I get like 60 scam calls for every scam text. Scam texts are mildly inconvenient. Scam calls on the other hand are far worse. I get so many scam calls I don't pick up any phone numbers not on my contact list, and which causes me to miss several important phone calls a year.
I get plenty of spam SMS, but they're not technically scams. (…unless I suppose if you jokingly consider the GOP a scam…) I wouldn't mind seeing those get cracked down on. (I'm not registered with them, and they continue to spam me about political issues in jurisdictions for which I've not been on the voter roles for over a decade.)
Also, spam SMSs trying to get me to sell my parent's home. (I don't think these are scams, per se, but from what I've read their offers aren't going to be good. Nonetheless, I'm not looking to evict my mother … out of a house I don't own?, of course.)
Finally, my hometown has apparently sold their soul … and somehow my cell phone information? … to a random private company. Instead of publishing WEAs like a normal jurisdiction, I get SMSes that have little to no context, like "take shelter from the storm" while it's completely sunny and the forcast is nothing but sun, and the radar is clear. (It took a while to figure out that they were warnings about a city a few thousand miles away, since, again … 0 context.)
> Recipients of a robocall have the ability to either pick up the phone or not. But on most devices, recipients of a robotext see at least some of an unwanted message immediately
> …unlike robocalls, scam text messages are hard to ignore or hang-up on and are nearly always read by the recipient – often immediately. In addition, robotexts can promote links to phishing websites or websites that can install malware on a consumer’s phone.
And per the article this particular regulation is already in effect for calls:
> The FCC already requires similar blocking of voice calls from these types of numbers.
In other words, it won't change anything. I still get just as many scam voice calls as I ever have.
Recipients of a robotext can choose to delay the moment of interruption. They can wait until a more convenient moment to read a text, and determine whether it was spam or not. Recipients of a robocall have to deal with the interruption immediately. They can potentially delay to voicemail, but that isn't a guarantee.
Because of this, the expectation of robocalls is enough to put the act of answering any unknown caller past the threshold of reasonable effort. Being interrupted by a robocall is likely enough that I don't answer calls from any unsaved numbers; unless I'm expecting an unavoidable call (something employment or healthcare related), in which case I am held captive: forced to answer every spam call the moment it rings.
In that situation, not only must I answer the spam calls, but I must also be prepared each time to answer the important call I am waiting for! This is incredibly stressful, especially since I have ADHD and struggle to prepare for, and to keep myself prepared for, a phone conversation.
Both types of spam are serious problems, but it's robocalls that cause me the most stress and general harm.
Whomever wrote this has never been on-call, never waited to hear back on a job application, never gave their number to a romantic interest nor ran their own business.
Lately all just getting those pointless Amazon scam b.s. texts that I hope the majority of the population know the drill.. .never open just delete.
The scammers I am afraid will start to really use AI ... hack/monitor legions of phones ...spoof your contact list and call you then actually spoof the voice of some of your contacts. For me then I would only use something like a Facebook messenger set up where I only add friends I know already and they pass a series of questions we only know between each other. It's going to get worse .. thinking ahead.
From my own anecdata, I've received about 50/50 texts/calls. I also do not pick up unknown numbers anymore.
"I buy junk cars" is pretty easy to filter out. Nowadays they send things like "i/buy/any old/car Yconpro/autos*" (this is a real one I got 9 hours ago). But that's still easier to design a filter for than a phone call which only happens over audio.
I know the current infrastructure can't really deal with that, but it's because the telecoms have no real reason to implement it.
My employer seems to have gotten a lot of sequential phone numbers assigned, so a similar number used to be highly correlated with legitimacy, now it’s a mixed bag.
I want but cannot find these features:
- Disable/mute notifications for all unsaved (contactless) numbers.
- Block all texts from email addresses. Real people know what is painfully obvious: you can use my email for that!
- Disable/mute notifications for all group texts. People don't expect to get an immediate response from sending a message to a group. You can practically never get multiple people together in person for a conversation without coordinating with each person beforehand.
My work doesn't use my personal phone# - I know this isn't possible for everyone but works for me.
Edit: I just did. Voicemail is an option too.
After looking into it a bit more, spam calls seem to be significantly less prevalent in many smaller EU countries that speak their own language when compared to the global average. Probably because it's harder to find scammers speaking the language, or it's less cost-effective to target those demographics.
A lot of reliable research is paywalled, but from what I was able to scrape together, it seems like people in Germany get about 3 times as many spam calls compared to people in Estonia, and people in the US get about 3 times as many spam calls as those in Germany. Those in India get about 3 times more than people in the US, and people in Brazil get about 3 times more spam calls than those in India.
So depending on where you live you may get 81x the amount of scam calls as people in a different region. At least based on quick and unreliable back-of-the-envelope math. Central and Eastern European countries may get 9x fewer spam calls per capita than the US.
This doesn't reflect my personal experience (anecdata I know) or those of any of the people I know.
I'll think I'll ask around because now I'm curious about the distribution. If a few people here are bombarded with spam calls it would average out the 1-2 a year me and my family/friends get on average on their mobile numbers.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1045618/spam-calls-per-m... (you'll only be able to view this page once or twice before Statista demands a subscription).
https://www.truecaller.com/blog/insights/top-20-countries-af...
https://blog.hiya.com/what-country-gets-the-most-phone-spam and their report
https://www.hiya.com/state-of-the-call
I also asked GPT to quote some research for me that I fact-checked, and I looked up some news articles about spam calls in different regions. As I said, my estimates are unreliable.
It matched my personal experience which is that of someone who has lived in these smaller EU countries and also in English-speaking regions.
It was a non-question, and my answer was still serious. Every topic has a few people jumping in to say "Wow I didn't realize the US sucked at X, we don't have that problem in Y country." Eventually someone else from Y shows up to say "Well, actually, I do, and I live here in Y."
Your observation about English vs non-English is not a bad guess. And with the highest average income in the world, it would make sense to see Americans be targeted more by spammers.
But still, it remains true that plenty of people in both Europe and the US get irritating amounts of spam calls/texts, but some people manage to escape it entirely.
I've also noticed answering the call makes it much more likely that you will receive more calls in the future. Even though I usually answer the call just to make them waste an hour talking to me as I pretend to be an old man who has trouble installing TeamViewer or finding my credit cards.
Some of the spam groups have even blocked my number since I've trolled them so much. But I still get calls from their system, and when I answer it says something like "You have been blocked from contacting this number. Goodbye."