Hacker News Reader

Comment by rco8786 | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

View on HN

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

I've had to do the same. I sometimes get three calls and voicemails per day about business loans. I'm pretty sure they got my number by scraping the LLC filings for my state :\.

I wish I would of used a Google Voice number rather than my cell.

One business that I own has "Lab" in its name. It gets sales calls for lab equipment from Asia at least once/week. It's a data lab, not a chemistry lab... these sales reps haven't done 1 second of research before calling. I assume they're scraping the names from somewhere too, or someone is scraping it and selling them a list.

One approach is to get a new cell number and port your existing cell number to Google Voice (GV). You can then forward calls from the latter to the former, using GV blocking and spam filtering to kill off the noise.

I tried this once. Now I have debt collectors after me because of my numbers previous owner.

If you have GVoice, you can change your forwarding number easily.

Yep, I know if a number has the same first six digits as mine there's a solid 95% probability it's spam. On rare occasions I'll get a text from a number in my area code with some variation of, "Do I know you?" so clearly other people are getting calls spoofed as my number as well.

I've also been getting lots of "same first six digits" spam, but yesterday I saw a new variation: only the first five digits were the same.

It is interesting half the calls I bother to answer, are just instantly disconnected. Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. It is funny to get a live person and mess with them though..."oh which credit card are you referring to"

I kept one agent on the line for a few minutes and was eventually called some very insulting swear words. If I recall correctly I was called a "bitchass mother fucker"

> Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me.

I think it might be something silly like confirming the number has a person on the other end. For selling to other spammers. Not sure why they can't do both at once though, so maybe I'm off.

They call more people than they have available to answer the phone at the other side. Normally, many phones won't answer. When more phones answer, they just hang on the ones they can't handle.

And, obviously, they can save a bit by always having more phones answer than they can handle. This way their employees don't waste any time waiting for a call, instead it's your time that is wasted, what costs them nothing.

And they can save your number to call back later.

Pretty sure that is the reason. It's the phone equivalent of verifying an email. They ping, you pong, it goes on a list of verified numbers.

It isn't, though. Getting a ringing response is enough to validate a number, and someone who isn't making the effort to check contact lists against do-not-call registries won't be making the effort to track numbers that do not answer, either. In any case, RTNR to such people simply means that there's no-one to answer right now and is no reason to discard a number.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 for what's actually happening.

Reminds me of "scam baiting" which is becoming a popular live stream opportunity.

I occasionally watch this guy who calls tech-support scammers or IRS scammers and attempts to waste as much of their time as possible. He will often impersonate an old lady using a voice modulator (or he'll implement other personalities) to make his performance more realistic. It can be quite entertaining.

https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga

They're overbooking their calls. Many people are dialed up simultaneously, but there's not enough people to service everyone at all times. As you answer the call, everyone is busy servicing other people that also answered - your call gets hung up.

Yeah, luckily for me my area code for my phone is from where I grew up, and I don’t know anyone who still lives there. That means when I see my own area code in the caller, I know to ignore it because it is spam.

Most of the calls are about getting my ‘business listed with google’

Me too. You don't pay to hide your whois data once and you pay in robocalls for the rest of eternity.

Same exact thing for me. I know three people with the same area code as my number: my wife, brother, and step mother. Their numbers are all in my phone. Any other number is spam and I ignore it. I haven't been wrong yet either.

Yes, amazed at how many local numbers are spam. I get three a lot:

1. Vacation Rewards Center - selling cruises I think

2. Business line of credit - their phrasing make it sound like I called them ("Hey, just getting back to you about that $15k line of credit)

3. Tax scare tactics, trying to settle debt or penalties

I didn't know who feel for this stuff until I talked to an older gentleman who said he got these calls and it took him a long time and encouragement from his friends to know it was a scam.

"this call is in reference to your credit account...there are no current problems with your account, please press 1 to be connected to an operator that can share an amazing opportunity for you $something"

I've never clicked '1', and never felt I've missed out, but I've gotten that same call from local numbers in my same block maybe 50 times already this year.

I always punch 1. I feel its my civic duty to waste 10 minutes of their time (usually while speaking in my best Monty Python accents).

The interesting thing is that I usually only get a person 1/2 the time. The system just glitches to hangup the rest of the time.

