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The laws changed a while ago, I hadn't gotten a single spam call in 10+ years of cell phone ownership. In the last 6 months, it's gotten apocalyptic. Mostly fr
by jvagner 8y ago
The laws changed a while ago, I hadn't gotten a single spam call in 10+ years of cell phone ownership.
In the last 6 months, it's gotten apocalyptic. Mostly from calls from from the first 6 digits of my current phone number, and most of them calling to extend my car warranty.
8-15 calls each day.
I've tried ignoring them, I've answered them, I've spoken to the calling humans (English speakers, the minute you ask for a manager or to be removed, they hang-up... often, the next call comes within 10 minutes, same people, robodialing engaged).
I called AT&T to see what options I had to minimize teh pain. Can I turn off calling entirely? No. Can I have ringing go straight through to voicemail? No, but I can make it happen after 5 seconds.
I've installed robonomo, AT&T's anti-spam calling app, Hiya, TrueCaller, etc.
They don't work well enough.
I'm on an iPhone 7. I like the 8, but not enough to upgrade. I don't like FaceID, and I don't like the notch, and I have an iPad Pro, and so I leave my iPhone on silent all the time, automatically deny any incoming calls that I notice, and have a voicemail greeting that says I don't check voicemail nor accept calls on this line.
It's that bad and annoying. I do have a Google Voice number that I give out, and which gets almost no spam calls for now. I changed that setting to announce that it's a Google Voice number, so I take the occasional business call.
But if the new iPhones continue to be engineered around FaceID, and if FaceID isn't better (and work with sunglasses and goggles and helmets) and if the notch persists, when this contract is up, I'm pretty sure I'll nix the iPhone contract and live with Google Voice on my desktop, and the iPad for mobile texting/connecting.
- bigtex 8y agoI hate how when they use your cell phone number as the robo call caller id and then you get text messages from strangers saying I can't take your call right now. Has happened a few times now.
- gergles 8y agoYou actually can turn off cellular network calling altogether, if you are willing to do that. Dial (star)#67# (or call 611 if it doesn't show up there) to see what number your voicemail center is. Then dial (star)21(star)1(that number)#. That will automatically forward all calls, at the network level, to your voicemail. To cancel this, dial #21#.
- jvagner 8y agoThanks for that, very cool. Giving it a shot. Are these documented somewhere? The response screen is pretty clear on what's going on here, lots of interesting things.