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As a European (I have absolutely never ever received one of these calls), is this really so bad? How many calls a month do you receive? What do they offer? Isn'

As a European (I have absolutely never ever received one of these calls), is this really so bad? How many calls a month do you receive? What do they offer? Isn't there any kind of regulation? If I remember correctly the law here says it's ok for you to call people to offer services or sell things, but there has to be a human talking, which is quite the deterrent.

Baeocystin 9y ago
Living in the Bay Area, California: Our landline gets between 3 and 7 robocalls/day. My cell, maybe 3-4 a week. It's infuriating.
- mrkrabo 9y ago
  Please tell me what kind of services and products do they offer in those calls.
  - immad 9y ago
    I get mostly pharmacy products and vacation deals
  - rblatz 9y ago
    I get calls about buying a car warranty, I won some sort of cruise, or some one who is having trouble with their headset.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      Ditto on car warranties, that's a good 70% of mine.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    Vacation scam, 'this is IRS' scam, 'update your google business account' scam, 'this is microsoft support' scam, and then ~20% of the time someone trying to sell me window blinds, security systems, or other low-value, high-margin crap. Although once I did get a phone call from Adobe, back when they had that big userinfo leak. I thanked them for the call, but said I wasn't going to do anything over the phone, they could contact me through my email address, which they did. So that's one legit one, at least. I have to leave our house fax unplugged most of the time for the same reason. It is a genuine annoyance.
    - passivepinetree 9y ago
      You have a fax system at your house and even that gets spam? I can't imagine that those are widespread enough to make that profitable for the scammers.
      - Baeocystin 9y ago
        Business inertia is a hell of a thing!
  - prawn 9y ago
    In Australia, it's usually ATO (IRS-equivalent) scams. The non-robo calls are typically sub-continental SEO spammers, marketing surveys, charity drives, politicians, etc.
  - scierama 9y ago
    You can see the list if you go to the FTC's Do Not Call site here: https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.as... Then click Continue and view the list named: "What was the call about?".
- logicallee 9y ago
  do you think you gave your numbers out numerous times which is in some but-for sense an ultimate source of your calls (if you had never given your number out you would ultimately not be receiving these calls?) Or do you think everyone gets that many calls per day regardless of whether they've ever given their number out?
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    They just call every number. They spoof the area code and prefix to make it seem like it's a neighbor or local business calling. This tactic may work for landlines, where prefixes are similar in particular neighborhoods (at least in the US). But for cell phones, it's actually a dead giveaway for many people. This is because prefixes are less correlated to location. For example, I have only ever known one person who had the same prefix as my cell phone. So whenever I see a matching prefix on the caller ID, I know it's a spoofed robocall. But it's possible that these robocallers actually don't mind that people like me get wise to them in this way, because they'd rather only reach less tech-savvy targets, who don't know about caller ID spoofing. This is like how spammers are rumored to use well-known tropes in their messages because then the only people dumb enough to respond are "qualified leads" that are more likely to fall for scams.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    No. Our landline is not my business line, and only family has it. My fax line is something I've given to a lot of businesses, but the # number of calls is roughly the same. My cell is also my business line, and thus freely given out, but thankfully the number of calls is less than either of our landlines.
- DrScump 9y ago
  Same here. I often get back to back calls with one bearing my landline prefix and followed by one to my mobile with its prefix (both numbers undoubtedly spoofed).
- erinnh 9y ago
  Holy hell. At that point Id just delete those phone numbers and do everything in my might to stop the calls. Maybe even block all non contact numbers and tell people to write me emails instead.
  - moftz 9y ago
    I don't pickup my cell unless it's from someone I know. I get at least a couple a day and my parent's landline gets even more. I use google voice for voicemail and get zero service at work so I get notifications about having a voicemail throughout the day. Most of my voicemailbox is recordings of spammers and robocallers. Google has started identifying spammer numbers by a report service so anyone can flag a number as spam. This helps a bit but most of the calls don't show up as spammers. It's no use to delete the numbers because they will probably never be used again to call me.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    Believe me, I hear you. If it weren't for the need to keep the copper landline for the comfort and safety of my elderly father, who I had move in with me after my mother's passing, I would have nuked all landlines years ago.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      Do you mean that he likes having the landline, and would rely on it in case of emergency? fwiw, my elderly father uses a cellphone. The only time we can't reach him is when he leaves it inside to go outside, and then a landline wouldn't help him, either :P
      - Baeocystin 9y ago
        Mostly that. He also has a cell phone, but is quite deaf, so he prefers the loudness possible from a boosted land-line phone over wearing his hearing aids and using his cell.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
