People Hire Phone Bots to Torture Telemarketers
wsj.com
wsj.com
Until we hunt telemarketers for sport, this will not stop being a miserable experience.
Gotta keep those lights on...because they're just marks and screw them if they fall for it amiright /s.
Point is, at this point I don't even bother answering unknown numbers. If it's important they'll leave a voicemail or text me
Turned out it was legitimate and I just looked like a jackass. Got my free upgrade though.
While I didn't need to be so arrogant, I think companies should make it easier to prove their identity. When I call my bank, they ask for information like DOB etc to prove it's me. Fair enough. But it never works in reverse if they call me, like a push message via their app, or an ID number I can call back with. I feel a bit silly asking.
Not that I have an option to request them to perform the validation. But they require that validation to continue the conversation now.
I've been looking at alternatives from ING recently.
That’s true if it’s done right, but it also sounds very similar to how people scam (call a victim, let them know they will receive a message from the bank, and ask them to read the verification code back to them)! It’s a little tricky.
Which phone verifies you to continue the conversation.
And I guess you’re right. The receive sms and read out the code is similar. Tho this doesn’t have a code. It’s an in app push notification which you simply accept (or reject if not expecting it)
We should take every opportunity to worsen their lives as they have employed themselves to worsen ours.
Just to play devil's advocate for a second. Some times you don't do things that would benefit you. In these cases getting your to do something that you wouldn't otherwise do is beneficial.
Which is something that marketing very nearly never does.
Marketing does more than just create ads: they research what their customers want, what they say they want vs. what they actually buy, and it doesn't matter how good your product is if no one knows about it.
The problem is that there are almost always other companies making the same/similar products, so you create a race-to-the-bottom effect where you have to eventually get more and more crazy in your methods of reaching a target audience. Don't blame marketing, blame capitalism.
I can blame both, as well as the underlying sociopathic mechanisms that the modern understanding of the terms necessitate.
If I am not mistaken what you are describing is market research, not marketing. Marketing is, in practice if not theory, about invasion of attention and manipulation. If marketing were not these things then companies would be content to have their products discovered in catalogs and store shelves where interested parties willing to devote attention to such things would readily find them.
That reminds me: if you ever receive a call from a legit collection agency, be prepared in advance. You have the right to ask them specific questions that they need to answer, according to regulation, if they have a legitimate debt to collect. Your second opportunity to ask the questions will be more difficult, so take advantage of them reaching out. Have a list by your phone or on your Favorites.
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-can-i-verify-wh...
https://anachronox.fandom.com/wiki/Grumpos_Matavastros#Weapo...
Let's brainstorm some similar techniques that we could do to similarly unscrupulous people.
Although most of the spam calls I get are bots on the other end - political, police shakedown, lazy leadgen for some company (eg cable TV), etc.
The ones that are actually human are generally outright scams targeted at old people ("microsoft", "medicare", etc). After playing along for a bit, I ask them if their parents know that their job is to scam old people all day and if they consider that success. That usually gets them pretty riled up.
Oh, hey! I'm not the only one whose done this. A couple of other good one:
- "How did you get into this line of work? Are your parents frauds too? Is it a genetic thing maybe we can weed out? Who do your parents rip off?"
- "When you see your family on the holidays, do you tell them you're a professional fraud, or do you actually have a sliver of shame? Do you have like sibling who think your cool for ripping people off?"
- "What does your god think of how you make a living?"
Get cussed out some, but most of them are obviously fine with it, usually via some variation of "hey gotta pay bills, just doing my job". The 'smile and dial' crowd self selects for zero-ethics worldviews. The god one did get me a death threat, which is nice. I'm sure they added me to a bunch of call lists as 'revenge'. Worth it.
I’ve finally found a good workaround when traveling abroad: adding a local eSim for data-only and keeping my U.S. number on for receiving voice & text.