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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

> If I’m on a call, even with family, it’s now almost exclusively on FaceTime/zoom/meet/etc.

I really don't get that. I don't get these, on neither of my phones (I've got two numbers). When it rings, it's virtually always friends or family. Sometimes the bank/insurance/doctor. Very exceptionally do I get a commercial or scam call.

I think it's not an argument good enough to excuse to excuse Authy here: "my phone already leaked, so what's one more leak!?".

> Which isn’t great because those aforementioned platforms are all proprietary walled gardens with terrible incentives

Oh I fully agree. I'm using Telegram for chat but zero FaceTime/meet/WhatsApp here. People want to call me, they usually phone me. Once in a rare while Telegram.

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i'm jealous of you. I recently had a day where I got 25 phone calls. 23 were spam. Turning on iOS "ignore unrecognize phone numbers" has been amazing (i assume android has the same feature)

Wow. I was wondering why people were fussing about the odd spam call! The most I have had is 2 in a day and my number is in websites, social media, whatever.

Almost all spam is instantly recognisable. Mostly visa and parcel delivery scams.

In do not block unknown numbers because lots of organisations use them here (UK) This includes people I really do want to be able to contact me if they want to such as the police.

> here (UK)

I think it's mostly just an issue in the US/North America

I’m in Canada and get maybe a couple scam calls a month

Occasionally I'll get spam from numbers in my contacts. I got a virtual kidnapping call from my wife's number the other day, which would have been terrifying if she wasn't sitting right next to me.

I have 5+ spam calls every day. Looking at my call history it’s been that way as far back as it lets me scroll. Blocking doesn’t make a ton of difference, as it’s almost always a different number.

I don’t understand what they are calling for either. I’ve answered a few and most of the time it’s a dead line when I answer. Just silence.

Those are usually robo dialers looking for active numbers to resell to spammers/scammers. You answering puts you on their good list. These are also the calls that never leave any type of voicemail. I’m not sure what list VM gets you on.

This sounds intuitive, but isn't true in my experience. It's a natural consequence of aggressive dialing with a limited pool of agents. See my sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40882163

> I don’t understand what they are calling for either. I’ve answered a few and most of the time it’s a dead line when I answer. Just silence.

The primary operating goal of a predictive dialing system is minimizing agent downtime. Ideally, when an agent transitions into being ready to talk, they want as little time as possible before they're connected to a live lead.

In above-board telemarketing, where there's a finite list of leads instead of 000-000-0000 through 999-999-9999, the administrator will adjust dialing aggressiveness to minimize the chance that a lead picks up the phone but no agent is available to take the call. Because when that happens, the answering party experiences nothing but dead air, followed by a timeout, and a hangup.

The one nice consequence from this, though, is that if you do answer a spam call and get connected to a live person, chances are very high that several other potential marks got dead air instead. Maybe you saved grandma for another day.

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