23 ms·

'One Ring' Phone Scam

• shereadsthenews 7y ago
  I can’t imagine why anyone ever answers the phone. I get at least ten robocalls every weekday. I don’t ever look at my voicemail and I haven’t answered a call in ages. Edit: I know I’m not alone because CNN just released a poll with no responses from people under the age of fifty, because they couldn’t reach enough of them by phone.
  • chrisseaton 7y ago
    Why does anyone spend the time to answer a poll for a for-profit company? I bet the person making the call is being compensated but they want the callee’s time for free?
    • millstone 7y ago
      To express and represent your point of view.
      • Scoundreller 7y ago
        The surveyors may not want to represent/hear about the interests of people too bothered to do things that take time without pay (e.g. voting or vaccination, which should also be paid imo).
        • studentrob 7y ago
          That's rather conspiratorial. Not all polls are created equal. If you wonder about a poll's integrity you can read about their methods, e.g. Pew research, https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/u-s-survey-research/our-survey-methodology-in-detail/ https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/u-s-survey-research/our-...
        • thaumasiotes 7y ago
          Vaccination does pay, in kind.
    • unityByFreedom 7y ago
      I guess some people enjoy sharing their opinion. Not everybody does, some people just hang up.
    • icebraining 7y ago
      The main market polling company around here does pay out; usually a 5€ voucher.
    • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      The company doing the poll will often misrepresent themselves IME. "Do you have a minute to talk about your phone service, we're calling from your provider." OR "We're finding out for the government about voter preferences." That sort of thing. People thing they may have an obligation to the company. UK government do a paper-based survey of businesses for which there is a legal obligation (backed by a fine) to respond, but it appears when you first get it just like one of these scammy polling companies.
  • Scoundreller 7y ago
    Work phones and/or being on-call. Encouraging non-PSTN calls can have huge privacy implications (e.g. using Facebook for health care provider communications). But ya; personally, I have a dedicated voicemail number that I hand out when I “must” provide a phone number.
    • blurhblurh 7y ago
      What is the voicemail service you use? I am very interested in a cheap voip service that is literally just voicemail. I'd love that. Especially if it's only $1-2/mo.
  • godelski 7y ago
    Slightly off topic (of the OP, not parent comment) Are you referring to this? [0] I was googling because I was interested. Looking at this the data seems fishy. Under total respondents they have answers for the age group, but not under any of the democratic/democratic leaning responses. So it looks like they only interviewed republicans under 50 and both groups 50+. There's some more fishy patterns like that with repubs <$50k. So it is hard to say if only young republicans answer their phones or the data set is (purposefully?) biased. [0] http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/03/19/rel4b.-.2020.pdf http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/03/19/rel4b.-.2020.pdf
    • URSpider94 7y ago
      No. Read the methodology statement carefully. They have 1000 respondents to the entire poll. When they refer to the data by a stratified group, they only present it if the number of people in that group is 125 or greater. For the poll questions that specifically say. “For voters registered as Democrats or democrat-leaning independents”, the response Pool is cut down to something like 450 (the exact number is listed in the description). If they then divide that into four age groups, then it would actually be reasonable for NONE of them to exceed 125 respondents. If you look at other breakdowns in the survey, it is clear that all of the age groups and demographics are covered. Also note that polls results are almost always corrected after the fact for sampling error - so if they get a low response rate from 20-30 year olds, then they weight those responses more heavily so that they represent the expected proportion of the overall population.
  • gpm 7y ago
    I answer the phone because people who I have to be responsive to call it. I'm currently getting a visa, if someone involved in the decision making process calls my number I better answer it. I was interviewing for a job not that long ago, when people get back to me by the phone I better answer it. When my dentist or doctor calls to schedule an appointment I need to answer it. If a family member needs to get my attention a phone call works better than text - the ringtone is more noticeable. Of course I live in Canada and my number isn't scattered everywhere on the web, I don't think I even get a robocall a week on average. But even if I lived in the states, I don't see how I could avoid the first two requiring I answer my phone sometimes, possibly the third as well but at least I'm the client there so I might be able to talk them into an alternative means of contacting me.
    • dredmorbius 7y ago
      Virtually all of those will leave a message.
      • Fnoord 7y ago
        I have that disabled. Either they contact me via a more modern communication line, or I contact them when it suits me. If I need a doctor appointment, I phone my doctor (or well, his secretary).
        • dredmorbius 7y ago
          Amending prior response: unless you've specifically removed the ability of that option.
    • maccard 7y ago
      I do t disagree with you that answerinf your phone can be necessary, but most of your examples are cases where you are expecting a call - except your doctor/dentist. Why are they calling you and not you calling them to make appointments? Semo-related but it's infuriating how many companies refuse to contact you by email. I'm currently remortgaging a flat, and I've told the broker repeatedly to contact me by email, and they still phone, leave a voicemail asking to be called back, and send an email saying they called.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • droithomme 7y ago
    > I can’t imagine why anyone ever answers the phone. I get at least ten robocalls every weekday. I answer the phone all the time and it's always someone I know. I do not have a caller id display. Here's how I managed that. Only 4 people know my real phone number and are under orders not to add it to any digital address book. My phone number is registered to an alias. I pay for my phone using cash. My area code is in a city I've never lived in and have no connection to. I add my number to the do not call list. For generic phone number requests, such as stores and shipper that demand it, it's always 555-1212. Of course this method won't work well for people who need to give their phone number out to people they don't know. But then again if that result is simply not to answer the phone ever, why would that be better. And for those who really only ever want to hear from a half dozen or fewer trusted friends and family, this is a solution that works.