I started doing the same a few weeks ago. It could be a coincidence but the number of calls seems to decrease. Not that I was getting a lot but now I go for many days without any at all. I just get to the life person and put the phone on mute. As far as my disruption goes it's about the same but I imagine the scammer's cost raises manyfold: they pay a lot more for the time on the line and their operators get disrupted on top of that. If I get a call to last a minute vs 3 seconds it takes to hang up it already makes my number an order of magnitude more expensive to call vs. a number that hangs up/does not answer.

It's not a glitch. This sort of system (which will be some form of predictive dialler) relies upon there being far more in-progress calls than human agents. Sometimes, therefore, there's no available agent to connect a person to. This nature of such systems is why some countries regulate them.

I get these things multiple times per day.

I received a call from a very angry lady in my local exchange who was convinced I was calling her all of the time. I tried to explain number spoofing to her, but not sure she got it. In any case, we've mutually blocked each other now.

I get voice mails (calls I don't recognize and don't pick up, but in area code calls) in Chinese about once a week --weird.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important.

Any thoughts on this?

After ~2 years of this strategy I've missed 0 important calls, the important ones always leave a voicemail.

Me too. The vast majority of my spam calls are on the local exchange for my phone's native number. I use Google Voice on a Pixel2, so nobody should even be using the native number. I've often wished for a way to either:

Block any call for the native, non Google Voice number or Block any call claiming to originate from any number in the native number's local prefix. Eg, 604-233-

I haven't found a call blocker that can do this, but it has been a while since I looked.

For those on iOS, you can block wildcard number ranges like this with Number Shield[0].

I have been receiving alot of these spoofed neighbor number calls, and this app saves me a lot of time and stress. You can also prevent it from blocking contacts that fall into your blocked number range.

0: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/number-shield/id1319082167?m...

Most of the junk calls to my cell phone follow this formula. There doesn't seem to be anything to block the whole exchange. I'd be happy to do it. I don't actually live in the same city as my cell number so the odds that I'd be blocking someone who needed to reach me is pretty small.

Hiya on android will allow you to block numbers that start with a prefix, so you could block all calls that start with 604-233 604-232 and 604-234

But will it allow me to block all calls from 604-232 and 604-234 that are not in my contacts? Because I've noticed a similar trend where I get calls from numbers that begin with the same 6 numbers as my phone number.. but I have friends and family with phone numbers similar to mine and I don't want them blocked. Just ones not in my contacts list.

Edit: I read a review of Hiya and it sounds like they're still missing what we're all looking for: "Two things are missing. First, the ability to block all calls not in contacts. I have to download a separate app for that. Second, on inbound calls from the same area code (i.e., spoofed numbers) it does not pre-screen the call."

Do it.

I have my phone in a permanent "Do Not Disturb" mode with a few break-through rules for "favorite" contacts (not even all contacts). Missed important calls: 0. If someone's calling and doesn't leave the voicemail, then it's not important.

Set default ring tone to silence. Create separate ring tones for people in a contact list or people for whom you must pick up a phone.

I have been using this for 3 years. No issues at all.

I'm purely whitelist at this point. If I get a call and it's not from a contact I know, I send it straight to voicemail. Probably less than 10% of my phone calls are legitimate. The rest (2-3 calls a day) are vacation timeshare spam, "IRS" spam, solar panel spam, and some Chinese spam that I can't understand because I don't speak Mandarin.

Anyone who's important (including kid's school) is in my contact list, so I'm confident that I'm not missing anything important. And in the off chance it is important but not in my white list they will leave a message.

I get so many robocalls I don't even bother with call notifications anymore. If they're a friend, they'll probably text instead. If it's a business matter, they'll leave a message.

Hiya on android will block calls from known spam numbers, or you can set it to allow the calls but flag them as known spam or telemarketers. It also supports blocking calls based on what the number starts with. So if you have a non local number, and spammers are spoofing a local number it is easy to block them without missing important calls. Lastly, how many calls do you get that are important, but not important enough that they would leave a voicemail?

T-Mobile will sometimes display "Scam Likely" for me in place of the phone number. It's way to conservative though. It would be nice to have a way to report scam phone numbers back. Kinda like Apple's "was this voicemail translation helpful" in voicemail. I'm sure this would weed out scammers phone numbers pretty fast. Although, once a number is flagged its gone for good and phone numbers need to be recyclable.

You should be able to report these numbers using T-Mobile Name ID app. https://explore.t-mobile.com/nameid?icid=WMM_TM_Q317NAMEID_2...

