Spam callers again (NA)

azure

azure

Final Approach
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azure
Just wondering if anyone knows of any good apps that have come out since the last time this was discussed... that are actually effective?

These a$$#o!es are driving me up a wall... no less than 3 in the last 20 minutes. That's way above my usual 7-10 per day rate. They are, as usual, all from my cell phone's area code. Yesterday I was getting them from other area codes specific to the same state (Michigan), and one even left a voice mail - something about my vehicle still being eligible for "protection". I would say about 5-10% of them leave voice mails now, most often a threatening message about my credit card being canceled or my owing the IRS lots of money, so it is also an expense in addition to an annoyance.

Last time we had this discussion, someone suggested Mr. Number, which I downloaded and installed. And I have to say, Mr. Number is next to USELESS. It blocks less than 5% of the spam calls that I get. Most get through, and I immediately block them (of course), which is just as useless and for the same reason: because these numbers are all spoofed. Once I even had a repeat caller on my home phone who insisted that he was simply returning my call - it took less than 20 seconds of conversation to realize that he was a legitimate business owner who had been victimized by somebody spoofing MY number. Grrrr... :mad: :mad2: :incazzato:
 
Get em daily. If I don't recognize the number I don't answer. Maybe 1 out of 10 leaves a VM.
 
Call Control is mediocre, which is about as good as it gets I'm afraid.

Rich
 
I downloaded AT&T's Call Protect app ... it stops a few calls, but I get calls daily from same area code same prefix as my cell phone... one day I was waiting for a service tech and answered one of those numbers, not knowing if it was the guy I needed to talk to. A little old lady told me that she has been getting daily calls from my number and wanted to know what I was calling about! I told her it wasn't me and I'm getting a lot of those as well.
 
If I answer a known spam call, I'll answer with a terse, "Police Department". As the person starts talking I will interrupt saying this is the police department, is there anyone specific you wish to talk to? 10 times out of 10 I get hung up on. Such rude people....
 
There is an APP called "Should I Answer" and it use to well well against this.. but the mice have gotten smarter with disguising them selves and it seems that more of these calls are now getting through again.. I just to them to "beep" off and hang up.... After being told this a few times one would think they might take this number of the list... noooooope, they just keep calling. They have to masochistic.

I like the one where I get the guy from Microsoft calls telling me I have a problem with my computer and they can fix it.... If I am stuck in traffic and they call.... I just take it out on them.. Actually had one guy so ****ed of he was stammering before he hung up.
 
If I don’t recognize,the area code and number,I don’t bother to answer. If they have a message for me they will leave a message.
 
I get several a day. They used to call from various places around the country, now the majority also come from my local area code and use the first three digits of my phone number. They’re getting smarter!
 
I used to get incessant calls on my MagicJack number from an Indian pharmacy trying to sell me Viagra. I suspect they got my name and number from one of the insurance company hacks and figured I was in the age group of males who might be interested. No matter how many times I told them I wasn't, they kept calling.

Finally, I forwarded the Magic Jack number back to the company that was calling me. The idea of one of their telemarketers trying to sell Viagra to another one of their telemarketers gave me the giggles. Since literally no one I actually want to hear from has that number, I just left it that way for a few months until I changed the number.

Rich
 
It is time for me to remind everyone, there is an email going around again talking about a food product that is made from pork with ham, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite.

Don't open it, it's Spam......
 
Ryanb said:
I get several a day. They used to call from various places around the country, now the majority also come from my local area code and use the first three digits of my phone number. They’re getting smarter!
Click to expand...
They THINK they're getting smarter. I know that nobody we know has our AC & prefix... so when I see that it's an automatic ignore. Ditto for just city & state for caller ID, names we don't recognize, and a few other criteria.

I was running my own VOIP PBX for years. I had a blacklist of many hundreds of numbers, and had started blacklisting entire NPA/NXX blocks. Most of Florida was blocked, I think. Our VOIP provider changed their billing practice so we went back to our local telco, and now I really miss that blacklist. Telco has no provision for whitelisting, blocking or reporting, unfortunately.

It's only a matter of time before we drop the land line entirely. About half the calls we get are illegal telemarketing and scam calls. My wife's cell phone gets a lot of them also, because she's not been fanatical about not giving the number out to web sites. Mine is a corporate owned phone, and I still get a couple bogus calls a week. They're easy to recognize, though -- same area code and prefix as my cell phone. That's an automatic reject from me.
 
  1. Nomorobo
  2. Port your number to Google Voice and use your new number as the forwarding phone.
  3. Use a whitelist and anyone not on it goes to voicemail.
 
My 96 year old mother was getting as many as 10 calls a day on her cell phone. I asked the cell provider if they had a white list feature at their level, yes and the cost
$20/month. Instead of doing this, I just changed her phone number. Verizon volunteered to comp the change. That fixed the problem. There are only about 4 people who need her phone number, and I notified them. End of the problem... for now!

