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Comment by NoboruWataya | Hacker News Reader

To me, answering calls from random or unknown numbers is something the older generation do, the one that grew up before phone spam became the norm. I would estimate that, in general, less than half of incoming calls to my phone are legitimate.

Of course, hiking on a mountain is an exceptional case, where you might reasonably expect that people will set out to search for you (possibly putting themselves in danger) if you are gone for an unreasonable amount of time. I wonder did they try text or leave a VM.

(As an aside, "The hiker had gotten disoriented in an ordeal that lasted about 24 hours" reminded me of the "fugue state" from Breaking Bad.)

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> To me, answering calls from random or unknown numbers is something the older generation do, the one that grew up before phone spam became the norm. I would estimate that, in general, less than half of incoming calls to my phone are legitimate.

I would say I get about 20 spam calls for every legitimate call I get (1-2 legitimate calls per day, 20-40 spam calls).

This is one call every 22 minutes. Even half that, pushing every ~45 minutes, is well past the point I would just get a new phone number.

That being said I'm probably exactly the type of person to have a full VM with no legitimate messages in it.

> well past the point I would just get a new phone number

Agreed, but 2FA makes this a non-starter. I don't want to find out a year from now that I can't access ___ service because they have my old number on file and won't let me change it.

As it is I can't get into my bank account to pay my phone bill if it's past due and service gets suspended. It's infuriating.

All ow the calls through. When a human starts talking don't hang up, but don't speak to them either. Allow them to hang up.

You'll soon get taken off the lists.

Pick up the phone, keep silent for 5 seconds. A human on the other end would say something or you would hear background noise. If you don't hear anything, hang up. This works because the auto-dialers that call centers use listen for you to say something before starting the robo-dialogue or patching you into a meat-talker.

This does work currently, but I worry for when we begin to see LLM agents that assess the victim for gullibility before transferring to an available, practiced con artist.

Mute your end if you're going to do this.

Either you really messed up with who you shared your number with,

and/or you're answering more than 0% of unknown callers, validating the line,

or someone has intentionally signed you up for marketing lists.

This is an insane situation to consider dealing with. I have three to five phone lines depending, less than 3 spam calls total per month.

I'm in the same boat of spam calls. The majority are looking for the previous owner of the number (debt collectors). The thing is I've had this number for well over any sort statute of limitations on debt. In the past I considered getting a new number but that would also be a giant pain. There also wouldn't be any guarantee that the new number wasn't in the same boat

That's between two lines; there are certain area codes that for personal reasons I basically have to answer. As an aside: Android's "Suspected Spam caller" is incredibly inaccurate; with the huge storm last weekend, the emergency alert was flagged this way, and actual spam calls often aren't.

If one of those areas codes is the same as the area code in your number, you're just plain screwed!

Can't answer the calls, ever, or you're "marked" - simple as that.

Really sorry to hear this.

Since you mentioned not enjoying it, and for the reader in a similar situation, a suggestion: use an internet number, with totally different area code from your received calls, so you have a prayer.

> the one that grew up before phone spam became the norm

I think there's been phone spam for a long time, it's just that previous generation's phone spam was so innocent. An unsolicited salesman calls and tries to sell you some magazines. If you actually buy the magazines, you'll actually get the magazines.

Compare that to today. The caller records your voice and even saying "hello" might allow them to clone your voice and then use your voice to scam your spouse. If you buy their magazines (or whatever the modern equivalent is), you'll probably get it, but also they might just steal your money and sell any information you give them on the personal data markets.

This is the same in advertising too. Old TV advertisements told you about a product and then hoped you'd buy it when you went to the store, fair enough. Compare that to today's YouTube advertisements that are often straight up scams and merely watching the ad or viewing the associate website is revealing information about yourself which will be sold unregulated.

Is this a rosey view of the past? Are we just suffering late-stage capitalism or is there something more specific we can blame these changes on?

It takes a lot more than “hello” to clone someone’s voice. A lightweight voice clone requires 2-3 minutes of audio dictation for acceptable results.

It depends on what you are cloning for. If you are just trying to just convince some other interactive voice response (IVR) system that you can answer the phone as human "Hello" may be enough to get to the next menu. Don't underestimate the power of a few taped lines, especially in the world of increasing automation on every side of a phone call (and plenty of systems talking to systems with fewer and fewer humans in the loop).

"The voicemail box you're trying to reach is full" (Of spam calls)

Anecdotal fallacy warning, but I just checked my phone call logs on my iPhone. Of the 12 phone calls I've gotten in the past week, exactly 1 was legit.

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