As far as I can tell, the only people who bite on unsolicited spam calls are the most vulnerable members of the public, thus, it’s pretty clear to me that the vast majority of these calls are deliberately targeted and their purpose is to swindle.
A likely story.
I find that difficult to believe. When election season rolls around, my landline gets several polling calls a day, and plenty of them are automated (and the stupid robocalls that do not auto hang up when the answering machine beeps, which means I listen to part of them before hitting delete).
On the subject, the best spoofed call I have received was spoofing my alternate home number (and no, the spoofer was not already in the house).
Here, have something that may make it easier to believe, maybe:
https://www.insightsassociation.org/legal-article/indiana-law-restricting-automated-research-calls
It’s all your fault!
Ding ding ding. Remember email before Google figured out how to stop spam? That’s where we are with calls now. And still, every time the phone rings I pick it up. What if, this time, it’s a hospital calling about my child who got sick at school?
It’s 11am and I’ve had 3 scam calls so far this morning. I want to turn off my phone, forever.
EDIT: 4 calls
I hate the calls that start off with something like, “Hello is Doug there?” and I say no, you must have a wrong number, and then I realize it’s a robocall when the continues on about whatever it’s after, usually some police fund scam.
Anyway, the calls don’t bother me too much, human or otherwise. I just say I’m not interested in a pleasant tone and hang up.
The point is to swindle but there is no targeting. Way easier to just mass dial with a robot and prerecorded message or dialogue tree.
Like with email spam, you can generate so much volume that the tiny percentage of people who actually bite justify the minimal effort.
Bizarrely, a few months ago the local convenience store where I have my morning coffee, had my home number come up on their fax machine as trying to send them a fax. They recognized my name and asked me what I was trying to send them. My home number does not have fax capability even.
Exactly right.
That may be, but if it relies on people’s vulnerability to be profitable, it’s still predatory.
Ooh I get those all the time too! I feel like an idiot every time for responding.
Should have screened your phone calls.
Yes, it is super scummy bullshit, for sure. Just wanted to clarify the methodology at work.
It’s not targeted in a direct way (“let’s call this number, the person there is disabled and on Social Security”) but it’s targeted in that the perpetrators know full well that the only people who fall for their crap are those least able to defend themselves. It’s scummy as hell, at best.
I work in a clinic. Some old people are so paranoid they won’t give their Medicare numbers when making an appointment. You know you called me, right, lady?
They say “we’re not supposed to give personal information over the phone”.
I have a land line that I put in when we moved a couple years ago. It was a new number for us and very few people know it.
I originally had it because during power outages it was a backup way to call.
But since having it, about 95% of the calls are telemarketing calls, and the promotional rate for the line expired so it’s not cheap anymore.
I’m going to dump it.
Naturally I’m also seeing an increase in marketing calls coming on the cell phone. I don’t know if there’s much hope in that regard but at least I can block numbers.
We have a land line that we got in our Fios deal (get internet, tv and a land line). Initially the only calls we got were because the prior owner had signed up to be notified when school closings happened… took a while to figure out how to get removed from that list! Since then it’s been just spam. So my wife finally decided we’d just unplug it. So we did. Happy ever since!
One of the things you can do with a landline is turn off the ringer and then use the number for any of those forms you have to fill out that require a phone number. That’s only if the land line is essentially free as part of a bundle deal. It’s not worth paying for a land line if you’re only using it to gain a phone number to toss away.
It is nice that a traditional land line will work during a power outage, but the kind of land line you get with a cable deal still requires power.
I get a fair number of spam calls on my phone. I’ve adopted the following approach (TLDR: whitelist) to triage calls:
- You’re a phone number attached to a name I recognize, and you’re important enough to me that I want to hear what you have to say IMMEDIATELY.
- Otherwise, I ignore the call. If you’re a real person, you’ll leave voicemail and I’ll call you back in a few minutes.
There’s an edge case where I’m expecting a call (and it’s someone making an appointment or similar, so getting back to them may be a PITA to be put on hold), so I have some expectation about the area code the call will come from and roughly what the number will be. Automated calling spam seems to be very good at figuring out this weakness [in terms of what fake number they spoof]. When answering these calls, I say “BBBEEEEEEP BOOOOOOOP”. If I hear back “Uhhhh.what the fuck? Hello?” then the conversation continues (occasionally with a good laugh). Otherwise, you aren’t going to get me to say anything like “Yes?” or “Hello?”.
Holy shit, I tried this once and it almost backfired horribly. I answered, "Sorry robocaller I’m not interested, " and hung up the phone.
The phone rang again and this time a guy said quickly, “Sir I’m not a robocall. I’m the manager at the local pizza place, I’m responding to your feedback on your last order that we screwed up. I’m giving you a credit for a complimentary pizza.”
Whoops! I’m thankful for the guy’s patience because I can’t guarantee I’d have called back if it was me on the other end of that call, lol.