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Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two w

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

rudedogg 9y ago
> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I've had to do the same. I sometimes get three calls and voicemails per day about business loans. I'm pretty sure they got my number by scraping the LLC filings for my state :\. I wish I would of used a Google Voice number rather than my cell.
- bonestamp2 9y ago
  One business that I own has "Lab" in its name. It gets sales calls for lab equipment from Asia at least once/week. It's a data lab, not a chemistry lab... these sales reps haven't done 1 second of research before calling. I assume they're scraping the names from somewhere too, or someone is scraping it and selling them a list.
- abawany 9y ago
  One approach is to get a new cell number and port your existing cell number to Google Voice (GV). You can then forward calls from the latter to the former, using GV blocking and spam filtering to kill off the noise.
  - Skunkleton 9y ago
    I tried this once. Now I have debt collectors after me because of my numbers previous owner.
    - xapata 9y ago
      If you have GVoice, you can change your forwarding number easily.
fosco 9y ago
> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?
- danielecook 9y ago
  Please do - but how would you go about doing that?
- nkrisc 9y ago
  I've considered it. Important-but-not-emergency calls would theoretically go to voicemail where they can leave a message. I would worry about missing calls that really are emergencies though. This is why I haven't done such a thing. Perhaps there would be an override if they kept calling back.
  - gowld 9y ago
    What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder? Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?
    - nkrisc 9y ago
      > What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder? If I'm available I don't want to wait to find out a family member was in an accident or something. > Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call? No, because I'm in the shower for less than 10 minutes. If some kind of emergency unfortunately happens while I'm in the shower then I guess I'll just have to find out after my shower. I can live with that.
- notyourday 9y ago
  Set default ring tone to silence. Create separate ring tones for people in a contact list or people for whom you must pick up a phone. I have been using this for 3 years. No issues at all.
jrobn 9y ago
I agree. I receive at least one a day. It's more frequent than spam mail. I'm sure there is a viable business venture to basically make "spam assassin" for telecom. I've gotten to the point where I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange that isn't returning one of my calls, because for the past 8 months 90% have been scam calls.
- rudedogg 9y ago
  I've found some apps/services that do this, but I don't think I should have to pay because the phone companies are sacks of shit. So I'm holding out hoping someone (the FCC, my service provider, or the robocaller's service provider) will do something about it.
- gowld 9y ago
  > "spam assassin" for telecom. https://www.asterisk.org/ https://www.asterisk.org/ > I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange Modern telecom scammers spoof your local exchange when they call you.
gowld 9y ago
Wait at least 3-7 years until the pro-freedom-to-pursue-life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-property FCC & FTC are out of power.
paulie_a 9y ago
It is interesting half the calls I bother to answer, are just instantly disconnected. Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. It is funny to get a live person and mess with them though..."oh which credit card are you referring to" I kept one agent on the line for a few minutes and was eventually called some very insulting swear words. If I recall correctly I was called a "bitchass mother fucker"
- jonknee 9y ago
  > Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. I think it might be something silly like confirming the number has a person on the other end. For selling to other spammers. Not sure why they can't do both at once though, so maybe I'm off.
  - apotheothesomai 9y ago
    Pretty sure that is the reason. It's the phone equivalent of verifying an email. They ping, you pong, it goes on a list of verified numbers.
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      It isn't, though. Getting a ringing response is enough to validate a number, and someone who isn't making the effort to check contact lists against do-not-call registries won't be making the effort to track numbers that do not answer, either. In any case, RTNR to such people simply means that there's no-one to answer right now and is no reason to discard a number. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 for what's actually happening.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    They call more people than they have available to answer the phone at the other side. Normally, many phones won't answer. When more phones answer, they just hang on the ones they can't handle. And, obviously, they can save a bit by always having more phones answer than they can handle. This way their employees don't waste any time waiting for a call, instead it's your time that is wasted, what costs them nothing.
cortesoft 9y ago
Yeah, luckily for me my area code for my phone is from where I grew up, and I don’t know anyone who still lives there. That means when I see my own area code in the caller, I know to ignore it because it is spam. Most of the calls are about getting my ‘business listed with google’
- rhcom2 9y ago
  Me too. You don't pay to hide your whois data once and you pay in robocalls for the rest of eternity.
- dopamean 9y ago
  Same exact thing for me. I know three people with the same area code as my number: my wife, brother, and step mother. Their numbers are all in my phone. Any other number is spam and I ignore it. I haven't been wrong yet either.
ransom1538 9y ago
Not me. I always put my fiends phone number into the “win a car” boxes at street fairs. I never get calls.
MrMember 9y ago
Yep, I know if a number has the same first six digits as mine there's a solid 95% probability it's spam. On rare occasions I'll get a text from a number in my area code with some variation of, "Do I know you?" so clearly other people are getting calls spoofed as my number as well.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  I've also been getting lots of "same first six digits" spam, but yesterday I saw a new variation: only the first five digits were the same.
everdev 9y ago
Yes, amazed at how many local numbers are spam. I get three a lot: 1. Vacation Rewards Center - selling cruises I think 2. Business line of credit - their phrasing make it sound like I called them ("Hey, just getting back to you about that $15k line of credit) 3. Tax scare tactics, trying to settle debt or penalties I didn't know who feel for this stuff until I talked to an older gentleman who said he got these calls and it took him a long time and encouragement from his friends to know it was a scam.
- abakker 9y ago
  "this call is in reference to your credit account...there are no current problems with your account, please press 1 to be connected to an operator that can share an amazing opportunity for you $something" I've never clicked '1', and never felt I've missed out, but I've gotten that same call from local numbers in my same block maybe 50 times already this year.
  - noonespecial 9y ago
    I always punch 1. I feel its my civic duty to waste 10 minutes of their time (usually while speaking in my best Monty Python accents). The interesting thing is that I usually only get a person 1/2 the time. The system just glitches to hangup the rest of the time.
    - macawfish 9y ago
      I get these things multiple times per day.
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      It's not a glitch. This sort of system (which will be some form of predictive dialler) relies upon there being far more in-progress calls than human agents. Sometimes, therefore, there's no available agent to connect a person to. This nature of such systems is why some countries regulate them.
    - pandaman 9y ago
jonhendry18 9y ago
It's actually wrecking the utility of the telephone.

