Junk phone calls question

ArrowFlyer86

ArrowFlyer86

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I'm sure like many of you -- I receive endless spam calls (and scam calls for that matter). 99% of the time I don't pick up and my phone automatically flags them as spam calls.

What's puzzling is that my normal number is susceptible to endless calls like this. Meanwhile my Google Voice number has never received a single spam call the entire time I've had it (years and years).
I've given my google voice number out for a number of accounts/product registrations etc. So theoretically that number should be floating through marketing databases + public domain and the general internet ether the same as my normal number. Yet... no robo calls...

Anyone know why that is? I ask because it's only 11am here and I've already gotten 5 spam calls this AM!
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
I'm sure like many of you -- I receive endless spam calls (and scam calls for that matter). 99% of the time I don't pick up and my phone automatically flags them as spam calls.

What's puzzling is that my normal number is susceptible to endless calls like this. Meanwhile my Google Voice number has never received a single spam call the entire time I've had it (years and years).
I've given my google voice number out for a number of accounts/product registrations etc. So theoretically that number should be floating through marketing databases + public domain and the general internet ether the same as my normal number. Yet... no robo calls...

Anyone know why that is? I ask because it's only 11am here and I've already gotten 5 spam calls this AM!
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I get them all the time too, the caller id has them calling from a town in my state, wy. I either mess with them or ignore the calls, I’m so sick of the calls
 
I recently moved from android (pixel) to iOS.

I get about 20x the spam calls and texts vs what used to get through, and a TON of political BS texts get through, which drives me up the wall. I'm pretty disappointed in the transition. My family are the green-bubble-text mafia though, so when I say I'm moving back to android they all hoot. Since the device was expensive, I'll amortize it out another few years before deciding whether to switch back or not.

So I guess the point is -- if you're iOS and willing to try, switching to an android pixel might work for you. I miss the call screening feature every day.
 
schmookeeg said:
I recently moved from android (pixel) to iOS.

I get about 20x the spam calls and texts vs what used to get through, and a TON of political BS texts get through, which drives me up the wall. I'm pretty disappointed in the transition. My family are the green-bubble-text mafia though, so when I say I'm moving back to android they all hoot. Since the device was expensive, I'll amortize it out another few years before deciding whether to switch back or not.

So I guess the point is -- if you're iOS and willing to try, switching to an android pixel might work for you. I miss the call screening feature every day.
Click to expand...

I'm on my 3rd Pixel... So not an iOS issue!
 
I get them in my Google Voice number as well. Less though. I think it may be because Google Voice numbers are somehow tagged. I noticed that because when I've used it for registrations and the like I have sometimes received a you-need-a-real-number message.
 
I have both landline and an iPhone. I rarely get junk calls on the iPhone, and that's the one I give out. But the calls on the landline can be fun. Most are from Pakistan, the Philipines or India. Most of the calls for remote access into my Windows system have stopped. They were the most fun. I'd let the schmuck go on and on and be very stupid "where on the screen should I click? But I don't have a 4 color flag on the bottom left corner" and they get more and more aggravated. They also have a very limited vocabulary of english obscenities. That's when I tell them I run unix and hang up. Wasted their time, spent an amusing 4-5 minutes.

Now the calls claim to be medicare or the police benevolent union. No political but I expect that to change very soon.
 
I have IOS. Years ago I got on the national do not call list. Some say that it is worthless but it helped me tremendously. The other thing that I do is block callers.

I do not answer numbers I do not know or are not in my contacts. If you leave a message I may call you back or block you depending on the message. If you do not leave a message I'll generally let it slide once and on a good day twice. After that the block goes on.

I have a lot of blocked numbers on my phone but these days I rarely get any spam calls.
 
In the last month two my spam calls have nearly tripled. My junk mail has increased much faster than that.
 
I block unknown callers on iOS. It made a dramatic reduction for me. I haven’t found a reliable way to block spam text messages
 
Occasionally I get a call with an ID of Directv. So I answer, ''Thank you for calling Dish Network, how may I direct your call.??''

Or I get my wife to answer and speak Tagalog. One time the caller kept asking if she spoke English, and my wife kept answering in Tagalog. Then another voice came on the line....''I think she is speaking Russian..." :lol:
 
Sign the numbers up for spam calls of their own? Record the numbers and enter them any time a website asks for a phone number.
 
Zeldman said:
…..Or I get my wife to answer and speak Tagalog….
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Maaaan, anyone can speak Tagalog. It’s Telegu where **** gets real!


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Google voice has a screen feature that says please state your name and we'll try to connect you. That likely filters out robocalls.
 
I am spoiled, and lucky to have gotten involved in VoIP and Asterisk projects over the years. It's one of the things I don't particularly enjoy doing, but I can do it and the results are well worth the effort for me.

I get a rare occasional spam call on my cell phone, and a text now and then, but not enough to be a real annoyance. Report & block features for those. Our land line number is VoIP, and I run my own PBX server to handle it. It does a Nomorobo lookup on incoming calls. If the call shows up in Nomorobo, it simply drops the call. If it's not listed but is a new unknown number, it answers and asks the caller to press a randomly selected single digit to be connected. LOTS of calls get dropped at that point, meaning they're not coming from humans and I don't talk to robots. Our phone never even rings. It's been very nearly 100% effective. The only ones that get through are local businesses (usually window, roof, and siding places) that ignore the Do Not Call list. They never call more than once.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
Sign the numbers up for spam calls of their own? Record the numbers and enter them any time a website asks for a phone number.
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Don't do that. Usually the number you see that it appears to be calling from is spoofed, a randomly selected number that actually belongs to some unrelated innocent person. I've even heard of people getting robocalls that appeared to be from their own number.
 
