Missing hiker ignored calls from rescuers because he didn’t recognise the number

The state of PSTN direct-dialed voic comms in much of the US is such that legitimate phone traffic is 1/2 to 1/10 of all received calls. Channel saturation and abuse is such that people ignore phone calls, and quite often voicemail. If they have voice service at all.

Telephone service by any description in the form of "anyone, anywhere, can connect to any one, anywhere, at any time" is in increasing danger of abandonment simply because of nuisance and malicious harm costs. I've had repeated dicussions with individuals and businesses who are constantly pestered by unwanted calls, cannot distinguish legitimate from illegitimate traffic (see "Deep Fakes" voice impersonation being used in a recent bank fraud case, impersonating the CEO --- I've known people who've had fraudulent calls claiming to be known contacts), as well as endless scams.

The industry aware of this and raised the issue years ago. They do nothing about it:

[S]ince mid-2015, a consortium of engineers from phone carriers and others in the telecom industry have worked on a way to [stop call-spoofing], worried that spam phone calls could eventually endanger the whole system. “We’re getting to the point where nobody trusts the phone network,” says Jim McEachern, principal technologist at the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS.) “When they stop trusting the phone network, they stop using it.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/how-to-stop-spam-rob...

We've reached the point that people in possible need of rescue ignore attempts at contact, and ... with credible reason.

I could see myself ending up in the same situation as the subject of this story if I were out hiking and I got slightly off course, but I weren't in fear of being truly lost, and if meanwhile the rangers were trying to call me from a number I didn't recognize.

One possible solution: For areas requiring permits to hike, make adding the park's phone number to your contacts a requirement to hike in the park. The reality of the spammy telephone system in the United States is that expecting people to notice calls from unexpected numbers is unreasonable.

(Or just require everyone to carry satellite locators in parks. I don't think we're too far off from that being economically feasible.)

For calls that you actually see coming in live, I think that would have worked. But for text or missed calls, I think it just isn't true. I think many of us are conditioned to just treat everything that isn't a known contact as garbage and block our brains from even really seeing it. Robocallers and scammers did this to us.

I'd say the only real solution is that whoever has your phone number and would be the one to report you missing should make it clear that they are going to do that, and tell you who would be contacting you if so. Make sure your phone will notify you if those entities then try to contact you, even if you have silenced it in general.

It could be a simple error, but I suspect a slacktivist attempt to increase the novel usage of 'they' in reference to specific individuals.

This is no different than “you” also being both singular and plural.

Its a little late for english grammar to make sense.

Note that singular they dates back to the 1300s. It became less popular in the 1700s and now is making a come back.

hahaha oh boy are you in for a treat.