    • mattkrause 7y ago
      How do you get--and keep--a job? Have friends? Make medical appointments? Order pizza?
      • probably_wrong 7y ago
        I am not the person you are replying to, but I would like to point out that my job never calls me (and if they expected me to be reachable they would give me a work phone), I keep in touch with my friends via my computer, and I order pizza online. Medical appointments are still done over the phone, though, but not always. I wouldn't go as far as to have no phone number whatsoever, but living without one doesn't seem entirely crazy to me.
        • dkersten 7y ago
          I lived without a phone number for about 9 months a few years ago. My phone was basically a WiFi device. I really enjoyed this time and am considering doing it again. I only stopped because my brother got annoyed and bought me a new SIM, but nowadays he doesn’t call me much and uses internet for voice. Even my mother uses WhatsApp for voice. Having a WiFi-only device (as opposed to a data-only one) did mean I had to plan things a bit, just like I had to do before mobile phones became such a popular thing. It wasn’t a big deal at all.
  • URSpider94 7y ago
    If you’re talking about the CNN poll on Democratic Presidential candidates, then that’s a colossal mis-statement of the facts. They definitely did have people under 50 in the poll. There was a Facebook post making the rounds that took a single chart from the methodology statement and claimed that nobody under 50 was polled, incorrectly. I encourage you to read the full polling statement, available online, to see that’s not the case. All of that said, yes, pollsters do have to do more work to survey younger people. They have recently added cell phones to their call lists, since land line phones are going the way of the dodo.
    • shereadsthenews 7y ago
      I don't think I've misrepresented the outcome of the poll at all. Even after lumping together 18-49 year old respondents, an unusually coarse cohort spanning several generations, they still didn't have enough responses to get statistical power.
      • URSpider94 7y ago
        First, I don't see any table that lumps all responses 18-49. I do see a column for <45. Second, the tables that show responses for all respondents do include values (not N/A) for all age groups, meaning that across the n=1000 poll there are > 125 respondents in each age group, meaning that at minimum 250 people out of the 1000 in the poll are under 50. The categories that do have N/A are in questions that select for only Democratic or Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote -- which is only 411 respondents out of the poll. And that one does have a lot of N/A's, including in the < 45 column. Having N < 125 under 45 in a sample size of 411 people is disappointing, but hardly the same as "no responses from people under 50", which is what you wrote. It also doesn't mean that those responses weren't included in the poll, only that they didn't feel confident to break them out separately.
  • m1sta_ 7y ago
    I don't understand why the USA doesn't pass laws to address this.
    • Causality1 7y ago
      "muh socialism"
    • metalliqaz 7y ago
      Regulatory capture.
  • agotterer 7y ago
    Over the past 6 months the number of robocalls to my mobile number has increased from 1 or 2 a week to at least 5+ a day. I’ve also just stopped answering numbers I don’t recognize.m, which isn’t always ideal because I miss legitimate calls now. I actually just send it immediately to voicemail. Most of the time my voicemail box is full because it’s filled with junk I don’t bother clearing out. Ive contemplated changing my number. But I imagine that won’t actually help. Is this just the new reality? Are there any solutions?
    • sethammons 7y ago
      I've moved to a new area code and kept my old number. Aside from known contacts, if I get a call from my phone's area code, I know it is not legit. If I get a call from my new area code, I know it has to be a local someone and I should answer it. Zero accepted robo calls in 6mo.
      • jerf 7y ago
        I've also done the "moved out of the area code of my number 15 years ago" [1], but someone's gotten smarter lately. They've hooked up to some sort of information source and I'm getting a lot more robo calls from my real area code lately. Since we have so many dozens of thousands of our best and brightest thinking day in and day out about how to violate our privacy, more dozens of thousands figuring out how to monetize that data, and so many dozens of our best and brightest thinking about how to secure that data, I can't even begin to guess what they've got a hold of or what it is, just that it's enough to start spamming me with faked calls that look a lot more real. I've literally noticed this just in the last couple of weeks; at least for me, it's a relatively recent development. YMMV. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1129/ https://xkcd.com/1129/
  • KozmoNau7 7y ago
    I only answer the phone if the call is from someone on my contact list. My phone is in Do Not Disturb mode 100% of the time, with only alarms and priority calls whitelisted, so I know that if a call comes through, it's probably important. Everyone else can send a message or record a voicemail. I'll call or write back when I feel like it. I have also taken the step of disabling all notifications except for direct messages to me. Those get to pop an icon in the notification bar, but no sound nor vibration alerts. I'll see the message whenever I decide to check my phone.