Recently I've seen an uptick in spam texts to de-tree, paint, or sell my house (for half what it is worth). What has really been annoying me is the huge uptick in physical junk mail with some variation of "Information made available by Navy Federal Credit Union" printed on it. I'm about to give NFCU a piece of my mind about that.
 
DaleB said:
I am spoiled, and lucky to have gotten involved in VoIP and Asterisk projects over the years. It's one of the things I don't particularly enjoy doing, but I can do it and the results are well worth the effort for me.

I get a rare occasional spam call on my cell phone, and a text now and then, but not enough to be a real annoyance. Report & block features for those. Our land line number is VoIP, and I run my own PBX server to handle it. It does a Nomorobo lookup on incoming calls. If the call shows up in Nomorobo, it simply drops the call. If it's not listed but is a new unknown number, it answers and asks the caller to press a randomly selected single digit to be connected. LOTS of calls get dropped at that point, meaning they're not coming from humans and I don't talk to robots. Our phone never even rings. It's been very nearly 100% effective. The only ones that get through are local businesses (usually window, roof, and siding places) that ignore the Do Not Call list. They never call more than once.
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That sounds great. I had Google voice through a Polycom OBi202 for years. It worked great and was completely free, but they have discontinued support for it and now they have stopped working. So, we no longer have a home phone but we still have the google voice service.
 
FORANE said:
Google voice has a screen feature that says please state your name and we'll try to connect you. That likely filters out robocalls.
Click to expand...
I wonder about those robo screeners. Aren’t they just giving away that a live number was called?
 
If you have a greeting message on your phone start it with the "Not in service" tone and then your "Hello you've reached . . ".
Robo calls will hang up as soon as the tone plays, a person will hear the tone and then your welcome message.
Added this to my phone message last Spring, no robo calls since.
My MP3 file of just the tone will not upload. The attached MP4 has the added voice, just clip the vioce off and leave the tone part.
 

Attachments

My carrier is T-Mobile and their blocker seems to work really well. I have a landline as a safety measure for my kids to be able to call 911 or family members if needed. That darn thing is silenced for all the junk calls we get. I occasionally like to mess with the callers. Y'all go take a look at the webTube for ScammerPayback. Very entertaining and informative regarding these kinds of calls.

I've had my cell phone number for almost 20 years now. Apparently, some girl by the name of Tammy used to have it and she doesn't pay her bills. I can tell when my number has been sold by some broker because all of a sudden, after months of silence I'll start getting a barrage of calls looking for her.

Lastly, my number is in the 361 area code which is where all my family lives and where I always figured I would return to. Well, that's not in the cards now so whenever I see an unknown number from the 361 area code I know immediately that it is a spoofed number used by a scammer. How do I know? I live in the 508 area code, over a thousand miles away from South Texas where the 361 code lives. There ain't nobody in Texas trying to reach me whose number I don't have saved. Or they would leave a message at least.
 
I have a similar feature to google voice (RingCentral). Just the fact that you have to push "1" to be connected (1 for me, 2 for Margy, 3 for either) filters out most spam. I haven't figured out the scenario, but occasionally I get voice mail on that line that consists of a computer voice saying "I can not hear you." I just tend not to play and messages that are less than 5 seconds long.

There are all sorts of fun things that turned out to not be spam. I got a call and it turned out to legitimately being American Express verifying a charge. While on the line they asked if the number they had called on was the best one to reach me. I asked them which number they had called. It turned out to be my office phone at Textron. I had forwarded it to the RingCentral number prior to going on vacation (when Textron fired me over the phone). Apparently, they'd not reused that extension and the call forward was still in effect. I gave Amex my cell number instead.

We had this number because our house and terrible cell service (and this was before microcells and wifi failover). My wife also worked in the basement of the Air and Space museum which also didn't have cell service and I worked amongst computer stuff. We were also frequently in NC. The RingCentral was set up with an 877RONMARG that rang all of our cells, our office lines, our home landlines at both houses, the Onstar phone in my truck. I seriously thought that I should set the outgonig message to say "I'm sorry but we're not on this planet right now."
 
schmookeeg said:
I recently moved from android (pixel) to iOS.

I get about 20x the spam calls and texts vs what used to get through, and a TON of political BS texts get through, which drives me up the wall. I'm pretty disappointed in the transition. My family are the green-bubble-text mafia though, so when I say I'm moving back to android they all hoot. Since the device was expensive, I'll amortize it out another few years before deciding whether to switch back or not.

So I guess the point is -- if you're iOS and willing to try, switching to an android pixel might work for you. I miss the call screening feature every day.
Click to expand...
Pixel has the setting to block spam calls. I have a pixel and was getting about 40 spam calls per day with call screening on "Medium". After turning call screening to "Maximum", I have not had a single spam call ring since.

They still show up in my call history though. I wish there was a setting to turn that off.
 
After that, a setting to send lethal voltage into the ear of the spammer.
 
Please, for the love of God don't give her any more views or listens
 
I know how to solve the whole problem in 1 month. FCC requires all phone providers to implement a feature where the receiver of a call can press *38 at any time, and receive $5 from their carrier. The carrier may bill either the originating caller, or the originating carrier if that carrier can't identity the caller, $6 to recover their cost. All to be paid within 30 days. If the carriers collectively can't figure it out and bill the person the last one closest to the caller is out $5. Only exception to be PSAPs following up on 911 hangups.

It would make so many industries much more entertaining in a hurry and it would raise the bar for entry into the phone network just a tiny bit.
 
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