-Skip
 
All the programs are nice, but do next to nothing for number spoofing. Around here, they spoof numbers from my exchange - sometimes have spoofed a law firm and a defense contractor. And most of them are robo.

I tend to ignore them, even though my phone system can send all unknown numbers to voice mail hell. Occasionally, I've picked up and said "radio station, you're on the air". That usually causes an immediate hang-up.
 
Funny you mention it. Today was the first time they left a voicemail. Basically saying they tried to contact me 6 months ago and I didn’t reply. Now they (Govt) are accusing me of fraud and filing a lawsuit. They didn’t even mention what the matter was about. Guess I better get a lawyer.

Seattle area code. Anything coming out of Seattle can’t be trusted.
 
Velocity173 said:
Funny you mention it. Today was the first time they left a voicemail. Basically saying they tried to contact me 6 months ago and I didn’t reply. Now they (Govt) are accusing me of fraud and filing a lawsuit. They didn’t even mention what the matter was about. Guess I better get a lawyer.

Seattle area code. Anything coming out of Seattle can’t be trusted.
Click to expand...

Area code 242, The Bahamas, is almost guaranteed spam.
 
DaleB said:
They THINK they're getting smarter. I know that nobody we know has our AC & prefix... so when I see that it's an automatic ignore. Ditto for just city & state for caller ID, names we don't recognize, and a few other criteria.

I was running my own VOIP PBX for years. I had a blacklist of many hundreds of numbers, and had started blacklisting entire NPA/NXX blocks. Most of Florida was blocked, I think. Our VOIP provider changed their billing practice so we went back to our local telco, and now I really miss that blacklist. Telco has no provision for whitelisting, blocking or reporting, unfortunately.

It's only a matter of time before we drop the land line entirely. About half the calls we get are illegal telemarketing and scam calls. My wife's cell phone gets a lot of them also, because she's not been fanatical about not giving the number out to web sites. Mine is a corporate owned phone, and I still get a couple bogus calls a week. They're easy to recognize, though -- same area code and prefix as my cell phone. That's an automatic reject from me.
Click to expand...

Dude, if you're going to ditch the land line, get a Magic Jack. That's the only number I give to anyone other than family and close friends.

I got a Magic Jack shortly after the company started doing business. I'm on my second device and my third or fourth Magic Jack number now. It's the number I give to anyone I never want to hear from, but who nonetheless demand a phone number from me. It's also the only number I call those entities from so it stays that way. The service isn't half bad on the newer devices.

When the number gets in telemarketers' databases (usually due to some company that had it getting hacked), I change it. I think it costs $25.00, and you don't have to replace the device itself.

Rich
 
Velocity173 said:
Funny you mention it. Today was the first time they left a voicemail. Basically saying they tried to contact me 6 months ago and I didn’t reply. Now they (Govt) are accusing me of fraud and filing a lawsuit. They didn’t even mention what the matter was about. Guess I better get a lawyer.

Seattle area code. Anything coming out of Seattle can’t be trusted.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you’re in deep kimchi! :eek:
 
I find if I don't pay my phone bill the annoying calls stop.

Probably not the most effective technique.

But I do so enjoy ****ing with them from time to time when I have nothing to rant about on PoA. I think the carpet cleaning company was the one I wasted the most time with... right up to them asking my zip code for the serviceman...

Kind of a shame in retrospect, their price was actually quite good and I can't it done for their price here. :(
 
My mother-in-law was getting 5-10 calls a day from her area code. I switched her from a flip-phone to an iPhone and updated her Contacts so that everyone who she knows is in them. Then I set the Do Not Disturb setting to on and only allow calls from her contacts. The scammers still call, but the phone never rings and they never leave messages.

My business rarely gets legitimate calls so I moved my landline to an old flip phone. I changed the message to something like, “We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls today, please leave a message.” Scammers don’t bother and about once a week I get a legitimate call.

I don’t know what I would do if I had to answer calls from new customers.
 
My new approach is my local CongressCritters. Each time I get a spam call, I either call all 3 congressional rep offices or send an email reminding them that these companies are in violation of the Do Not Call list, and I'm a registered voter.

There are different rules for political calls, I refer you to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). You can really make the campaigns upset by citing the 2015 update to the
TCPA Omnibus Declaratory Ruling and Order, which can be found by searching for FCC-15-72A1_Rcd.pdf

Among other rules for all calls, not just political, that once the callee has disconnected, the caller is required to disconnect within 10 seconds. This is a health & safety issue because many medical monitoring systems require a fairly stable phone connection.

But then, when I'm not immediately hanging up, I explain that the call is being recorded for the FBI and my lawyer. Then it's a race to see who hangs up first.

All this is on my land line. I don't have problems with my cell phone. Very few people have that number, and most of the time, the cell phone's not even turned on.
 