    • ytjohn 7y ago
      I'm setup pretty much the same way. I actually have a home phone (in addition to a cell phone). We used to get robocalls all the time, so it was really just something that would ring at annoying times till the answering machine picked up. We just replaced it with a new phone that has call blocking. Callers in your caller id are allowed to ring through. Everyone else has to say a name and press a button before they can ring through. While I'm sure some robocallers can press buttons, none of ours do. We put family phone numbers and some of the medical/vet office numbers in. Our phone has been blissfully quiet since.
  • welly 7y ago
    I don't understand why young (I'm making an assumption here) people don't like making or receiving voice calls. I'd far rather talk to someone than text them. Texting requires far more effort and takes far more time.
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      >Texting requires far more effort and takes far more time. A reasonable theory would be that if your typing skills are good enough, the opposite is true.
      • asark 7y ago
        Especially if you're "texting" from a computer (iMessage linked to a phone, for example)
      • welly 7y ago
        It's less the speed of typing but the continual back and forth of texting and the delay between messages. You send a message, you get a reply - sometimes later on in the day and you don't want to be that guy by hassling the recipient of your text messages by keep nudging them. Example, today on the train I texted a mate to see if he was about as we'd previously discussed meeting up today. I was going to get off the train at a particular stop if I was going to see him but otherwise would have carried on. I texted him and didn't get a reply until just before I was going to get off the train, which was about 40 minutes later. If I'd just given him a phone call, I'd have known immediately. It was all fine in the end but if I hadn't received his text before the first stop, I'd have continued on my way assuming he was busy. But because now the default method of communication is text messaging, I feel I can't make a phone call any more.
      • fjsolwmv 7y ago
        Those are rare skills. The optimum is texting via voice recog
    • dredmorbius 7y ago
      Depends on the correspondent, but many messages can be resolved quickly via text, while phone conversations tend to get more easily waylaid. People who prefer to create drama or interminable conversations can and do do so via any medium.
  • thefounder 7y ago
    What's your phone for if not to answer when people call you?
    • tstrimple 7y ago
      The Internet and occasionally texting.
    • scarecrowbob 7y ago
      Mostly I use it as a network connection for the Messages app on my computer, and as a mobile computing platform/camera/text message system. Occasionally I use it for a general network connection when I don't have wifi. I call my parents every once in a while, though. It's a nice to have feature.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • kljdsjiodjaof 7y ago
      - taking and sharing photos - to get directions - to send and receive text messages - to listen to music and media - voicemail and lastly - to make and receive phone calls agreed upon in advance, usually text
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      To call other people? Calls I make are split ~50/50 between personal, to people who know me and have my number, and business, when I either want to buy something or resolve some issue. Calls I receive are split 40/60 between personal and spam. And I'm in Europe. In the US, from what I hear, that would be closer to 10/90. There's a huge asymmetry in phone use. Marketers and scammers make the phone network near-unusable to regular people, by ensuring most of the calls they receive are unwanted.
      • martin_a 7y ago
        Where in Europe are you? I'm in Germany and I'd say I get one call a month from somebody who wants to do a survey or something like that. And I also might get one spam SMS per month which I report to the "Bundesnetzagentur", which will then take care of that as this is prohibited in Germany.
  • tluyben2 7y ago
    You are not alone; people can call me via other voice services. I need a mobile number for mobile banking but otherwise I would have a data sim only.
  • Negitivefrags 7y ago
    I don't understand why the phone companies don't do more prevent this kind of thing in the USA. In New Zealand, I have had periods where spam phone calls have been pretty bad for me. 2 or 3 a day for a week or so, and that was annoying. But they always seem to stop. The last spam call I got was long enough ago that it doesn't show up in my iphones call history. Certainly several months ago. Can't the phone companies look at calls the same way email providers do and use all the information they have at their disposal to filter out the spam?
    • swozey 7y ago
      A bunch of carriers like tmobile and att can filter spam at their network. I was getting 5+ a day so I'm testing tmobiles name ID. But it's an extra $4/month when it should be included. Most people just use hiya and all of the apps that community source the blocking. Tbh my experience is probably better with those.
      • raverbashing 7y ago
        It's part of being completely incompetent at their job then charging people for the "convenience" It's the same BS with credit scores/credit freeze
        • _jal 7y ago
          This appears to be the new-style of "American innovation". You junk something up, break it, or otherwise make things worse and then take your cut out of restoring something resembling the status quo. Living in a gangster's paradise...
  • goodcanadian 7y ago
    Put your number on the National do not call registry. It doesn't stop all calls, but in my experience, it greatly reduces them.
    • mbreese 7y ago
      This isn’t the case anymore. There is currently no real enforcement mechanism in place for the registry, so even a number on the registry will get many robo calls a day now.
    • dredmorbius 7y ago
      Probably doesn't hurt. By most reports, it helps little.
    • ceejayoz 7y ago
      This works well for good actors, but it’s a nicely packaged list of active numbers for the bad ones.
  • adam12 7y ago
    Is that the poll that puts Biden at such a huge lead?
  • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Ah man, I only normally answer at the point someone starts talking to the answerphone and I recognise their voice - people we know are aware of that and so can say who they are and we'll pick up. I had call after call after call from this one number, over about 3 weeks. Eventually, after I was complaining about it to my wife the phone went and it was the same number so I picked up ... it was a domain registrar asking "are you happy, do you need any help", that was it, just a lousy marketing call (probably because I basketed a domain with them and then bought it elsewhere). What an absolute waste of time.
  • EADGBE 7y ago
    > get at least ten robocalls every weekday I always find it interesting how these almost cease each weekend day. Do scammers' charge more to answer a phone on a weekend?
  • Consultant32452 7y ago
    Do you have any guesses as to why you've been chosen? I can't remember the last robocall I got. I'm in my late 30s, have a cell phone only, which is on the do not call registry. The only times I get harassed are when I update my resume on whatever job site. Then for a few weeks/months I get what I consider too many calls from recruiters. I wonder if we have different purchase histories or something that has resulted in this very different outcome.
    • humblebee 7y ago
      I also have a similar experience to the OP. However, I do not get 10 calls a day. It's generally 1-3 during most weekdays but not all. I use to not travel much, and any traveling I did was pretty basic flight + hotel. No fancy vacations or anything. A bit over a year ago I booked a trip to a resort in Cancun through a travel agency in Florida. None stop spam since. I noticed a massive increase the amount of email spam I got and started to received a large number of phone calls. I can't say for certain that was the cause as it seems spam phone calls have been heavily increasing over the last few years, but it's the only thing I can point to as an out of the ordinary change.
      • Consultant32452 7y ago
        That really blows, I'm sorry that happened to you and op. This kind of frequency is tantamount to harassment.
  • mcv 7y ago
    Robocalls seem to be mostly an American problem. I live in Netherland, and I don't think I've ever had a robocall. Marketers, salespeople, pollsters, salespeople pretending to be pollsters, yes, all of those, but all of them real people at least. Most of the spam calls are from energy companies selling energy to small businesses, because I'm registered as a business. Maybe I should get a separate phone number that goes straight to voicemail for my CoC registration. But other than that, our do-not-call regulation seems to be working quite well. Maybe the US should copy it.
• drp 7y ago
  "at not cost." A scam warning with a typo.
• spectramax 7y ago
  I feel like if FCC/Telephone providers don't fix this soon, traditional cell phones will become unreliable and we will need to adopt a new system or just use existing framework (facetime, whatsapp, etc.). If every cell phone has LTE and internet connection, why the fuck do we need traditional cell phone number? I never use it except for calling my pharmacy, customer support or restaurants/shops. All conversations with friends and family happen over messages and Facetime Audio or Whatsapp. While I don't wish to suggest we move to a proprietary system such as Facetime, I think there is a real need for email equivalent of a VOIP solution where there is automatic spam filtering just like emails. Also, why can't cell phone providers use same spam filtering techniques used in email filters? I don't know the details of spoofing but I feel like telephone providers are scum of the earth and they have some kind of a reverse incentive to continue allowing spam calls.
  • saalweachter 7y ago
    I occasionally contemplate trying to find a data-only plan for my cell phone, with no associated cell number.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • mey 7y ago
      That may be impossible under current cell designs. WiFi hotspots even have assigned phone numbers.
      • reaperducer 7y ago
        But a hotspot doesn't ring, so you can ignore it. My hotspot gets spam text messages but I'm only aware of them the once or twice a year I log into its control panel.
      • kalleboo 7y ago
        You'll always have a phone number, but on an SMS- or Data-only plan it will never ring (MVNOs in my country offer these types of plans at a discount because reserving a voice phone number here is subject to ID verification and higher fees)
• unityByFreedom 7y ago
  Great work FCC. Now that all our communications are done over the internet, and ISPs are effectively no longer common carriers [1], you've enabled those internet fast lanes and we'll all get rich. Just kidding, we will pay more for slower internet. But hey, you alerted us about robocalls, so not your fault right? [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/14/the-fcc-is-expected-to-repeal-its-net-neutrality-rules-today-in-a-sweeping-act-of-deregulation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/14... EDIT: Please explain downvotes. You feel the current FCC are saints and would never think such things?
• Brajeshwar 7y ago
  I started with an experiment about a year back and now I've practically stopped answering phone calls. My phone responses are now async. Just like an email, I look up the missed calls list once a while and call back if I know someone or was expecting a call from a particular number. The phone is kept silent at all times and is on DND mode from the first minute of the day to the last. The only call that passes through are the ones in the favorites, which will never exceed 10. Even they won't ring but vibrate. (My wife knows how to make my phone ring via Find my Phone.) This is my No Phone Life - https://no.phone.wtf/ https://no.phone.wtf/
  • eastWestMath 7y ago
    But if someone else had the same system you’d end up in an infinite loop...
    • aloisdg 7y ago
      Use sms
  • baroffoos 7y ago
    That only works if others don't do it however because they won't get your call back.
    • blotter_paper 7y ago
      Nah, it just degrades into voice mail.
  • nimchimpsky 7y ago
    You've created a website to tell people you have your phone set to silent. This seems counter intuitive to me.
