6 ms·

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail.

waynecochran 7y ago
Me too. Although you realize that we will now occasionally miss an important call. In fact this just happened — my credit card fraud team was legitimately trying to get a hold of me and I ignored it. This made my travel this week painful with a hold on my credit card. This is the real loss... missing calls I would have wanted or needed to answer.
OnlineGladiator 7y ago
You aren't getting the robot voicemails yet? I mean sure I can ignore those too - but it's that much more annoying since I now have to filter through my voicemails to see if anyone left a message that actually matters. I'd guess about 1/3 of robocallers are leaving me voicemails now. I also very recently started getting obvious phishing attempts via SMS.
- Jaygles 7y ago
  For some reason that happens very rarely for me so its not that big of a chore to listen to all the voicemails I receive.
- BitwiseFool 7y ago
  About 1/2 of all my voicemails are in Mandarin.
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  This is why I just don't listen to voicemail. There is no reason to leave a voicemail, just send a text.
  - wuunderbar 7y ago
    Yeah that's going to screw you over at some point, I presume. I had the California DMV try to reach out to be about some form inconsistencies and they only contacted me by phone and voicemail. (To their credit they left me 3 voicemails through a very busy day I had.) There was no other way they were going to contact me before letting my car registration expire.
    - asdf21 7y ago
      Same thing just happened to me just this week, I wasn't checking voicemails because I get too many spam calls / spam messages and I almost got withdrawn from Graduate School because of it -- (I needed to verify a term break and since I never did, automatic withdraw initiated.) Sorted it out, but barely. Very frustrating to have that sort of outcome from the root cause of phone spammers.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    My cell provider could disable voicemail, after I asked them nicely. That way people don’t even get the impression they’ve left me a message.
defertoreptar 7y ago
I wish I could afford to do that. I've got important calls coming in of which I don't always know the number. If I miss the call, it can be a headache trying to get the process going again.
cgy1 7y ago
Yep.
dec0dedab0de 7y ago
I havent had voicemail in over a decade. I used to fill it up myself, then later I learned you can call the company and they will disable it. I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place. But I havent gotten any spam calls in over a year ever since tmobile started blocking them for me. Are the other providers not doing this?
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place. Interesting, since my mobile hotspot gets dozens of spam text messages from Seattle-area car dealers each month.
exhilaration 7y ago
I always answer the call and then joyfully "block/report spam" the number in the Android dialer. Being able to do something to fight back is satisfying enough that I don't ignore the call. I did just switch to T-Mobile and they pass "SCAM LIKELY" as the caller name so I may start declining those.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  the block button doesn’t do anything since most of the phone numbers are spoofed (someone pretending to be someone else). Filtering out any number that shares my area code and first three digits and not in my phone book would go a long way to getting rid of spam.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    I get more calls these days that are callbacks because the spammers have spoofed my number than I get actual incoming robocalls these days.
  - CoryAlexMartin 7y ago
    I used a bulk number blocking app to do exactly that, and the amount of spam calls I receive has dropped dramatically. You can also have it make exceptions for numbers in your contacts list. The one I used on IOS is called Wideprotect, but I'm sure there are ways to do it on Android as well.
  - tartoran 7y ago
    I agree, this only blocks legit numbers since they're spoofed anyway and next spam call will be an auto-generated number anyway (form a similar area code). My solution is to simply not pick up calls that are not in my phone's address book. I still get a lot of annoying calls, from a few a day to dozens. It's frustrating but I refuse to get annoyed, to keep my sanity. Most of the calls that I get are making an announcement in Chinese. I am not Asian and I do not understand Chinese. I've read somewhere that it's scam meant to swindle Chinese citizens in the US for money. My wife received a call from a person who was angry at some phone scammer and started cursing her and telling her not to call anymore. My wife tried to explain that she did not make the call, that the number was spoofed, but to no avail, the curses continued until they hung up. I find this kind of breach quite problematic and don't really understand how it can proliferate to this extent.
inkeddeveloper 7y ago
Same. There are seven other ways to contact me on my phone.
alkonaut 7y ago
So you get notified you have a few new voicemails and you need to take time checking them, and presumably robocalls leave robo-voicemail, and now each robocall ended up costing you more time than they would if you just hung up? (If robocallers don’t leave voicemail...why?)
- woobar 7y ago
  Both my VM providers transcribe voice mail into text. Glancing at a transcript to identify spam takes a second. More important I am not interrupted by calls and could check them at the time most convenient to me.
reaperducer 7y ago
I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail. I don't do either, because the spam calls I get are in a language I don't speak, and my voicemail is full of messages in languages I don't speak. I have to resort to "if it's important, someone will e-mail me or send a letter," which ten years ago used to be the biggest vector for unwanted contact.
JohnFen 7y ago
Yes, this has been my practice as well, except that voicemail is mostly for unknown callers to get a chance to actually get a message to me (just in case). For people I know, if it's important then they need to SMS me to tell me that they're going to call. If they can't text for some reason, then there's always voicemail.
flavmartins 7y ago
I don't answer either. And I get voicemails with robocalls about Cigna health plans A LOT. Not sure why. I also get warranty spam calls that leave voice mails too.
flavmartins 7y ago
I never answer AND never check voicemails. If people want to get a hold of me they can text or email.