rudedogg 9y ago

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I've had to do the same. I sometimes get three calls and voicemails per day about business loans. I'm pretty sure they got my number by scraping the LLC filings for my state :\. I wish I would of used a Google Voice number rather than my cell.

bonestamp2 9y ago
One business that I own has "Lab" in its name. It gets sales calls for lab equipment from Asia at least once/week. It's a data lab, not a chemistry lab... these sales reps haven't done 1 second of research before calling. I assume they're scraping the names from somewhere too, or someone is scraping it and selling them a list.
abawany 9y ago
One approach is to get a new cell number and port your existing cell number to Google Voice (GV). You can then forward calls from the latter to the former, using GV blocking and spam filtering to kill off the noise.
- Skunkleton 9y ago
  I tried this once. Now I have debt collectors after me because of my numbers previous owner.
  - xapata 9y ago
    If you have GVoice, you can change your forwarding number easily.

fosco 9y ago

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

danielecook 9y ago
Please do - but how would you go about doing that?
nkrisc 9y ago
I've considered it. Important-but-not-emergency calls would theoretically go to voicemail where they can leave a message. I would worry about missing calls that really are emergencies though. This is why I haven't done such a thing. Perhaps there would be an override if they kept calling back.
- gowld 9y ago
  What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder? Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    > What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder? If I'm available I don't want to wait to find out a family member was in an accident or something. > Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call? No, because I'm in the shower for less than 10 minutes. If some kind of emergency unfortunately happens while I'm in the shower then I guess I'll just have to find out after my shower. I can live with that.
notyourday 9y ago
Set default ring tone to silence. Create separate ring tones for people in a contact list or people for whom you must pick up a phone. I have been using this for 3 years. No issues at all.

jrobn 9y ago

I agree. I receive at least one a day. It's more frequent than spam mail. I'm sure there is a viable business venture to basically make "spam assassin" for telecom. I've gotten to the point where I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange that isn't returning one of my calls, because for the past 8 months 90% have been scam calls.

