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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

>STIR/SHAKEN is a good start...

It seems to have done nothing. Even for phones I get more spam than ever. Same for my Mom 99% of calls to her landline are scammers.

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Something has changed. The auto warranty scam calls have stopped, which at one point were the majority of scam calls I got. Scam calls are most of my calls as well.

Now I get:

- Travel package scams (I believe this is related to timeshares, this is most calls I get).

- Medicare/Medicaid scams (a close second by volume)

- Auto accident scams (pitching an insurance payout)

- Home security system scams (free security system!)

These days—meaning the last few weeks—I get:

• Home remodeling come-ons. So many. They know my name. Often “I’m calling for my Dad’s construction company, xxx, who is working in your area …” It’s a different company name every time.

• Medicare BS.

• “Scare” scams—just lately with no specific reason, just words such as, “…your case is urgent and you must call our agent Sam at 555-xxx…”

• Tax relief crap.

Oh yeah - the home remodeling ones - I get those occasionally.

Also occasionally solar company calls. These appear to just be really shady lead generating companies, but the solar companies are real (if maybe themselves a little shady).

Once in a long time I get the "scare" scams - those are usually claiming you owe the IRS a bunch of money.

The scare scam I got a while ago was a "cop" claiming that I missed showing up for jury duty that morning. He spoke "cop talk" and passed me to another "officer", who tried to convince me that since I missed showing up for jury duty that a bench warrant was issued which would result in me getting arrested if I tried to show up to the court house to "post bond". Instead, he recommended that I use a remotely located "bond posting" machine they have in several locations (he rattled off 3 addresses), and I can give him the receipt number and that would clear up the warrant. It just so happened that if you googled "Bitcoin ATMs", it came up with those 3 locations as the first three results.

Now what really pissed me off is that it took more than half an hour to get to the scam part -- they put me on hold multiple times, and passed me back and forth between the two "cops", with really no information given to me. Once it got to the demand for money, I started putting them on hold, until I hung up (which he of course warned me not to do), and they kept calling back until I blocked the number.

Anecdotally, I tend to agree. I have both UK and US phone numbers. The US phone number receives dramatically more spam calls than the UK one, despite us not having STIR/SHAKEN in the UK yet. I don't know if that's because the US people are likely to be juicer targets (richer etc) or because of some infrastructure difference that makes it more of a hassle to do in the UK.

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