I registered on the US national do not call list a decade ago. I'm not sure how much it helped over the years, but in the last few years, the phone calls illegally ignoring that list are increasing like crazy. All the telemarketer strategies are changing too, to get around whatever blocking method you have. They're spoofing random local numbers now, so you can't use your phone's number blocking feature. They're hanging up and calling back later to avoid time wasting. They're offering fake do not call lists to confirm a human is listening. I think it's hopeless, my only strategy now is just decline any call not in my address book. If it's someone who needs me, they'll leave a voicemail.
Then the next step is for spammers to leave voicemails
"Hi! This is Rachel from card[DELETE]"
https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/beware-of-the-chin...
I'm not Chinese, so I'm definitely not being personally targeted by the scam. But apparently, there are enough Chinese speakers in NYC to make randomly calling people and leaving voicemails in Chinese a viable form of crime. (I've also had the same cell number for 17 years, so I know it hasn't been recently owned by a Chinese person.)
As an individual, getting critical mass is beyond most of our energy levels, but it helps to talk about it, with your friends and family, on HN, etc.
You could call your telco and complain about as many spam calls as possible. Their support time is expensive.
You could request better spam blocking services. I'm on Verizon and they offer blacklisting for a fee. This is completely ineffective now, so a total waste of money. Cancel your account and switch to another provider, cite the phone spam and their lackluster service as the reason.
Maybe things could get better if there was a new telco, or if one of them broke ranks, and offered great spam protection. Not holding my breath, the spammy business accounts are probably worth more money.
What sucks is it takes a lot of energy to fight this no matter what.
You might be able to do a trace origin on all incoming calls, but I don't know how far that gets to figure out who the spammer is.
Also the telcos will not violate any rules by allowing consumers to opt into a service that blocks calls originating from companies reported as spammy by a large number of other consumers.
It is absolutely within their power to give consumers some control and choice about receiving spammy phone calls. The reason they are choosing not to give consumers this choice is because it would effectively eliminate their income from phone advertising, the public by and large does not want unsolicited phone calls.
Are you sure about that? I thought that the carriers being unable to discriminate between incoming phone calls, for whatever reason, was the whole point of common carrier status. I'm pretty sure that there's a business opportunity for a cell carrier that could offer spam filtering as a selling point and if it's a small mobile only carrier there wouldn't be any phone advertising that they'd be giving up by doing that.
Pretty sure, but by no means certain, I'm not a lawyer and I don't know all the laws. Common carrier status does mean that FCC regulations must be followed by companies placing phone calls. Since they are already illegally ignoring the US Do Not Call registry and spoofing phone numbers, there's plenty of room for enforcement of the existing regulations.
Telcos could also advocate for stronger regulation. They don't now and they won't in the future, but that is in their power.
Telcos could provide an opt-in system for sending & receiving calls that are verified to be from legit businesses that adhere to the do not call registry, actually stop calling people when asked, and generally aren't shady. They could provide the consumer with more information, without having to block any calls or violate common carrier rules.
They definitely have the power to try, and they definitely have a financial incentive not to. They are choosing to pretend like their hands are tied.
> I'm pretty sure that there's a business opportunity for a cell carrier that could offer spam filtering as a selling point and if it's a small mobile only carrier there wouldn't be any phone advertising that they'd be giving up by doing that.
Yeah agreed, I hope someone comes along and tries!
AT&T's lobbyists include Joan Marsh and Robert Quinn, and a few others:
Wayne Watts, Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel, James W. Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President—External and Legislative Affairs, Robert Quinn, Jr., Senior Vice President—Federal Regulatory, David Lawson, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Hank Hultquist, Vice President—Federal Regulatory, Michael Paradise, Vice President—Global IP Operations and Infrastructure Services, and Gary Phillips, General Attorney and Associate General Counsel, of AT&T; and Richard Rosen and Maureen Jeffreys, of Arnold & Porter LLP.
https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/60001116224.pdf
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342942A1.p...
https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1011263448484/Status%20ATT%20ex...
My phone is in do not disturb mode, if i expect a call (2fa) i turn it off temporarily. They havent got around it yet. I can whitelist saved contacts. Check missed calls with Hiya or equiv.