UK: We get robocalls (completely automated recording) for PPI, and in the past for government schemes like boiler replacement or lost insulation, wherein they try to misrepresent the call as being from the government. Auto-dialers with spoofed caller ID are usually Indian call centres doing "Microsoft support" scam; or are UK fake invoice scammers; or are UK "phone companies" who try to convince you to change your phone/broadband (or sometimes energy supply) usually by saying someone else already agreed to it and this is just the final confirmation call. We're on all the do-not-call lists.
qguv 9y ago
United States: 3–8 per day on my cell phone. Some nights, I get dozens of calls one after the other. I work on-call.
MaulingMonkey 9y ago
> How many calls a month do you receive? Varies by time and by recipient. My "bad" months only net ~10 robocalls, but I'm apparently on the low end. That's more than reaches my email spam folder! I basically no longer pick up for unrecognized numbers - which has it's own problems. > What do they offer? From what I can tell, the ones calling me are straight up scammers. "Rachel with cardholder services", "free vacation" nonsense, etc. > Isn't there any kind of regulation? Ineffective ones, yes. I may have recieved one or two legal robocalls (there are a few exemptions for e.g. political calls) but the majority I get are illegal. Enforcement is problematic - caller ID spoofing is common. VOIP lets a call center in India spoof your local area code, and even enforcement against domestic callers has taken distressingly long. > If I remember correctly the law here says it's ok for you to call people to offer services or sell things, but there has to be a human talking, which is quite the deterrent. We have similar here - although I'm not sure if it's legal to blind call cellphones, or numbers in the "do not call" registry, unless you've established some kind of business relationship. They're also generally required to add you to their own "do not call" lists if you tell them to (possibly an exception there for debt collectors?) Meanwhile, these robocallers don't have a means of opting out, don't have the scammer on the line to yell at, and run the same fucking campaign for months! It'd be one thing if those ~10/month calls were varied - but no, it's the exact same prerecorded message 20 times from 20 unique spoofed phone numbers all hailing from my own area code, that I hang up 3 seconds into because I remember their intros.
- cmg 9y ago
  Some days I get 5 of these calls per day. It's gotten to the point that I pay $2/month for an app subscription on my iPhone that blocks most of them. Unfortunately, it can't stop them from leaving voicemails or block numbers on the same area code & exchange as you. I believe some of them are because literally 5 years ago, I registered a domain without using WHOIS privacy. Some of them are probably from other marketing lists, like the USPS change of address forms, and some is likely just random.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  > I basically no longer pick up for unrecognized numbers - which has it's own problems. Curious, what problems? I haven't regularly answered calls from numbers I don't recognize as long as I've had a cell phone. Anyone who has a real reason to call me would leave a voicemail (or text me these days).
CDokolas 9y ago
I suspect that here in Europe you can't spoof caller ID :)
- erinnh 9y ago
  Definitely possible. There are legit VOIP services that will spoof my outgoing caller ID to a different phone number of mine that I have previously confirmed with them.
raverbashing 9y ago
Yeah it seems the amount of money the US spends on BS products and services caused by bad or lacking regulation is atrocious (not that the cookie directive is better, but the cost is small and people usually overdo it) Anyway, to me the issue is that exchanges that plug into the POTS service needs to be held accountable Things like: you're allowed to spoof the number if your own that number (like IP blocks) and can receive a call on that number, otherwise call gets blocked and/or you get fined (the interchange) VoIP call rates seem to be around 3c per min (compare that to a pre-paid cellphone minute in the US and see how it's extortionate)
w8rbt 9y ago
I get 5 to 7 calls a day. I don't answer the phone unless I know the number. If it's important, they'll leave a message.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  It's worth mentioning that answering will tend to reduce call volume; in general scammers will mark a number as done once their pitch has failed. They don't do that for no answer.
mrexroad 9y ago
I get maybe 7-10 per week on my mobile.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
I receive 3 - 4 per DAY on Verizon. Though, some weeks it's lighter; maybe 1 - 2 per day. It's really bad. Gladly, that's my work number, so if the numbers aren't in contacts, I don't answer.
usefulcat 9y ago
I've been getting multiple calls per week (sometimes per day) on T-Mobile for at least 3-4 months now.
yoda_sl 9y ago
I do receive at least between 2 to 5 calls a day ! Same for my wife. We are in the Bay Area. It is becoming such a pain, that I have decided to work on an app (iOS first) to help filter/detect such calls... it will not necessarily catch every calls but it should help make a dent into it. There are many apps on iOS with similar features, but I have a different/novel approach for it. The most important piece is the backend system which I have almost complete now, so I have started as of yesterday the iOS code... I would love to get some beta testers before I release it. Contact info in my profile.
acjohnson55 9y ago
I get ~1 daily. Often zero, but as many as 3.
brixon 9y ago
At least 2 calls a day call my phone, but it used to be more. Currently I am using the "Mr Number" app and it will send every call to voicemail unless they are in my contact list. Robocallers tend to not leave messages (unless it is my auto insurance on a holiday telling me to drive safe).
op00to 9y ago
I receive anywhere from 3-5 spam calls a day from clearly spoofed numbers. My worst was 15 in one day.
scierama 9y ago
My numbers, my wife's too, have been on the FTC's DoNotCall list for over a decade and I check every 2 or 3 years to make sure they are still on it. We still get a total of around 250 calls per year. I also used to actively report each call until I realized it seems like the FTC is farming robocallers for cash using fines. Now I just block the caller and move on.

