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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 p
by anonu 8y 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 8y agoAbsolutely. 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 8y agoI do this exact thing. I have also turned off all notification toast pop-ups on my phone.
- daviddavis 8y agoHow did you do that? Is it possible with an iPhone?
- ysavir 8y agoDo 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.
- Waterluvian 8y agoYou should be consciously aware of who might emergency contact you anyways. Add them to your whitelist. Edit: all good points. Yeah I guess that is a risk. Also reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/J-inCB3POqs https://youtu.be/J-inCB3POqs
- slig 8y agoI believe the parent is taking about an emergency where the hospital calls, not the person.
- moccachino 8y agoThat's not really feasible. You might know for which persons you are the emergency contact but you can't possibly know from which phone you would be contacted in case of an actual emergency.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoYou never know who's going to call from what number. Just yesterday I had a carrier I hired call me from the shipper's landline because the situation was going sideways and there was no cell service.
- astura 8y agoYeah, because when your spouse is getting rolled into emergency surgery after suddenly collapsing you'll definitely know what number is going to call you to inform you, so you'll want to whitelist that one. And when a drunk driver hits her car on a rural road in the middle of the night and her phone is trapped in the wreck, you'll want to make sure you whitelist the phone number of the passerby that stops to help. And when your elderly parents' house is burning down (along with their phones) you'll definitely know all the phone numbers of all possible emergency responders and neighbors, so whitelist all of them too. That's not even considering mundane everyday stuff like delivery people/repair people who got lost or have to reschedule last minute. You might have the main number for the business whitelisted, but those sorts of calls usually come from the phone number of the day's driver. The only people who think "just disable incoming phone calls" is a viable option either have no friends and/or family, very little life experience, or both.
- darkwater 8y agoWell, actually you cannot know for sure. If the person trying to call you has only your phone number as a mean to contact you, you cannot possibly know if their are trying or not to contact you. I understand you are assuming they are going to escalate somehow to get to you, but maybe it can't just be possible in some scenario.
- SomeHacker44 8y agoJust not willing to do this. I never want to miss a call from someone talking about an emergency with a family member, the FAA calling about an unclosed flight plan, a recruiter (if job hunting), a delivery person, etc. I answer virtually all unknown numbers except the ones T-Mobile puts in as “Scam Likely.” What I do not understand is, given that the phone is a computer, why there is not an on-phone IVR which can solicit a brief intro. I mean, I had tech that could do that for a landline 25 years ago.
- booleandilemma 8y agoMy strategy is: if I don’t know the caller they can leave a voicemail. If it’s not important enough for a voicemail, it’s not important.
- stOneskull 8y agoSame here. Makes sense. If it's important at all they'll leave a message.
- grawprog 8y agoThe problem with this for me is my voicemail is now so full of spam messages from numbers I don't answer or block that I can't ever get any useful messages if there are any. A lot of the time my inbox remains full and I can't actually receive new voicemails. It's just gotten to the point where the new voicemail icon has become a permanent fixture on my notification bar I totally ignore.
- freehunter 8y agoVisual voicemail is one of the best things I've ever seen. Especially with transcription turned on.
- grawprog 8y agoI've never heard of this before. Unfortunately after checking it out, it looks like my carrier only offers it for iphones. This does look like a handy feature though.
- solotronics 8y agoThere was an article on here a few months ago about how the organ donor system works. If you are on the list to receive an organ you get a phonecall and if you miss this call the organ goes to the next person on the list who picks up the phone.
- brewdad 8y agoGiven the time constraints around organ donation and transplantation, this seems reasonable. If you only have a couple of hours before the organ is no longer viable you can't reasonably sit around hoping someone will return your call. Ideally, you should be alerted that your position on the waitlist is approaching so that you know to answer any incoming calls in case it's "the one". I have no idea if this reflects reality however.
- rlpb 8y ago> Ideally, you should be alerted that your position on the waitlist is approaching... I'm not sure the false hope would be an improvement. Unfortunately there are a whole bunch of emotional considerations that need to be made in this case.
- etrautmann 8y agoYes, but there should be an automated system that sends email, text, and calls to multiple family members simultaneously
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoI use a variation of your system with two phones. One is like yours and I always hawe it with me, turned on. The second is for everyone else - delivery people, banks etc. I have it muted except if I expect a call. Every couple of days I check it only to find that there were no important calls. Once a year someone leaves a message and I call them back. This system works great, I don't remember when was the last time I had to deal with scammers and other people wasting my time.
- cm2012 8y agoDoctor's offices will almost always only call you for fear of HIPAA violations.
- sib 8y agoMy doctors either send email with a link to their secure messaging portal (meh) or a push notification to their mobile app which contains a messaging capability (much better). This is much better than the old days of phone-only contact.
- jasonhansel 8y agoMy solution has been to switch my ringtone to a silent MP3 file. A good trick, since iOS doesn't let you disable all incoming calls (AFAICT).
- brownbat 8y agoThe FCC is saying the system requires whitelisting, but using your memory, rather than any technology from providers. It is strange.
- userbinator 8y agoThat's weird. I can understand not returning, since then you're the one originating and thus getting charged for the call, but for answering? Is there any landline service that charges for non-collect incoming calls?
- nulbyte 8y agoNo, but prepaid wireless services may charge you for incoming calls.
- michaelmior 8y agoAre there any services that actually charge you additional fees for incoming long distance calls though? That seems to be the primary concern here.
- Bartweiss 8y agoI can't find any evidence of major carriers doing this. There's discussion online to the effect that this has been true, but it looks like it was mostly a weird episode during the rise of cellphones where a call could be long distance but billed to the caller at normal rates, so the carrier would try to collect from the recipient. If anyone knows of a scam in which simply picking up a call can produce extra costs, they should definitely share!
- brownbat 8y agoNot unique to this scam, but scammers often log whether or not someone answered and put you on a list for additional attention. It's like how responding to spammers with "No, thank you!" will actually get you more spam.
- amyjess 8y ago> How to avoid this scam: Don't answer or return any calls from numbers you don't recognize. Unfortunately, this isn't great for a number of reasons: 1) The last two times I got a series of missed calls every two hours from somebody who didn't leave a voicemail, it was my credit card company (a different company each time) calling to ask me about a number of suspicious charges on the other side of the country that I sure as hell didn't make (I distinctly remember saying, on one such occasion, "What the hell is a Sheetz?"). Both of those times lead to me having my card declared stolen and the bogus charges reversed. If I didn't answer, I probably wouldn't have noticed the bogus charges. 2) My employer covers a large chunk of my phone + Internet bills. This is so I can answer emergency calls from our NOC whenever one of the important applications my team maintains goes kablooey. The whole thing with Android not resolving people's numbers right away includes them, as well. The call comes in as a long string of numbers, and if I miss it, it takes a few minutes before the long string of numbers resolves to a name on my contacts list. I'd rather not develop a reputation for snubbing our internal customers, especially not when they have an emergency.
- Bartweiss 8y ago> a series of missed calls... from somebody who didn't leave a voicemail, it was my credit card company This is a huge part of why this system doesn't work. Perhaps 95% of the calls I get from unknown numbers either produce informative voicemails or are scams. But the ones that don't are often the most important calls I get, from sources like credit card companies and doctors. Depressingly often, the numbers they're using aren't even listed online to look up later.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoWhy do you use a credit card from a company that (a) does not how to email you or notify you via app, and (b) dumps their fraud protection back onto you by forcing you to handle number misuse; and if the problem was actual fraudulent use, your card woud be canceled so how would reaching you on the phone help, as the response to fraud is to cancel your card # and issue another one?