  • throwawayjava 7y ago
    ...do you have kids?
• abtinf 7y ago
  What baffles me about this is that getting people to dial these numbers has been a known scam for many years. The fix seems stupidly trivial: break up the North American Numbering Plan to move them out of the +1 zone. They just don’t belong there. Frankly, Canada should be moved out the +1 zone too.
  • Marsymars 7y ago
    > Frankly, Canada should be moved out the +1 zone too. Why? Who does that benefit? It's pretty common for phone plans in both the US and Canada to treat the US/Canada as a single region for the purpose of long distance calls and texts.
    • jgowdy 7y ago
      Good point. The purpose of my comment you replied to above was that there should be either pricing normalization such that callers aren't surprised, OR split the +1 country code. Its not just "kick everyone out of the US country code", it's protect consumers by principle of least surprise sorta. But again, this only protects against toll fraud and not all of the other "Appear to be in a nation you aren't" scams.
  • jarfil 7y ago
    Just changing the zone would do nothing for people who blindly dial back without even checking the number. What we need is a system to report the per-minute cost of an outgoing call, and being able to block any call above that limit (like, set the limit to $0.00/min and you can only call numbers included in your plan). But of course carriers wouldn't want that, not only because it would make consumers painfully aware of how much their calls cost, but also because they are profiting from these scams.
• bredren 7y ago
  I take phone calls now—but I expect them. Either from people in my address book, or from customers I set up a call with in advance. Recently, I had a payment service call me on behalf one of my customers—from my area code. I nearly told them to beat it. I was sure they were spammers. Anon Phone calls are approaching completely spam bucket status. I doubt they will recover.
• vpzom 7y ago
  What does someone gain by doing this? Wouldn't the charges just go toward the caller's phone company?
  • probably_wrong 7y ago
    If they make you call a premium-rate phone number[1], they get to charge you more for the call and keep a percentage of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number
• mattnewport 7y ago
  I thought this was going to be some new Tolkein themed phone scam, I might actually fall for that.
• reaperducer 7y ago
  I wonder if the solution is remarkably simple: Make phone calls expensive again. Get rid of unlimited/free/super-cheap rates and make all callers pay by the minute again. Especially inbound international calls. Let people who want free communication use FaceTime and SMS and Email and whatnot. But make phone calls expensive enough that you know if someone is paying to call you it must be important. I got my first document scanner in 1997. Because of that I still have all of my phone bills going back to that year. I just looked up my April 1997 Cincinnati Bell bill. A five minute call from Cincinnati to Charleston, West Virginia cost $1.45 ($2.31 in 2019 money). If we can raise the cost of customer acquisition there will be far fewer scammers. Incidentally, my total bill for that month was $104.34 -- almost the same as what I spend for cell service today. Except that now I'm paying for unlimited texts and minutes that I never use. The only advantage my phone has today is its mobility, which feels more like a burden than a benefit.
  • kumarharsh 7y ago
    Yes, because Nokia 3310 has FaceTime.
  • kalleboo 7y ago
    I believe this is one reason why spam calls are less of a problem in Europe - in Europe the caller pays the higher rate to call mobile phones (vs the north America system where the cell phone user pays for incoming "airtime"). Just looking at skypeout rates and an example, UK landlines cost 2 cents/min vs 10 cents for mobiles
    • gruez 7y ago
      >in Europe the caller pays the higher rate to call mobile phones (vs the north America system where the cell phone user pays for incoming "airtime"). So in Europe, is receiving calls on a mobile phones free? Or do you still have to pay for minutes?
      • detaro 7y ago
        At least in the countries I'm familiar with it's free, unless you're in a different country and have to pay roaming charges. (Gotta be careful with "in Europe" claims)
• mgalka 7y ago
  I just got a bunch of these yesterday, all from Sierra Leone
  • aeorgnoieang 7y ago
    Me too; weird!
• paul7986 7y ago
  Another trick these spammers are pulling is prompting you to search the number on Google and you clicking thru to a malware infested site. The phone system we once knew needs to be obliterated!
• khazhoux 7y ago
  Similarly, I don't understand why people answer the front door when they can hear or see (through peephole or Ring) that it's a stranger. I don't need your magazines, your house-painting services, your church, or whatever else. If you're lost and looking for your friend's house you're supposed to be at, sorry I'm not gonna be able to help you anyway.
  • Dirlewanger 7y ago
    Attitudes like this is why American communities at the local level are dying.
    • freehunter 7y ago
      Are you suggesting the attitude should be to give your time to door-to-door salesmen and every religious organization that wants to convert you? Everyone who comes to your door deserves your attention regardless of their intentions? It's not really an "attitude" as much as it is a solution to a problem. The problem is door-to-door salesmen (whether they're selling phone service, vacuum cleaners, Girl Scout cookies, or religion). There are ways and places to meet your neighbors that don't revolve around knocking on my door unsolicited. Once we've met, you're no longer a stranger and the "attitude" doesn't apply.