Baeocystin 9y ago

Living in the Bay Area, California: Our landline gets between 3 and 7 robocalls/day. My cell, maybe 3-4 a week. It's infuriating.

mrkrabo 9y ago
Please tell me what kind of services and products do they offer in those calls.
- immad 9y ago
  I get mostly pharmacy products and vacation deals
- rblatz 9y ago
  I get calls about buying a car warranty, I won some sort of cruise, or some one who is having trouble with their headset.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    Ditto on car warranties, that's a good 70% of mine.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  Vacation scam, 'this is IRS' scam, 'update your google business account' scam, 'this is microsoft support' scam, and then ~20% of the time someone trying to sell me window blinds, security systems, or other low-value, high-margin crap. Although once I did get a phone call from Adobe, back when they had that big userinfo leak. I thanked them for the call, but said I wasn't going to do anything over the phone, they could contact me through my email address, which they did. So that's one legit one, at least. I have to leave our house fax unplugged most of the time for the same reason. It is a genuine annoyance.
  - passivepinetree 9y ago
    You have a fax system at your house and even that gets spam? I can't imagine that those are widespread enough to make that profitable for the scammers.
    - Baeocystin 9y ago
      Business inertia is a hell of a thing!
- prawn 9y ago
  In Australia, it's usually ATO (IRS-equivalent) scams. The non-robo calls are typically sub-continental SEO spammers, marketing surveys, charity drives, politicians, etc.
- scierama 9y ago
  You can see the list if you go to the FTC's Do Not Call site here: https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.as... Then click Continue and view the list named: "What was the call about?".
logicallee 9y ago
do you think you gave your numbers out numerous times which is in some but-for sense an ultimate source of your calls (if you had never given your number out you would ultimately not be receiving these calls?) Or do you think everyone gets that many calls per day regardless of whether they've ever given their number out?
- gnicholas 9y ago
  They just call every number. They spoof the area code and prefix to make it seem like it's a neighbor or local business calling. This tactic may work for landlines, where prefixes are similar in particular neighborhoods (at least in the US). But for cell phones, it's actually a dead giveaway for many people. This is because prefixes are less correlated to location. For example, I have only ever known one person who had the same prefix as my cell phone. So whenever I see a matching prefix on the caller ID, I know it's a spoofed robocall. But it's possible that these robocallers actually don't mind that people like me get wise to them in this way, because they'd rather only reach less tech-savvy targets, who don't know about caller ID spoofing. This is like how spammers are rumored to use well-known tropes in their messages because then the only people dumb enough to respond are "qualified leads" that are more likely to fall for scams.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  No. Our landline is not my business line, and only family has it. My fax line is something I've given to a lot of businesses, but the # number of calls is roughly the same. My cell is also my business line, and thus freely given out, but thankfully the number of calls is less than either of our landlines.
DrScump 9y ago
Same here. I often get back to back calls with one bearing my landline prefix and followed by one to my mobile with its prefix (both numbers undoubtedly spoofed).
erinnh 9y ago
Holy hell. At that point Id just delete those phone numbers and do everything in my might to stop the calls. Maybe even block all non contact numbers and tell people to write me emails instead.
