something like that that you use instead.
Free-riding off the target-rich environment of available phones is another option.
I've made precisely one true emergency request call in my life, and that was when employed in a safety-supporting role. I've used emergency phone services on other occasions, but in those cases, the situation was either not life-threatening, others had reported the event, or the involved party was already clearly dead.
And if I need a burner (trip/travel), I can pick one up / refill an otherwise unused phone for a few euros.
Wheneve a telemarketer comes through i punch ##66# abd that adds them to the blacklist ( in case they call back ) and sends them to the lenny script.
https://github.com/bshep/freepbx-Its_Lenny
Edited to add:
- The nerdvittles links did not work for me last time I tried, I got the sounds from the repo I forked
- The original repo was missing one sound which I found somewhere else ( dont have the source anymore )
- The module is unsigned due to ridiculous terms for module signing for FreePBX so if you use it you will get a scary warning, if you decide to sign it please let me know ;-)
* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mistergrou...
None of the apps solve the random VoIP callers. I would be perfectly happy with an app that outright blocked many VoIP providers.
Communications providers are the problem. Just as the USPS supports junk mail (it pays the bills), phone carriers support telemarketing (likewise). It's a case of perverse incentives and impunity, and the way to fix the problem is to hurt the carriers themselves.
Lowering prices often makes a thing worse. "Cost" means "what you've got to give up for something", and it can be inverted to "how badly do you want to accomplish some X?" In a large number of cases, mostly involving network technologies -- transport, communications, data, commercial and trade networks -- reducing costs means that those who provide little overall social benefit seek to use a service. Highway congestion, Usenet and email spam, social network trolling, telemarketers and robocalls, hazardous or unsafe products or materials transported or transacted. Unless you can impose very effective regulation or restriction mechanisms, those uses will dominate the system.
Phones are ripe for disruption. Both POTS and cellular networks. I've not carried a phone for months now, in part made possible due to specific circumstances, but it's wonderful. There's one use-case I miss: on-the-go access to transit information. The lack of access, filtering, blocking, voice-to-speech, and similar features on traditional services is inexcusable. The complicity of major carriers in global warrantless surveillance and data collection is another huge trust-buster.
We've had VOIP technologies for over two decades, and several large providers: Skype, Apple's iChat, Google's Hangouts (still a lousy name), and others. The biggest problem is that these don't interconnect. If they did, and bridged to legacy voice comms, they could take out the voice comms market in a few years. I suspect customers would flock to them with the offer of control over interruptions alone.
Coordinated campaigns against providers are powerful. A coordinated set of efforts to drop vendor service on account of phone spam might elicit a faster response from providers.
The combined effect of the last two elements also makes phone providers subject to the evaporative cooling effect. This is the inverse of network effects, and is why social networks often collapse so rapidly: defection by valued members and customers leaves lower-quality prospects and more noise on the channel, leading to ever more defections. Eventually it's just spammers and those who must retain service for regulatory or statuatory reasons who remain, and the system dies.
What options do I have? Numbers are not like IP blocks with cidrs registered somewhere. Who do I even complain to?
In any event, if you are able to determine that the number is actually in use by the caller, you would determine the responsible LEC via LRN lookup (this handles portability issues). DID blocks are tied to a particular LEC, but the DID is then handled for portability via LRN (so, this is how you determine which LEC the number got ported to).
I think far worse than this though is that my regular mailbox regularly gets filled up with junk mail that the US post offices delivers on behalf of it largest demographic - direct marketing(junk mailers) - almost none of it is actually addressed to me it always "our neighbor" or "resident", there is nothing you can do about this either, I have opted out from every possible consumer list. There is no way to tell the post office you would like opt out. This is the business they are in these days. It seems odd that there is federal agency generating this kind of waste and nuisance.
I have these frequently and I enjoy nothing more than attempting to keep them on as long as possible.
One new trend not mentioned in this article is the "soundboard" telemarketer, where the telemarketer is hired from a low-wage country, but can respond to you by pre-recorded responses. Here's a good way to deal with these people:
https://soundcloud.com/user-630893114-106605627/speaking-to-...
Telecom companies don't have any incentive to fix this.
Over here in Russia it's the SMS of all sorts, can't remember ever getting called like that.
But there the difference ends - the "no advertisements" lists tend not to work too, and asking a friend at the cellphone company to put your number into the hardware works too well - the messages with the bank codes stop getting through.
There is no middle ground, and the only salvation is to turn off the SMS sound.
(I've considered going mobile only, but the costs for VoIP.ms are miniscule enough that it doesn't really register anymore.)
I got tired of that and replaced it with Mr. Number, which seems to keep itself updated and allows me to ratchet up the blocking all the way to "everyone not on my contact list." That's not ideal, because I might miss calls from my credit card company, bank, etc, but the 2-3 scam calls I was getting every day were driving me crazy.