  • copperx 7y ago
    Sometimes a neighbor you haven't met is the one ringing the doorbell. I recently had to leave my car parked in front of a stranger's house, so I rang the doorbell to let them know, but they didn't answer even though they were clearly home. Capitalism might be great and all, but door-to-door marketing and phone spamming have killed reasonable methods of communication. I refuse to let these things die, so I still open the door if I don't know the person (I have a hotel-like door latch now to help prevent someone from kicking in the door or shooting an arrow at me). You just have to learn to be aggressive and say "I'm not interested" if it's a salesman or Jehovah's Witness.
    • discreditable 7y ago
• aryehof 7y ago
  I have received a lot of these one rings from international numbers, and always wondered what they were about. I'm grateful to now know why.
• busymom0 7y ago
  Scammers are getting more and more sophisticated now a days. It seems like most of these scam calls are a result of the ability to spoof phone numbers. Spoofing phone numbers does have legitimate purposes (for example a phone number from a customer service company is able to use their company phone number as the caller ID) but these scammers seem to abuse this. It's quite similar to how SMTP for emails allows the "From" field to be set to something other than your actual email. Email scammers abuse this same thing too but the difference is that in SMTP emails, you can still tap the detailed headers of the email and see what the actual "from" email is. But for phone numbers, this isn't the case. I think, the best way to solve this phone scam issue would be by modifying the phone protocol (I am not sure of the details) to allow users to be able to see the "Real" underlying phone number.
  • marcoperaza 7y ago
    At the very least, for calls purporting to come from within the US, it seems that telephone companies should be able to verify the actual origin of the call and cut off spammers. But perhaps there is more to this than I understand that makes it infeasible.
    • Aloha 7y ago
      That is largely correct, yes - the issue comes up where numbers are valid from more than one carrier, even though say, carrier A owns the numbers, its perfectly valid to place outbound calls for those numbers via carrier B - there is no records kept for that kind of thing currently however.
  • warp 7y ago
    This is apparently being implemented as we speak ( SHAKEN/STIR, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAKEN/STIR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAKEN/STIR ). (which seems a US focused initiative, which I guess makes sense as the problem seems much worse there than in other countries... but I wonder if that means that you guys will be getting lots of robocalls from unknown foreign numbers in the future ;)
    • 7y ago
• anonu 7y ago
  From the website: How to avoid this scam: Don't answer or return any calls from numbers you don't recognize. If the FCC is recommending we don't pick up our phones, isn't something really wrong with the system?
  • Waterluvian 7y ago
    Absolutely. The phone system is totally broken. A few years ago I disabled the incoming call part of my phone to everyone except a few family members and my wife. So far it's been great. Everyone who needs me emails me. I've yet to run into a situation where someone I needed to hear from would only call me.
    • cbluth 7y ago
      I do this exact thing. I have also turned off all notification toast pop-ups on my phone.
    • daviddavis 7y ago
      How did you do that? Is it possible with an iPhone?
      • ceejayoz 7y ago
        You can leave do-not-disturb on, and flag the people you want to exempt as VIPs.
        • crsmith 7y ago
          Doesn't this block all other notifications too?
    • ysavir 7y ago
      Do you have any concerns over being an emergency contact for anyone? I've considered doing the same as you, but I fear the chance that a I would be contacted in such a scenario and wouldn't even know it.
• dropmann 7y ago
  German authorities call this 'Ping Call', and ordered telecommunications providers to make pricing transparent via voice announcements prior to calling, due to ~14.000 complaints in 1/2019 [0] [0] https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2019/20190208_PingAnrufe.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• S_A_P 7y ago
  In the last few years, my phone has steadily become more and more a pocket (textual) communicator and less a telephone. The amount of spam calls I get at the peak numbered about 20-30 per day and that is with my being on the do not call list. I spent some time wasting telemarketers time and that seemed, somewhat ironically to get me blacklisted from some of them and things trailed off. From what I gathered, it seemed that none of the tele marketers were really all that interested in really landing a sale. Most of them are quick to hang up at the first sign of a troll, even if its minor. There are no hard sell tactics that Ive encountered. It makes me wonder who is spending the money to make these things profitable. Seems to me that its really just a vetting to see if the number is active so they can sell your contact info to another spamorg.
• Grustaf 7y ago
  OK, so if someone calls me from Turks and Caicos about a lottery I never entered, I shouldn’t call back?
• nightcracker 7y ago
  I'm from europe (the Netherlands). Everytime I see these american robocall threads it blows my mind. What about your system is so bad that allows this to go on? It's not a problem here at all.
  • wazoox 7y ago
    Here in France I receive these sort of calls from Tunisia quite regularly. Plus some guys declared as SPAM by the truecaller App I'm using precisely for this purpose (usually telemarketers trying to sell pay TV, insurances or some other crap I don't want). I'd say it makes for about 30% of all the incoming calls. Therefore I don't reply to unknown or hidden numbers.
    • black_puppydog 7y ago
      My (French) phone number is semi-publicly visible, and I've had it for a few years now. I get maybe 1 unsolicited call a month. What am I doing wrong? :P
      • wazoox 7y ago
        I get 2 to 3 unsolicited calls a week... I think SFR sold my number, simple as that.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • duiker101 7y ago
    It's all about the money. Laws are not put in place to stop this because the companies that make the money lobby to not have them or even worse, tear down the ones that are there.
