Hacker News Reader

Comment by AimForTheBushes | Hacker News Reader

At this point, if it's a phone number not in my contacts I'm letting it go to voicemail. The problem is that I'm getting desensitized to voicemails. After hearing "...Blue cross, Aetna, blah blah" health insurance spam voicemails 5x a day I guess anyone would just start deleting them without checking. It's infuriating.

Also, hope your father is doing alright!

View on HN

I also let non-contacts go to voicemail, but my experience is different — I find that almost no unsolicited calls leave voicemails. Also, I use the Google Voice transcription, which is at least good enough to let me know if it's interesting or spam. Sometimes even good enough I don't need to listen to the recording.

If they had to press a key, they'd not leave any, ever. As of right now, the voicemails are the robospiel with the first 30 seconds cut off. They start the tape the moment your voicemail picks up, and by the time it gets to the beep, their message is already half through.

I find the same. <transcript not available> => mark as spam. Google Fi?

That’s exactly the ones I’ve been getting for over a year, sometimes 4+ times per day! Once I answered and told the guy I reported them to the FCC and he changed from energetically polite to boiler room sinister and he told me,

“I hope your entire family gets cancer and dies.”

It’s difficult to screen them before they vary the area code so much. Seems like my report through the FCC form of several numbers used should give the feds teeth to track them down since even if they’re using an API like Twilio, I’d expect a carrier would be required by regulators to track all number usage back to somebody.

I also stopped really checking voicemails... I stopped checking voicemails, as only people who call and leave voicemail are not the people who I communicate everyday. People in my life know to text/chat/email if they need to get through to me right away. And I do the same. I never leave voicemail in people's inboxes...

Exactly. I got 7 spam calls today. Each one left a voicemail. I can't keep up with that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com