> and phone numbers need to be recyclable.

Why?

Finite supply.

I haven't answered an unknown number in well over a decade. My voicemail message has for at least that long been along the lines of "I probably chose not to answer you, especially if your number is withheld or not known to me. Leave a message, or better yet text/email me". I don't recall ever missing something important.

I use Google Voice.

I send all calls that block the caller ID automatically to voicemail.

If I get repeated spam voicemails from the same number, I manually add it to a contact called “Block”. The next time they call they get a special voicemail message I recorded telling them the number is no longer in service.

This system has worked well for years.

I'd suggest against it. There are important calls that can come in from true unknown sources, people who just legitimately need to contact you out of the blue, especially officials (police, utility companies, etc...). If you feel like ignoring those, there's also the possibility that a contact of yours needs to contact you in an emergency can can't use their normal phone. As an example, assuming you're married, maybe your spouse gets into an accident and calls to you for help from a nearby house?

This happens less often than being killed by lightning, which you do not take proactive measures against.

People can leave a message. Officials can leave a message. When do you ever need to answer a call from a official? 911 is for getting instant help in emergencies. No one needs you to answer your personal phone immediately.

I tend to agree. It's probably in part that I can remember when someone reaching you required you to be at home. I can even remember before answering machines :-) Now, I don't make myself arbitrarily hard to reach. But I also don't buy into the idea that it's unthinkable to not be reachable 24 hours a day.

I do take protective measures against being hit by lightning. I don't take shelter under trees during a lightning storm - I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.

> I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.

On a serious note, all buildings are different so you can't really do this reliably as it is unlikely you will locate the lightning rod before it is too late to course correct.

So please tell me you are joking :)

You can always just accept the call and wait for the other party to speak. If it's a machine-assisted call, silence doesn't trigger the answer detector, and it hangs up after a few seconds, possibly also marking your number as no-contact. A human caller will eventually ask if anyone is listening.

They called you, after all. They can just say what they wanted to say whether you acknowledge them or not.

They can (and do) leave a voicemail.

I could see sending all non-contact calls to voicemail the first time, and letting them ring if they call again.

Anything more restricted would make you unavailable if, say, the police called because a family member was in a crash. I will put up with some inconvenience to be available in rare emergencies.

If you get a voice mail from the police, you can listen to the voice mail and respond.

Yes, that was referring to the idea of going further than sending to voicemail.

I've considered it. Important-but-not-emergency calls would theoretically go to voicemail where they can leave a message. I would worry about missing calls that really are emergencies though. This is why I haven't done such a thing.

Perhaps there would be an override if they kept calling back.

What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder?

Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?

> What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder?

If I'm available I don't want to wait to find out a family member was in an accident or something.

> Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?

No, because I'm in the shower for less than 10 minutes. If some kind of emergency unfortunately happens while I'm in the shower then I guess I'll just have to find out after my shower. I can live with that.

You can do it on an iPhone at least using Do Not Disturb. I've resorted to doing that when I travel overseas because otherwise I get woken up in the middle of the night. I don't really like doing it for the reason you say but I really don't have a choice.

I'm seeing residential POTS equipment now listing up to 1,000 number blocklists.

None I've yet found clearly advertise a whitelisting feature, though that's obviously the direction to roll.

I'm also trying to see if Asterisk might be applicable here.

We tried that in the UK with BT's service but it was blocking to may calls and as one of the household was on a transplant list that was some what suboptimal.

Please do - but how would you go about doing that?

It's actually wrecking the utility of the telephone.

I agree. I receive at least one a day. It's more frequent than spam mail. I'm sure there is a viable business venture to basically make "spam assassin" for telecom. I've gotten to the point where I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange that isn't returning one of my calls, because for the past 8 months 90% have been scam calls.

> "spam assassin" for telecom.

https://www.asterisk.org/

> I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange

Modern telecom scammers spoof your local exchange when they call you.

I've found some apps/services that do this, but I don't think I should have to pay because the phone companies are sacks of shit. So I'm holding out hoping someone (the FCC, my service provider, or the robocaller's service provider) will do something about it.

Wait at least 3-7 years until the pro-freedom-to-pursue-life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-property FCC & FTC are out of power.

Not me. I always put my fiends phone number into the “win a car” boxes at street fairs. I never get calls.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com