Ask HN: How do you deal with phone scams? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with phone scams?

5 pointsriyakhanna19837 comments

A number of my close friends and relatives have fallen victim to phone scams. Either they received a scam call or reached out to a fake number listed on Google. What are some ways to avoid such scams? It'd be very helpful if you could share your experience and approaches you have explored to block/detect fake numbers. EDIT: Failed to garner enough response last time, I'm posting this question again.

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My personal approach is simple, but blunt. I don't answer the phone unless A. I recognize the number, and B. it's somebody with a real good reason to be calling, like my mom, or my sister.

Otherwise I either let it go to voice mail (which is nearly always full, so good luck leaving me a message, which I might or might not check within a month or two), or use the Google call screening service.

I'm wondering if its possible to eliminate phone number altogether, at least with your friends/relatives -- ask them to use FaceTime or WhatsApp for calls.

Mobile phone: If I don't know the number, they go to a voicemail-to-text service. I get to read the text and choose whether or not to call them back.

Land-Line: Answering machine contains just 'This line not active' set of tones plus a terse 'Leave a Message' audio. The robo-callers hear the tones and hang up. The humans hear the 'Leave a Message' and have to choose between hanging up immediately or leaving a message. I get to choose whether I feel like calling them back.

The best you can do is educate people and let them make their own mistakes. Show them funny youtube videos of people being scammed, maybe they will remember those. Find some scam meme's perhaps. I recently saw a video of a police captain talking to a phone scammer, was great.

Are you thinking of this one, by chance? https://youtu.be/Hsq0IYrOsrk

Yes, that was it.

All my phone numbers go through my Asterisk server. If they are telemarketers, I send them to my bot:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYyYngFvpbNqsAhpAI6DoeA

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