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Comment by blakejustblake | Hacker News Reader

I would not suggest people try to waste scammers time, or do anything but hang up on them. A lot of calls that just hang up on you are putting out the feelers for phone numbers that have humans answering on the other line so that they know that's a viable target for attempting to scam. Showing any sign that your phone number belongs to an actual human just ups the chances that you're going to get an increased amount of phone spam, regardless of if you got the chance to waste someone's time or not. Also, people should be wary of saying anything at all the these suspicious phone calls, some of them try to get recordings of you saying some key words to make it easier to steal your identity. For instance, if someone asks if you are who you are by name and you say yes, then they've got decent confirmation that they've got a recording of a particular person saying "yes" which can be used against you in stealing your identity or credit card fraud.

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To avoid "yes" recordings, I answer the phone with "<indistinct garble> speaking!" When I hear a human I adopt a creaky old-person voice. This old person tends to give their credit card information slowly, and remember that they're using the wrong card after about 14 digits.

Eventually I change back and tell the person that they're working for a fraudulent business and should worry about whether they're going to get paid, and should strongly consider getting a new job.

> This old person tends to give their credit card information slowly, and remember that they're using the wrong card after about 14 digits.

Give the full number and an expired date and go "oh.. this is my old card... I'm sorry... give me a moment, I need to look for my new one1'

> A lot of calls that just hang up on you are putting out the feelers for phone numbers that have humans answering on the other line so that they know that's a viable target for attempting to scam.

I also thought that might be the case but have performed the comparison between a number which never answers them and a number which always answers them. Several years now of experience suggests otherwise: they get the same number of spam calls.

> that they've got a recording of a particular person saying "yes"

Again, this sounds highly speculative. Do you have any citation for it? It isn't like any bank or service is comparing your voice. And if all they needed was a yes, unfortunately, there are too many ways of getting a yes from someone.

Obviously when talking to any of these scammers my 'identity' is entirely fictional.

When they used to be more responsive I had a lot of fun trying to convince them that my routing number was "1" and that my account number was "1"... Or that my name was some absurd 40 character compound name like "Jim Klenersmithvelazquezouishawexlereconomou". A friend once kept a caller from "windows" on the line for an enormous amount of time while they "restored" their system via a recovery disk after it "crashed" several times attempting to "install" their malware.

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