Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jaygles | Hacker News Reader

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail.

View on HN

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail.

I don't do either, because the spam calls I get are in a language I don't speak, and my voicemail is full of messages in languages I don't speak.

I have to resort to "if it's important, someone will e-mail me or send a letter," which ten years ago used to be the biggest vector for unwanted contact.

You aren't getting the robot voicemails yet? I mean sure I can ignore those too - but it's that much more annoying since I now have to filter through my voicemails to see if anyone left a message that actually matters.

I'd guess about 1/3 of robocallers are leaving me voicemails now. I also very recently started getting obvious phishing attempts via SMS.

For some reason that happens very rarely for me so its not that big of a chore to listen to all the voicemails I receive.

About 1/2 of all my voicemails are in Mandarin.

This is why I just don't listen to voicemail. There is no reason to leave a voicemail, just send a text.

Yeah that's going to screw you over at some point, I presume.

I had the California DMV try to reach out to be about some form inconsistencies and they only contacted me by phone and voicemail. (To their credit they left me 3 voicemails through a very busy day I had.)

There was no other way they were going to contact me before letting my car registration expire.

Same thing just happened to me just this week, I wasn't checking voicemails because I get too many spam calls / spam messages and I almost got withdrawn from Graduate School because of it -- (I needed to verify a term break and since I never did, automatic withdraw initiated.)

Sorted it out, but barely. Very frustrating to have that sort of outcome from the root cause of phone spammers.

My cell provider could disable voicemail, after I asked them nicely. That way people don’t even get the impression they’ve left me a message.

I always answer the call and then joyfully "block/report spam" the number in the Android dialer. Being able to do something to fight back is satisfying enough that I don't ignore the call.

I did just switch to T-Mobile and they pass "SCAM LIKELY" as the caller name so I may start declining those.

the block button doesn’t do anything since most of the phone numbers are spoofed (someone pretending to be someone else).

Filtering out any number that shares my area code and first three digits and not in my phone book would go a long way to getting rid of spam.

I get more calls these days that are callbacks because the spammers have spoofed my number than I get actual incoming robocalls these days.

I used a bulk number blocking app to do exactly that, and the amount of spam calls I receive has dropped dramatically. You can also have it make exceptions for numbers in your contacts list. The one I used on IOS is called Wideprotect, but I'm sure there are ways to do it on Android as well.

I agree, this only blocks legit numbers since they're spoofed anyway and next spam call will be an auto-generated number anyway (form a similar area code). My solution is to simply not pick up calls that are not in my phone's address book. I still get a lot of annoying calls, from a few a day to dozens. It's frustrating but I refuse to get annoyed, to keep my sanity. Most of the calls that I get are making an announcement in Chinese. I am not Asian and I do not understand Chinese. I've read somewhere that it's scam meant to swindle Chinese citizens in the US for money.

My wife received a call from a person who was angry at some phone scammer and started cursing her and telling her not to call anymore. My wife tried to explain that she did not make the call, that the number was spoofed, but to no avail, the curses continued until they hung up. I find this kind of breach quite problematic and don't really understand how it can proliferate to this extent.

> Filtering out any number that shares my area code and first three digits and not in my phone book would go a long way to getting rid of spam.

Filtering by number is a lot easier when you have a number with a small state's area code when you have not lived there for some time. All unknown callers from that state are then easily identified as spam with 99% probability.

I’ve found that when I get a robot call, if I type randomly on the numpad it usually gets me on the line with a real person, who’s time I’m happy to waste. I figure this is the most expensive outcome for the caller

Is there some way to implement this as a service with a chat bot or just prerecorded mumbling and confused statements? I guess it could happen by just transferring the call.

The true future of AI is robots sending eachother spam.

That would be Lenny: https://shaun.net/notes/introducing-lenny/

Doesn't this signal to the malicious caller that your number is an active line with a human willing to pick up the call? I imagine that information is valuable to malicious callers who probably sell lists of active phone numbers of curious humans willing to pick up.

I heard that advice 10-20 years ago, and I think it made sense then: junk calls were accomplished with autodialers feeding into phone banks with real humans to finish the scam.

With modern VOIP I’d be surprised if anyone compiles lists of possible marks: your outbound traffic can be way more than before, so why not let the computer call everyone and see who bites every time?

I've had decent luck with saying straight out at the start of the call "I know this is a scan. I am on the federal Do Not Call list and will be reporting you. I'm hanging up now" and then hanging up. My intention is to get my number marked as having a low probability of converting; if you lead them along they might think a few more calls will give them a decent chance at profiting. I also feel sympathy for people whose best option is telephone scams.

Note: I'm lying about Do Not Call. It's just another way for people to learn your number has a real person behind it. But the synchronization between the Federal list and internal systems of callers is a shitshow so actually reputable mass dialers will just assume they missed you and add you to their internal list. (Edit: So of course I don't report people. Even if I was really on the list, that takes time and has essentially no return)

I have had (in the uk) a few recently - they stopped after the last one after I answered in my best BT Phone Voice "Met Police Duty Officer"

When I used to get a lot of spam calls (because I had to answer my phone for everything), I used to answer numbers I didn't recognize as "Orleans County 911, what is your emergency?" Most spammers got the hint and either hung up immediately or stammered out an apology and hung up.

One person insisted on trying to sell a car warranty so I ramped it up a bit. I'm only a little sorry that the person was apologetically crying about "interfering with emergency services" by the end of the call.

This can backfire. Robocallers used my local pharmacy's number so much that I had to tell the pharmacist to add it to my file that I shouldn't be contacted via phone.

That was my old practice, but spoofing means that not only is that ineffective, you're often blocking real numbers that you might want to be able to reach you.

I havent had voicemail in over a decade. I used to fill it up myself, then later I learned you can call the company and they will disable it. I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place.

But I havent gotten any spam calls in over a year ever since tmobile started blocking them for me. Are the other providers not doing this?

I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place.

Interesting, since my mobile hotspot gets dozens of spam text messages from Seattle-area car dealers each month.

Yes, this has been my practice as well, except that voicemail is mostly for unknown callers to get a chance to actually get a message to me (just in case). For people I know, if it's important then they need to SMS me to tell me that they're going to call. If they can't text for some reason, then there's always voicemail.

I wish I could afford to do that. I've got important calls coming in of which I don't always know the number. If I miss the call, it can be a headache trying to get the process going again.

Me too. Although you realize that we will now occasionally miss an important call. In fact this just happened — my credit card fraud team was legitimately trying to get a hold of me and I ignored it. This made my travel this week painful with a hold on my credit card.

This is the real loss... missing calls I would have wanted or needed to answer.

So you get notified you have a few new voicemails and you need to take time checking them, and presumably robocalls leave robo-voicemail, and now each robocall ended up costing you more time than they would if you just hung up?

(If robocallers don’t leave voicemail...why?)

Both my VM providers transcribe voice mail into text. Glancing at a transcript to identify spam takes a second. More important I am not interrupted by calls and could check them at the time most convenient to me.

I don't answer either. And I get voicemails with robocalls about Cigna health plans A LOT. Not sure why.

I also get warranty spam calls that leave voice mails too.

I never answer AND never check voicemails.

If people want to get a hold of me they can text or email.

Same. There are seven other ways to contact me on my phone.

Yep.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com