Also... for the good it does... I do report EVERY SINGLE illegal call at complaints.donotcall.gov. Just a hobby of mine. It may be a waste of time, but maybe not. A couple of years ago I received a letter from an AG office somewhere telling me that they had my name as a potential witness in a criminal prosecution of one group. I never needed to do anything, but eventually a few people went to jail on that one.
 
Thanks guys. I see that as I thought, there is basically nothing that can stop spoofed calls.

I never, ever answer a call from a number that I don't recognize or that doesn't display on caller ID. The persistent caller that turned out to be a legitimate business that had been called by a spammer spoofing *my* number is a rare case where I called back a number that appeared repeatedly on my home phone caller ID. That home phone is actually connected to a Verizon cell service transceiver, but it started getting spams within a couple of weeks of my getting it a couple of summers ago. So I don't think you need to be on any list, I think they just call numbers at random.

At work it is a real problem. Spams come through, sometimes more than one in an hour, usually while I'm in class. I have tried airplane mode -- no joy, spammers have managed to get through even so, and it doesn't stop the text spams, since texts can come through Wi-Fi. Deactivating Wi-Fi is not a good solution since there are two services available at my workplace, and the default one is intentionally crippled for security reasons, meaning I have to manually connect to the real service when I want to reactivate Wi-Fi. I've tried Do Not Disturb, but that alone is not enough either since they can override it (mark the call/text Urgent or something, I'm not sure exactly how). About the only thing that is guaranteed to keep them from disturbing me while I'm lecturing is either all three measures, or leaving my cellphone in my office. I've opted for the latter, plus Do Not Disturb AND airplane mode for when I'm working in my office.

I'm really at my wits' end and almost ready to just trash the iPhone... :mad2:
 
I wish I could delete the phone app on my iPhone but it doesn't let me. So I just put it in do not disturb mode. If anyone I know wants to reach me they just text or email. I haven't answered an unscheduled phone call in at least a few years.
 
JScarry said:
My business rarely gets legitimate calls so I moved my landline to an old flip phone. I changed the message to something like, “We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls today, please leave a message.” Scammers don’t bother and about once a week I get a legitimate call.
Click to expand...

I did something similar. Had my business line forwarding to my cell and it was literally out of hand the number of spam call I was getting. I got a Google Voice # and just forward the business line to that. Any legit voicemails left are now transcribed and emailed to me...works great since all of my clients have my direct cell #.

But now my cell has gotten so bad that any unrecognized or unexpected calls get bumped to VM now as well.
 
Does "Rachel" call you guys as much as she calls me? I keep blocking her number, she keeps getting another one.
 
I don't understand why phone companies have a feature that supports spoofing of numbers. I don't know what legitimate purpose it could serve.
 
RudyP said:
I wish I could delete the phone app on my iPhone but it doesn't let me. So I just put it in do not disturb mode. If anyone I know wants to reach me they just text or email. I haven't answered an unscheduled phone call in at least a few years.
Click to expand...
I'm glad do not disturb mode has worked for you, but I've had spam calls come through anyway. Apparently there is a way to send a call with "high priority" or something that overrides do not disturb. I've never gotten a *phone call* come through when BOTH airplane mode and do not disturb were active, but I have no reason to think, from my experience, that it will block ALL of them. As I wrote, I no longer take my cellphone to class with me, since the only thing I really used it for there is to get accurate time, and I use a computer anyway.
 
To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to stop the calls if they are spoofing phone numbers.
The people behind "Rachel from card services.." are now calling me and spoofing my own phone number, which makes it very easy to ignore.
What's really disturbing, and appears to fast becoming the next big thing, is that they are getting info on the numbers you call or receive calls from frequently, and are spoofing those numbers, so you see them and pick up.
That means someone in the phone company is illegally selling that information.
Someone has called here 3 times in the last two days spoofing my 101 year old mother-in-laws number.
 
I'd love to mute the phone and ignore it, but I hate having legit phone calls go unanswered. Half the people I know do that, and it drives me up a wall. I just don't'want to act like a flake. Why have a phone if you aren't going to answer it?
 
Palmpilot said:
I don't understand why phone companies have a feature that supports spoofing of numbers. I don't know what legitimate purpose it could serve.
Click to expand...
Forwarding via Google voice
 
I ditched the landline and went with Obitalk and google voice. Google voice shows the number of the incoming call on Google Talk. Mark the number as spam. Seems to work, at least from repeat calls from the same number.
 
I cancelled the land line a few years ago. I have an old phone from the 50s that has that wonderful bell ringer. Hearing that in the middle of the night was like hearing a smoke alarm go off....
 
I've contemplated changing my number. I receive no less than 10-15 spam calls a day. They used to mostly be out of town area codes, but lately it has all been local numbers. I coach two different sport teams and have parents call me frequently so I usually try to answer but these calls have made me start screening numbers and just make people leave a voicemail. It is absolutely ridiculous.
 
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