  • blihp 7y ago
    Lobbying groups working on behalf of the telcos and related business interests that oppose any measures to deal with this, and most other, issues that someone is making money as a result of.
• basicplus2 7y ago
  And the "you missed a call message" without ever ringing
• harryf 7y ago
  This problem (and telemarketing in general) is incredibly easy to solve, especially if you are Google or Apple. In fact it's almost a disgrace that they don't. Back in the day, did this with the apps for local.ch in Switzerland ( some fluffy details here: https://tel.local.ch/en/advertising-calls https://tel.local.ch/en/advertising-calls ) which something like 40-50% of the Swiss population have installed on their phones. As a Yellow pages phonebook app we provided an "Incoming Call" lookup service against our search engine of Swiss business phone numbers, so we could see who you received calls from (data which we treated as strictly private). These types of robocallers (and telemarketers in general) were really easy to spot in logs - you see a number that's been calling many different people but _wasn't_ in our official database of businesses (we had good coverage of all businesses in Switzerland), we'd flag it our users with "We don't know this number but we suspect telemarketing" leaving the user to decide whether they wanted to call back or not. The Google Places API or the Yelp API ( https://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v3/business_search_phone https://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v3/business_se... ) would probably suffice for the same purpose. The only way to get round this is for robocallers to rotate the numbers they're using with a very high frequency so they don't "peak" in the logs but that can get expensive for them. What's nice is this approach is also dynamic - you don't need an official database of blacklisted numbers. You just need a big enough sample of users with your app installed and you'll catch Robocallers as soon as they start peaking in any logs. Apple and Google have way more insights into who's calling who than this (e.g. number of rings, email signatures, the users address books, which numbers have been blocked and a ton of analytics) which could be used to kill telemarketing for good. Given the solution is so simple, it really surprises me they don't.
  • endorphone 7y ago
    This would be entirely predicated on callerid being trustworthy. But it isn’t. At all. Some scammers who have call lists based upon surreptitiously stolen contact lists now call people ‘from’ their own contacts.
    • harryf 7y ago
      True but I’d assume (at least right now) faked calledid makes up < 1% of telemarketing / scam calls. Plus the type of robocalling described in the article where they ring once and hang up wouldn’t work if you fake the callerid - you’d just get them to call back someone from their contacts
• nebulous1 7y ago
  I've never understood why we allow telephone operators provide unwanted premium rate call services to their clients without any opt out. These scams will just keep coming until it's no longer a matter of simply calling a number to spend a large per minute premium rate. I'm guessing the average hacker news user is unlikely to get scammed by this one, but it's a common one and it works.
• mike_hollinger 7y ago
  It occurred to me just last week that land line phones have caller ID as I was helping my parents port their land line into a VOIP service. How is it that cell phones, a nominally more advanced technology, lack this function which was retrofitted into the analog phone system? I'd love to read or hear more about how that came about.
  • jgowdy 7y ago
    Caller ID is an untrusted advisory best effort service. It has absolutely no integrity of any kind today. There's an American law against spoofing it in theory, but it's not very enforcable at the moment. Understand it's literally a string that you can set to any value, including complete nonsense, and calls will often work. Heck, we constantly receive calls with invalid phone numbers. And it's not always on purpose, sometimes it's just crummy or small-time carriers in rural areas (no disrespect intended, this is just an honest statement from experience). If we ingress filtered all invalid numbers, it would almost certainly be devistating to our customers. This is like with email. First we need an integrity mechanism, then we can start doing reputation and identifying bad actors.
• anovikov 7y ago
  For the U.S., where most people rarely need to make international calls, an easy solution would be to use an option (which i am sure is provided by every operator), to just disable any international calls. Sounds like an easy fix.
• kyleblarson 7y ago
  I have a Seattle area code and for the last year or so I've been getting daily calls from various 206 numbers that also match the first 3 digits of my number. I answered the first one and there is no one on the line. After that I block each new number but they keep calling. I guess it'll eventually end as there are only 9998 possible numbers.
  • frogpelt 7y ago
    Maybe phones should have a whitelist feature. Only allow my contacts to call me and anyone else hears a message saying they must text me first to be added to the whitelist.
• eatbitseveryday 7y ago
  One pattern I noticed but haven’t tried to circumvent yet is that I noticed robocalls identify on the caller ID as having the same area code as my normal phone number and my Google Voice number. If we were to acquire a phone number from say, some small town somewhere you have no business with, then could we block all caller ID with that area code and avoid all such robocalls?
  • knodi123 7y ago
    > identify on the caller ID as having the same area code as my normal phone number and my Google Voice number. Most of my spam calls copy my area code and the first 3 digits of my phone number. In fact, I installed an android app called Calls Blacklist solely to make any call that began with the same 6 digits as me to not even ring - and now I get about 1 spam call per month. YMMV.
    • brewdad 7y ago
      Ooh, I need to look into that. I acquired my mobile number about 15 years ago in a town 20 minutes away where I know practically no one. I get plenty of calls that have the first 6 digits pattern and it is virtually certain that those calls will not be from someone I know. It would be great to have them never even ring.
