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Comment by M4v3R | Hacker News Reader

There are many other valid reasons to receive a call from an unknown number:

- someone from your immediate family lost their phone (or it ran out of battery) and they're calling you from a borrowed phone

- someone close to you had an accident and police / hospital is calling you about it

- a call from school about your kids

- someone you know changed their number

- delivery person has a package for you and wants to confirm you're home

- you bought something online but they ran out of stock and want to offer you a replacement

- etc.

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You can always pick up the phone. You're never under any obligation to say anything to the person on the line.

Those people can leave a message.

I think answering unknown numbers in real time is situational. I normally don't answer any of them; as you said, if it's important, they'll leave a message. But when I bought a refrigerator I knew delivery people would be calling, so I answered unknown calls until it was done.

The ability to view a transcript of the message in real-time is a great new feature of iOS 17. I use it all the time — and it's pretty much always junk.

Wait til AI voice spoofing is part of the scammers arsenal.

I don't always answer calls from random weird area codes. But I'm also not willing to effectively throw out my phone as a way to reach me because I get the odd junk call.

The underlying issue is that answering these junk calls perpetuates them.

When I am expecting a call from an unknown number, I begrudgingly answer the junk calls, knowing full well the next several weeks will be full of them.

With cell phones being near-ubiquitous, there's no reason not to text and email in these scenarios.

My niece and nephew's school does text message updates. Informational communications from friends are by text or email (and can be confirmed via the mechanism not being used, or by arranging a call). I have never gotten a call for a delivery (it's all email and text if I've opted-in), and would treat one as a scam, even moreso if it is related to an online purchase. Legitimate emergency services have zero excuse for not displaying as such via caller ID.

More and more routine notifications ("You have an appointment next week") have moved to texts. (Lots of people ignore emails or they filter to rarely-checked tabs.) And pretty much no one where I work calls unscheduled. But there's still a fair bit of calling from doctors' offices, immediate needs, etc. They'll leave an often partial message if it's important but then you can get into call-back loops.

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