Ask HN: Is it just me, or are fake callers getting out of control? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it just me, or are fake callers getting out of control?

I am getting at least 5 fake phone calls from random numbers daily.

Sometimes they call and hangup after half a ring.

Sometimes it rings a few times and I pick up and it's some bot on the other end of the line who speaks perfect english and just keeps asking "Hello... hello...? Are you there...? Hello?" and then hangs up.

When I order a bunch of domain names (and my phone number inevitably gets out into the whois database scrapers) I get at least 10-20 calls from india asking if I need website development on my domain that has no content up on it.

Is it just me, or are fake callers getting out of control in recent months?

It's getting to the point that I am getting more fake calls than real ones, and I am seriously reconsidering even having a phone number.

View on HN

Just to give you all an additional data point, I am based in Europe. I do have business contacts and give out my number freely (on resumes, etc.) I think I've gotten 1 robot call in the past 5 years (my thought was - I knew this would happen sooner or later! I know it's a huge problem! But it didn't happen again.)

I use this phone every day and it's always on. So: if you don't want robot calls, get an international number in Europe.

People who need to contact you can pay the international surcharge.

Logical, but completely impractical suggestion.

I live in the US, am from Europe, and I would never switch to a EU number just to avoid robocallers. It would heavily damage my ability to connect with US people, for work or leisure.

I got a job at an U.S. company and so I now have a T-Mobile phone as well as my Uruguayan phone.

I've never gotten a robocall on my Uruguayan phone and half the world must have it on their database (Spammy SMS, on the other hand, are a problem).

OTOH, my U.S. phone gets several calls a day, and I've seldom given it out. Most are marked "Scam Likely" by T-Mobile. But I've never gotten a spammy SMS.

A surprising cultural shock, to be sure.

I simply don't answer the U.S. phone anymore.

I agree. It’s out of control. There is not much you can do that is effective. Some people have had success with various black list apps for mobile phones.

My favorite consequence of these phone calls is the rise of the “its Lenny” bot (more than once discussed on HN) https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/about

The page you linked is dead, but /r/itslenny is a real sub and it's glorious. Thanks for that tip!

Hmm I just checked. That link still works for me. Either way I’m glad you liked it.

I no longer pick up the phone unless the caller is in my address book. But the ringing is still distracting.

iOS lets you suppress calls from all but contacts, but to do that you have to put your phone in “do not disturb” mode, which also suppresses all other notifications. So that’s a non-starter.

Any other ways to shut them up?

I really want a tick box and auto sends a caller to voice mail if you're not in my contacts. That would really help me.

No kidding. Weirdly, Verizon sometimes does that to me with legit calls anyway, even with perfect reception. Infuriating.

For the last 7 years I have had a callcentric account. I added telemarketer block to my calls, then callers have to press a number to get through to you which eliminates robocalls. You can assign friends into buckets which get different treatment such as dialing your cell number.

Yes overall I think numbers are up. What I find confusing is that people are allowed to phreak clid. I understand why hiding clid might be needed but randomly lying about it? What trip were the telcos on, allowing that?

My guess would be that it has something to do with corporate phone systems. In some cases they want all incoming calls to the front desk or 800 number regardless of the outgoing number - and it’s not all that uncommon for each desk in an office to have an actual individual number instead of an extension. So that outgoing calls all have the front desk as caller ID, but individual employees can choose to give out their direct number to vendors or important clients or whoever.

Not that that justifies allowing the system to be abused like this.

At the beginning of this year, I had a lot of fake calls. What helped was blocking the numbers when I discovered it was a fake. They tried several days while they were blocked and it stopped. Then they tried a new number and I blocked them again. After a few weeks, they stopped calling and they haven't done it since then. If you don't want to answer the calls where you don't know the number, just reject the call, google the number and have a look at the owner or if someone says it's a fake. If it's a real person you can call back.

90% of my calls are spam. 10% are my mom. I use privacy protection (Contact Privacy Inc.) when registering domains but still get robocalls from numbers that are spoofed to look like mine (same area code and first three digits). One thing that seems to have helped reduce the incoming robocall volume is that I turned on Google Voice's call screening, which I think requires the caller to record their name before putting the call through.

Take a look at my project that I wrote exactly for this: https://phone.qnzl.co

The idea is to stop using your real number for things and use a number that gives control of who can ring the number (among a few other features)

Looking for feedback as well. :)

(And yes, I concur. Robo-calls are terrible and I hate them)

I started leaving my phone in airplane mode when not expecting a call, and that drastically reduced them. My friends all use Signal (which can use wifi) so I can go a week or more without turning on my cell. These bots mark people who don't pick up as bad prospects, so doing this will usually get you a couple months of peace.

My boss started having his number get used as a spoofed number, so he was getting calls, voicemail and texts from other people asking why he was calling them. He was getting hundreds of calls a day when it started. His voicemail box was full. The carrier said wait it out or change your number. After about a week it has died down.

Definitely a growing problem > https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/florida-m...

Concur. >50% of incoming calls to my mobile phone are robocalls. Many of are sourced from numbers in the same exchange, aka (nnn) XXX-nnnn. After the first few months I started ignoring any number I didn't recognize.

Thankfully my carrier flags many calls with "Probable Spam" or similar messages.

I think it's best to just ignore them. Sometimes I also look up the numbers on Google or some sites like http://whycall.me and block their numbers. It would save a lot of our time rather than talking to them.

I’m not sure this is new. Additionally, I get a spammy text message every day or at least every other and have been for the past few years. Even if the recorded message (either phone or SMS) is the same, they always use different numbers so number blocking doesn’t work.

I qualify these calls as an attack. The economic toll of decreased phone system reliability cannot be allowed to continue.

The parties responsible must be destroyed... economically if possible, physically if necessary.

Yeah, I had the same question lately, since I think about a month ago, there are a lot, 5 a day seems like it.

It's very annoying and distracting. Proper solution I think would be appreciated.

It’s worse if you’re older. My parents get 30-40 calls a day.

Namecheap offers free whois guard. So use that.

Or burner phone and po box address for the whois.

yes, 3-5 per day I get but less because I add each number via carrier blocklist. don't ever trust an app to do this, most of them sell your data anyway.

I'm getting a lot of robo calls with a foreign language speaker. Not sure what it is exactly, but it happens every day now.

Ideally there would be a way to setup a filter and whitelist. Some prompt and captcha for first time callers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com