  • opencl 7y ago
    I sort of unintentionally did this by buying my first cell phone while briefly living in a small city I no longer have any business with. It was effective for a long time but somehow in the past few months I have started getting robocalls using the area code of the actual city I currently live in.
  • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    I retain an out of state number that was used on resumes in the past. It gets slammed with frequent robocalls from the same area code. I have no contacts there so I can easily ignore them. My in-state numbers have been kept more secure and don't get any unwanted calls.
• js2 7y ago
  This is my solution for my home line: https://imgur.com/eLFvavS https://imgur.com/eLFvavS Note the ANI check. There are a couple extremely aggressive callers that I’ve had to blacklist their exchange to keep them from leaving weekly voicemail. The most recent is a company who calls monthly insisting I won a car, that this is their final attempt to reach me, that they aren’t a telemarketer, and that they are aware of the Do Not Call list. For my cell, Google Voice seems to be working well enough for now. I do wish iOS had a voip app that was worth a damn, and that iOS would let you choose a custom app for outbound dialing. The Google Voice iOS app frankly stinks.
• peeters 7y ago
  Why do we allow pay-per-minute phone services to even exist? There's no point to them in this day and age. If someone wants one of those services, there are plenty of ways to make it pay-per-minute without the phone company acting as a broker. Just end support for it, immediately.
  • mpolichette 7y ago
    I agree. If not this, then the phone company should at least require acknowledgment of the extra cost of the call.
• amyjess 7y ago
  Funny thing is, I got hit by a flood of these calls on Saturday. Funny seeing it here right after it happened. Unfortunately, I called one of them back before I realized it was an international number (Android's dialer, for some reason, seems to record everything as an unbroken string of numbers before updating them several minutes after the missed call, so I just thought it was a US number with area code 232. It wasn't until after the callback that it resolved to a Sierra Leone number, so I asked about it on Facebook, and I got a link to an article on the scam. I immediately felt like a heel, and then I blocked the number, just in case I forget to never call it back. When my statement comes in at the end of the month, I think I'm going to try to contact my carrier and dispute the charge. Though I'm not holding my breath: I'm on Fi, and Google's customer support is notorious for being virtually nonexistent.
• seniorsassycat 7y ago
  I have received dozens of phone calls a day that almost-but-not-quite match the 'One Ring' scam. I get calls from international numbers, 'private numbers' and 'unknown numbers', (I'm not sure the difference between private and unkown, it's what android displays in caller id). The calls ring once and hang up. I've managed to answer it a few times but they usually disconnect before I can. When I answer I hear a few sentences in a language I don't recognize then they hang up. The unknown and private numbers don't match the 'One Ring' scam because you cannot call back a private or unknown number.
• jgowdy 7y ago
  As someone who has worked in the telecom space for nearly 20 years, I really think we need to remove other countries from country code +1. People in any country should have confidence when they dial a number that it isn't unexpectedly billing them for international calls. This applies to people in any of the +1 nations, not just the United States. Otherwise, we need to set the rules and pricing conditional for being a part of +1 to mitigate this issue. No disrespect to Canadians, but I wonder if most Canadians are aware of how much fraud operates out of Canada and takes advantage of the +1 area code plus the protections of being in another nation. This isn't just Carribean Island nations as people tend to stereotype. (Please miss me with the whataboutism, I'm not throwing stones simply sharing information and experience.)
  • Marsymars 7y ago
    If it's done for their own benefit, probably easier for the US to remove themselves from the +1 area code than to remove other countries.
    • jgowdy 7y ago
      I tried to be clear that I believe the principle should apply to all callers. No on planet earth should second guess whether they're calling a different nation or not. That principle includes other +1 nations.
      • Marsymars 7y ago
        Sure, but as a Canadian, I'm not bothered by it. My phone and VoIP plans all include US calling/texting. I'd prefer to keep the +1 prefix. The US is free to change theirs.
        • jgowdy 7y ago
          I'm just going to nit on your phrasing here. NANP and the associated +1 country code originated from the United States. Technically I am talking about "changing theirs." The fact that it's very reasonably shared with other North American countries in a manner that allows for plenary power on the part of each other member nation is the source of this issue. I'm suggesting the US revise NANP and put more conditions on sharing the +1 country code, although most preferably with a consensus of the other members. Bad actors in different nations than consumers shouldn't be able to leverage sovereignty or agreements like NANP to be bad actors with impunity.
• knicholes 7y ago
  "you can file a complaint with the FCC at not cost."
• mullingitover 7y ago
  Imagine if the web didn't have SSL certificates. That's what the legacy phone networks are foisting on the public. It's a garbage service and if the caller identity problem can't be solved, we should shut the whole thing down as it's actively harmful.
• gandutraveler 7y ago
  This happened to my gf few weeks back. Number came from some eastern European country. We thought it could be one of our friend who was traveling in eastern europe I'm that week. Luckily we saw her online on WhatsApp to make sure she wasn't the one calling. Quick Google search I did that time confirmed our hunch.