I've gotten about a half dozen calls this week where the spoofed caller ID shows that they are in my address book. One of them was ostensibly from my wife. I figure they've gotten ahold of my social graph, associated phone numbers with some of my friends, and are targeting their spoofing to me.
That's what I do, expect if they leave a voice mail I almost know 100% it's a recruiter or a scammer because my family and friends don't live in the 1990s. Everyone else I want to be contacted by is either in my contacts or has organized a specific time to call me via email or some other means first.
The bot will waste the telemarketers time, which is the most expensive thing that these companies are paying for. Do this enough times and the calls drop off rapidly.
I'm assuming the companies running these illegal calling scam operations, don't share a DO NOT CALL list.
I could see this working against each company individually. So if its only one bad actor that has your phone number, that would work.
Even the ones that have options to hit '2' and add yourself to the do not call list are not only not adding you to any do not call list, they are confirming there's a human listening and increasing the call frequency. I just had that call 5 minutes ago, after attempting to opt-in to their do not call list twice this week.
I used to waste their time when I could, but now I just have to let it go to voicemail.
The best call I had was when they called at 9:30pm... saying I won a trip, and I just needed to give them my cc so they can verify I was 18+.
I talked to them like I was interested, and when they asked for my cc I told them i had to go find it quick.
I put the phone down and watched an episode of South Park and forgot they were on the line yet.
I get back and pick up the phone and tell them I just found the card. I start reading the information off of it, but using the wrong name, and numbers, etc.
He was so excited about it that he kept telling me about all the fun I was going to have. Then he got a sad tone and said the card was rejected. I acted surprised and asked him to read back to me what he had since I had no idea what I gave him.
It got rejected another time, so he suggests we call the number on the back to do a three way call with my cc company to figure out what is going on.
I give him an 800 number that my cousin and I found by accident when we were like 12. I read him a phone sex number. He started to dial it and all of a sudden I heard a recording of some lady moaning. He immediately hung up and never called again.
I've become irrationally irritable because of these calls. I have started subconsciously turning off my ringer, causing me to miss actual important calls. Jolly Roger may be my saving grace.
I don't know why telemarketers decided this would be a good strategy to increase conversions, but it certainly makes things easier for me.
I could tell instantly, without picking up the phone, if I knew that person.
Wish my current phone had that.
Many of these services will only call "hot" numbers - numbers that pick up/give some interaction. Hitting "decline call" actually gives them an indication the line is hot, since the call went to VM earlier than if it had timed out, and will lead to more calls.
So I let the calls ring until the other side ends the call.
Having the spam call ringing is annoying though, so I've taken to leaving my phone in airplane mode if I'm not expecting a call.
(Most people communicate via email or Signal with me anyways)
In my experience if you leave your phone in airplane mode when not expecting calls for a week or so, it'll drastically cut down on the robocalls.
1) Go to https://www.donotcall.gov/ and register in the National Do Not Call Registry
2) Wait 31 day (it takes some time to propagate this information to callers)
3) Start reporting unwanted calls via link above
I have not received a single telemarketer call over a year since I started doing that.
FTC is also very good at dealing with collection agency calls if you are not the person they are trying to reach. I received personal apologies from ERC after filing complaint through FTC website.
https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM11477...
2. Callers you don't recognize can leave a message if they want to talk to you.
3. If you do end up in a call with a spammer, then work your way into the conversation to get a real business name out of them. While you are on the phone, you can press them to help you find their business on the web. You may even find a BBB rating on them and inform the caller that the BBB rating is pretty bad. Or you can ask them for a callback number (which they probably won't give) and you will call them back to continue the call. All of these questions should prevent them from calling you again and if you are lucky you have a business name you can further report on the web as a spamming company.
There are landline phones with blocklists of up to 1,000 numbers. None seem to offer the more useful option of whitelisting. (Or whitelist / blacklist / greylist.)
I've been looking into small-office / SOHO PBX or VOIP options which might afford solutions. Asterix and/or Twilio that I'm aware.
Another option is to ditch both POTS and traditional mobile services for ... well, just what tech-based messaging? I'd prefer no vendor lock-in, but the options seem decidedly minimal.
I think we're in the final decade of traditional / offshoot voice comms. Ironically, it's falling costs which are largely to blame. Make this too cheap, and every asset on the planet can beat a path to yor door. Or phone / voicemail / messaging system.
