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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

They stopped calling you and started calling me. You're welcome ;-). I get 5-10 a day now, up significantly in the last couple years.

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Omg, I was remembering Lenny [0], the incredible automated trolling machine.

Turns out that he/it still works and there's a phone number that you can call -- or rather forward/3-way-call spammers to!! It's 347-514-7296. You can hear past recordings here [1].

I wish there was a way to pay for this incredible service, and can't wait to start using it!

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3b7na/the-story-of-lenny-th...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@ToaoDotNet/videos

You can also self-host it: https://github.com/sladesys/LennyTroll

There's also a way to self-host Lenny on your own Asterisk (often FreePBX) server if you DIY your voip.

I've had tremendous success ending them for me. My main number is with a VOIP provider and I set up the IVR to say "Please dial 1 to continue the call" and wait for it. No spam calls have gotten through since then.

I turned on "silence unknown callers" for a month or two and that seemed to get my number off of the hot list.

The trick is to pick up and immediately mute your phone. They will hang up and eventually flag the number as inactive or unscammable (like maybe it’s a machine picking up). If you don’t answer, they can call back later. If you pick up and say something, then they know there is a human behind the number and that it is actively used.

Change your voicemail prompt to "We're sorry, the number cannot be completed as dialed..."

They don't fall for this. Or at least using the local Australian no-number recording... Somehow they know.

Back in the land line days I bought a nifty gadget that you plugged in between the phone and the line. It had a button that when pressed would inject the intercept special information tone [1] that the phone company used to tell calling equipment that the number was no longer in service.

It seemed to work pretty well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tone

I pretend to do as they ask but purposely stuff up the instructions until they get frustrated. It's amusing how many creative insults they have. Most are directed at my mother for some reason.

I haven't answered the phone for non-family callers in 20 years. They still call several times a day (or their Perl scripts do).

I haven't answered my phone except for family members for coming on 3-4 years now and still get 3-4 spam voicemails a day. That number goes way up when I start screening the calls though, so maybe there is something to answering vs not.

A little town I know has maintained their antique telephone exchange for going on 40 years, and one of the features is that they have a block of numbers that lead to all the error messages. (541-447-0054 for example) For a while I redirected my phone number to one of their error messages, and now I rarely get robocalls, because the spammers presumably blacklisted me.

I haven't gotten any for years, because I block all calls that come from any number that isn't already in my phone book. They go straight to voice mail, where only a small percentage even leave a message.

That sounds like a hell hole. I’d throw my sim away.

I set my voicemail to be 2 minutes long (the max AT&T allows). It's just me telling jokes I found on the internet so it isn't terrible but man it's effective. I still get the spam calls but now I don't get a little voicemail I need to delete.

For anyone reading: what would your top dollar be for a phone number that hasn't received spam calls for 3, 5, or maybe 8 years?

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