- moftz 9y ago
  I don't pickup my cell unless it's from someone I know. I get at least a couple a day and my parent's landline gets even more. I use google voice for voicemail and get zero service at work so I get notifications about having a voicemail throughout the day. Most of my voicemailbox is recordings of spammers and robocallers. Google has started identifying spammer numbers by a report service so anyone can flag a number as spam. This helps a bit but most of the calls don't show up as spammers. It's no use to delete the numbers because they will probably never be used again to call me.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  Believe me, I hear you. If it weren't for the need to keep the copper landline for the comfort and safety of my elderly father, who I had move in with me after my mother's passing, I would have nuked all landlines years ago.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Do you mean that he likes having the landline, and would rely on it in case of emergency? fwiw, my elderly father uses a cellphone. The only time we can't reach him is when he leaves it inside to go outside, and then a landline wouldn't help him, either :P
    - Baeocystin 9y ago
      Mostly that. He also has a cell phone, but is quite deaf, so he prefers the loudness possible from a boosted land-line phone over wearing his hearing aids and using his cell.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

UK: We get robocalls (completely automated recording) for PPI, and in the past for government schemes like boiler replacement or lost insulation, wherein they try to misrepresent the call as being from the government. Auto-dialers with spoofed caller ID are usually Indian call centres doing "Microsoft support" scam; or are UK fake invoice scammers; or are UK "phone companies" who try to convince you to change your phone/broadband (or sometimes energy supply) usually by saying someone else already agreed to it and this is just the final confirmation call. We're on all the do-not-call lists.

qguv 9y ago

United States: 3–8 per day on my cell phone. Some nights, I get dozens of calls one after the other. I work on-call.

MaulingMonkey 9y ago

> How many calls a month do you receive? Varies by time and by recipient. My "bad" months only net ~10 robocalls, but I'm apparently on the low end. That's more than reaches my email spam folder! I basically no longer pick up for unrecognized numbers - which has it's own problems. > What do they offer? From what I can tell, the ones calling me are straight up scammers. "Rachel with cardholder services", "free vacation" nonsense, etc. > Isn't there any kind of regulation? Ineffective ones, yes. I may have recieved one or two legal robocalls (there are a few exemptions for e.g. political calls) but the majority I get are illegal. Enforcement is problematic - caller ID spoofing is common. VOIP lets a call center in India spoof your local area code, and even enforcement against domestic callers has taken distressingly long. > If I remember correctly the law here says it's ok for you to call people to offer services or sell things, but there has to be a human talking, which is quite the deterrent. We have similar here - although I'm not sure if it's legal to blind call cellphones, or numbers in the "do not call" registry, unless you've established some kind of business relationship. They're also generally required to add you to their own "do not call" lists if you tell them to (possibly an exception there for debt collectors?) Meanwhile, these robocallers don't have a means of opting out, don't have the scammer on the line to yell at, and run the same fucking campaign for months! It'd be one thing if those ~10/month calls were varied - but no, it's the exact same prerecorded message 20 times from 20 unique spoofed phone numbers all hailing from my own area code, that I hang up 3 seconds into because I remember their intros.