________________________________
Notes:
1. The other reasons: tracking, surveillance, privacy, cost, and always-on stress.
I used to carry a secondary phone that I would use for non-life-critical contacts, but have since stopped carrying that phone, although I still keep basic service active on it.
Yesterday my doctor called because they had to reschedule an appointment. Would I have to have remembered to whitelist them? What if they have multiple outgoing numbers?
What about all the other businesses I interact with? The computer repair place saying my laptop is ready to pick up? The cable technician calling to let me know that he'll be 30 min late? The hotel I made reservations with calling to confirm?
It's completely different for unsolicited calls - you don't have any business with them and they don't provide you any service.
Having severe fines for the latter should work just fine: they call you, you report them, they receive a fine that put them out of business.
It seems to work just fine in Europe so should be doable in US as well.
Imagine the "Do Not Call list" but with an angle that everyone are on that list (so no company can call you). You make an appointment with dentist - they ask you for your number and they call you to reschedule, you also provide the phone to the company/technician to install your cable.
It feels cleaner
There are apps like Extreme Call Blocker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.greythinke...) which you can set up to send everything not in your contact list straight to voicemail.
Also you could use something like Should I Answer (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mistergrou...) which will show you if a caller is spammy based on a huge database of crowd-sourced ratings.
Just add a screen, like a voicemail, that requires an action be taken to get through to speak to you. Your friend with a new phone number calls, they get a message saying, "Stay on the line one second. If you want to speak to me, hit 445." If they take the action, they proceed to connect the call as normal. Otherwise, you don't even know there was a call.
Google Voice already has something like this. But it's too annoying to switch over everything to that, plus I don't trust Google to keep features around and can't use them for something that essential.
I've registered with Do Not Call and I don't answer calls beginning with my 6 digits. The next steps would take too much effort.
I don't like accepting something I find repellent, but I have other priorities and I'd rather happily work on them than angrily be distracted.
Meanwhile, I'm working on cutting my incoming junk paper mail. I downloaded PaperKarma, but it doesn't work (it takes pictures but fails to upload them). I emailed them two bug reports but no response. Does anyone know what I can do instead?
Spoofing caller ID simply should not be possible, considering the very small number of telcos that completely control network authentication, access, billing and routing.
Just send everything not in your contacts to voicemail. The PSTN will be dead in less than a decade anyway. Like email, its time of utility has passed, ruined by spammers and marketers.
This is, admittedly, extreme but I already have an aversion to using the phone and can manage just fine (99% of the time) with email.
For me, an unwanted call isn't just inconvenient for the duration of the call but for quite a long period afterwards because my train of thought has been interrupted and I can't just pick up where I left off.
Most spam calls that I get are using local number spoofing. I have an area code from where I grew up, but live in a completely different state now. I can recognize the spam numbers immediately: if it's from the area code where I grew up, and it's not in my contacts, it's spam. Everything else I let through.
Disclaimer: it's very sketchy because it takes your contact list and uses it for other users in the reverse lookup feature. Which is a neat feature, you get FB picture and name of the caller on each call, but still a privacy concern.
People say this just confirms you are a real person, but I'm pretty sure they haven't tried it successfully for months the way I have. I still get calls of course, but it's a couple a week and not from the same parties over and over and over.
what is that?
I sometimes go weeks without a scam call, but I also sometimes get 3 or 4 in a week.
Anyone of importance that I talk to is already on my contact list which will ring through and anyone else that is really trying to get a hold of me for a legitimate reason will leave a voice mail.
Each one requires a detailed form to fill out on the FCC site which I send off into the oblivion only to have the call volume go unchanged (or increase). Sorry, tragedy of the commons and all, but it's just not worth it to me to take the time to do this.
Relevant quote from FCC Chairman Pai: “Which is the ultimate solution, I think, to this problem, which is to find a call authentication standard.”
And there’s no timeline when that’ll happen. So buckle in, we’ll be here a while.
Edit: Ok, a couple have :)
I decide as I were giving a junk email or my real email out. Google voice is great because it looks real, it can do SMS codes and I can stop using it when I want to.
My phone bill dropped compared to comcast and I have eliminated spam calls.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/at-t-call-protect/id11816325...