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"Spam phone calls/telemarketers" are probably on the nicer side of typical voice traffic floating around (at least in the US) these days. The article doesn't r

"Spam phone calls/telemarketers" are probably on the nicer side of typical voice traffic floating around (at least in the US) these days. The article doesn't really mention the vast number of spoofed police/(three letter government agency) calls that attempt to get people to pay up for a made-up crime. Sometimes these are even highly targeted (e.g., scary threats aimed towards international students). It's gotten to the point where not only do I never answer the phone from a number I don't know, I regret ever having listed my number on a CV/resume that has certainly been scraped at this point.

jolmg 8y ago
Then there are places where you get calls from people pretending to be your just recently kidnapped daughter or other family member crying for you and then switching to someone supposedly the kidnapper trying to get you to pay a ransom right quick before they do something you might regret. They yell and demand to get you scared so you're not thinking straight. I know a few people this has happened to. One uncle got a call from his "daughter" crying for his help when she was really only a few months old. That was a little funny. As soon as he expressed surprise at how quickly his daughter learned to talk, they hung up. Best thing to do in these scenarios is to hang up quick without saying anything, and contacting your family member directly to check if they're ok. There are also those that talk vaguely and familiar to get you to think it's someone you should know but just can't remember, and they'll tell you they've got trouble and ask if you can help them out with some money. I've gotten one of those. Oftentimes, how this works is that they'll call you sometime before to carefully obtain information from you and then call you again when you might have forgotten the call to use this info against you. These things used to be more common a few years ago, but I'm still careful never to give any personal info to random callers. Back then, I once got a call like this: *ring* me: "Hello?" caller: "Who am I speaking to?" me: "No. Who are you and what do you want?" *caller hangs up* Something that's really annoying recently are telemarketing calls from the competitor of my cellphone provider. Every. time. of the 3 to 7 times a day they call, they ask for my name. I mean, what? Given how common these types of scams were nationwide just a few years ago, you'd think they'd understand how unacceptable it is for a caller to ask the name of the person they're calling.

jolmg 8y ago

Then there are places where you get calls from people pretending to be your just recently kidnapped daughter or other family member crying for you and then switching to someone supposedly the kidnapper trying to get you to pay a ransom right quick before they do something you might regret. They yell and demand to get you scared so you're not thinking straight. I know a few people this has happened to. One uncle got a call from his "daughter" crying for his help when she was really only a few months old. That was a little funny. As soon as he expressed surprise at how quickly his daughter learned to talk, they hung up. Best thing to do in these scenarios is to hang up quick without saying anything, and contacting your family member directly to check if they're ok. There are also those that talk vaguely and familiar to get you to think it's someone you should know but just can't remember, and they'll tell you they've got trouble and ask if you can help them out with some money. I've gotten one of those. Oftentimes, how this works is that they'll call you sometime before to carefully obtain information from you and then call you again when you might have forgotten the call to use this info against you. These things used to be more common a few years ago, but I'm still careful never to give any personal info to random callers. Back then, I once got a call like this: *ring* me: "Hello?" caller: "Who am I speaking to?" me: "No. Who are you and what do you want?" *caller hangs up* Something that's really annoying recently are telemarketing calls from the competitor of my cellphone provider. Every. time. of the 3 to 7 times a day they call, they ask for my name. I mean, what? Given how common these types of scams were nationwide just a few years ago, you'd think they'd understand how unacceptable it is for a caller to ask the name of the person they're calling.