rudedogg 9y ago
I've found some apps/services that do this, but I don't think I should have to pay because the phone companies are sacks of shit. So I'm holding out hoping someone (the FCC, my service provider, or the robocaller's service provider) will do something about it.
gowld 9y ago
> "spam assassin" for telecom. https://www.asterisk.org/ https://www.asterisk.org/ > I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange Modern telecom scammers spoof your local exchange when they call you.

gowld 9y ago

Wait at least 3-7 years until the pro-freedom-to-pursue-life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-property FCC & FTC are out of power.

paulie_a 9y ago

It is interesting half the calls I bother to answer, are just instantly disconnected. Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. It is funny to get a live person and mess with them though..."oh which credit card are you referring to" I kept one agent on the line for a few minutes and was eventually called some very insulting swear words. If I recall correctly I was called a "bitchass mother fucker"

jonknee 9y ago
> Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. I think it might be something silly like confirming the number has a person on the other end. For selling to other spammers. Not sure why they can't do both at once though, so maybe I'm off.
- apotheothesomai 9y ago
  Pretty sure that is the reason. It's the phone equivalent of verifying an email. They ping, you pong, it goes on a list of verified numbers.
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    It isn't, though. Getting a ringing response is enough to validate a number, and someone who isn't making the effort to check contact lists against do-not-call registries won't be making the effort to track numbers that do not answer, either. In any case, RTNR to such people simply means that there's no-one to answer right now and is no reason to discard a number. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 for what's actually happening.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  They call more people than they have available to answer the phone at the other side. Normally, many phones won't answer. When more phones answer, they just hang on the ones they can't handle. And, obviously, they can save a bit by always having more phones answer than they can handle. This way their employees don't waste any time waiting for a call, instead it's your time that is wasted, what costs them nothing.

cortesoft 9y ago

Yeah, luckily for me my area code for my phone is from where I grew up, and I don’t know anyone who still lives there. That means when I see my own area code in the caller, I know to ignore it because it is spam. Most of the calls are about getting my ‘business listed with google’

rhcom2 9y ago
Me too. You don't pay to hide your whois data once and you pay in robocalls for the rest of eternity.
dopamean 9y ago
Same exact thing for me. I know three people with the same area code as my number: my wife, brother, and step mother. Their numbers are all in my phone. Any other number is spam and I ignore it. I haven't been wrong yet either.

ransom1538 9y ago

Not me. I always put my fiends phone number into the “win a car” boxes at street fairs. I never get calls.

MrMember 9y ago

Yep, I know if a number has the same first six digits as mine there's a solid 95% probability it's spam. On rare occasions I'll get a text from a number in my area code with some variation of, "Do I know you?" so clearly other people are getting calls spoofed as my number as well.

greenyoda 9y ago
I've also been getting lots of "same first six digits" spam, but yesterday I saw a new variation: only the first five digits were the same.

everdev 9y ago

Yes, amazed at how many local numbers are spam. I get three a lot: 1. Vacation Rewards Center - selling cruises I think 2. Business line of credit - their phrasing make it sound like I called them ("Hey, just getting back to you about that $15k line of credit) 3. Tax scare tactics, trying to settle debt or penalties I didn't know who feel for this stuff until I talked to an older gentleman who said he got these calls and it took him a long time and encouragement from his friends to know it was a scam.

abakker 9y ago
"this call is in reference to your credit account...there are no current problems with your account, please press 1 to be connected to an operator that can share an amazing opportunity for you $something" I've never clicked '1', and never felt I've missed out, but I've gotten that same call from local numbers in my same block maybe 50 times already this year.
- noonespecial 9y ago
  I always punch 1. I feel its my civic duty to waste 10 minutes of their time (usually while speaking in my best Monty Python accents). The interesting thing is that I usually only get a person 1/2 the time. The system just glitches to hangup the rest of the time.
  - macawfish 9y ago
    I get these things multiple times per day.
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    It's not a glitch. This sort of system (which will be some form of predictive dialler) relies upon there being far more in-progress calls than human agents. Sometimes, therefore, there's no available agent to connect a person to. This nature of such systems is why some countries regulate them.
  - pandaman 9y ago

jonhendry18 9y ago

It's actually wrecking the utility of the telephone.