cmg 9y ago
Some days I get 5 of these calls per day. It's gotten to the point that I pay $2/month for an app subscription on my iPhone that blocks most of them. Unfortunately, it can't stop them from leaving voicemails or block numbers on the same area code & exchange as you. I believe some of them are because literally 5 years ago, I registered a domain without using WHOIS privacy. Some of them are probably from other marketing lists, like the USPS change of address forms, and some is likely just random.
0xffff2 9y ago
> I basically no longer pick up for unrecognized numbers - which has it's own problems. Curious, what problems? I haven't regularly answered calls from numbers I don't recognize as long as I've had a cell phone. Anyone who has a real reason to call me would leave a voicemail (or text me these days).

CDokolas 9y ago

I suspect that here in Europe you can't spoof caller ID :)

erinnh 9y ago
Definitely possible. There are legit VOIP services that will spoof my outgoing caller ID to a different phone number of mine that I have previously confirmed with them.

raverbashing 9y ago

Yeah it seems the amount of money the US spends on BS products and services caused by bad or lacking regulation is atrocious (not that the cookie directive is better, but the cost is small and people usually overdo it) Anyway, to me the issue is that exchanges that plug into the POTS service needs to be held accountable Things like: you're allowed to spoof the number if your own that number (like IP blocks) and can receive a call on that number, otherwise call gets blocked and/or you get fined (the interchange) VoIP call rates seem to be around 3c per min (compare that to a pre-paid cellphone minute in the US and see how it's extortionate)

w8rbt 9y ago

I get 5 to 7 calls a day. I don't answer the phone unless I know the number. If it's important, they'll leave a message.

maxerickson 9y ago
It's worth mentioning that answering will tend to reduce call volume; in general scammers will mark a number as done once their pitch has failed. They don't do that for no answer.

mrexroad 9y ago

I get maybe 7-10 per week on my mobile.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

I receive 3 - 4 per DAY on Verizon. Though, some weeks it's lighter; maybe 1 - 2 per day. It's really bad. Gladly, that's my work number, so if the numbers aren't in contacts, I don't answer.

usefulcat 9y ago

I've been getting multiple calls per week (sometimes per day) on T-Mobile for at least 3-4 months now.

yoda_sl 9y ago

I do receive at least between 2 to 5 calls a day ! Same for my wife. We are in the Bay Area. It is becoming such a pain, that I have decided to work on an app (iOS first) to help filter/detect such calls... it will not necessarily catch every calls but it should help make a dent into it. There are many apps on iOS with similar features, but I have a different/novel approach for it. The most important piece is the backend system which I have almost complete now, so I have started as of yesterday the iOS code... I would love to get some beta testers before I release it. Contact info in my profile.

acjohnson55 9y ago

I get ~1 daily. Often zero, but as many as 3.

brixon 9y ago

At least 2 calls a day call my phone, but it used to be more. Currently I am using the "Mr Number" app and it will send every call to voicemail unless they are in my contact list. Robocallers tend to not leave messages (unless it is my auto insurance on a holiday telling me to drive safe).

op00to 9y ago

I receive anywhere from 3-5 spam calls a day from clearly spoofed numbers. My worst was 15 in one day.

scierama 9y ago

My numbers, my wife's too, have been on the FTC's DoNotCall list for over a decade and I check every 2 or 3 years to make sure they are still on it. We still get a total of around 250 calls per year. I also used to actively report each call until I realized it seems like the FTC is farming robocallers for cash using fines. Now I just block the caller and move on.