waynecochran 7y ago

Me too. Although you realize that we will now occasionally miss an important call. In fact this just happened — my credit card fraud team was legitimately trying to get a hold of me and I ignored it. This made my travel this week painful with a hold on my credit card. This is the real loss... missing calls I would have wanted or needed to answer.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

You aren't getting the robot voicemails yet? I mean sure I can ignore those too - but it's that much more annoying since I now have to filter through my voicemails to see if anyone left a message that actually matters. I'd guess about 1/3 of robocallers are leaving me voicemails now. I also very recently started getting obvious phishing attempts via SMS.

Jaygles 7y ago
For some reason that happens very rarely for me so its not that big of a chore to listen to all the voicemails I receive.
BitwiseFool 7y ago
About 1/2 of all my voicemails are in Mandarin.
EamonnMR 7y ago
This is why I just don't listen to voicemail. There is no reason to leave a voicemail, just send a text.
- wuunderbar 7y ago
  Yeah that's going to screw you over at some point, I presume. I had the California DMV try to reach out to be about some form inconsistencies and they only contacted me by phone and voicemail. (To their credit they left me 3 voicemails through a very busy day I had.) There was no other way they were going to contact me before letting my car registration expire.
  - asdf21 7y ago
    Same thing just happened to me just this week, I wasn't checking voicemails because I get too many spam calls / spam messages and I almost got withdrawn from Graduate School because of it -- (I needed to verify a term break and since I never did, automatic withdraw initiated.) Sorted it out, but barely. Very frustrating to have that sort of outcome from the root cause of phone spammers.
- michaelt 7y ago
  My cell provider could disable voicemail, after I asked them nicely. That way people don’t even get the impression they’ve left me a message.

defertoreptar 7y ago

I wish I could afford to do that. I've got important calls coming in of which I don't always know the number. If I miss the call, it can be a headache trying to get the process going again.

cgy1 7y ago

Yep.

dec0dedab0de 7y ago

I havent had voicemail in over a decade. I used to fill it up myself, then later I learned you can call the company and they will disable it. I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place. But I havent gotten any spam calls in over a year ever since tmobile started blocking them for me. Are the other providers not doing this?

reaperducer 7y ago
I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place. Interesting, since my mobile hotspot gets dozens of spam text messages from Seattle-area car dealers each month.

exhilaration 7y ago

I always answer the call and then joyfully "block/report spam" the number in the Android dialer. Being able to do something to fight back is satisfying enough that I don't ignore the call. I did just switch to T-Mobile and they pass "SCAM LIKELY" as the caller name so I may start declining those.

unlinked_dll 7y ago
the block button doesn’t do anything since most of the phone numbers are spoofed (someone pretending to be someone else). Filtering out any number that shares my area code and first three digits and not in my phone book would go a long way to getting rid of spam.
- thrower123 7y ago
  I get more calls these days that are callbacks because the spammers have spoofed my number than I get actual incoming robocalls these days.
- CoryAlexMartin 7y ago
  I used a bulk number blocking app to do exactly that, and the amount of spam calls I receive has dropped dramatically. You can also have it make exceptions for numbers in your contacts list. The one I used on IOS is called Wideprotect, but I'm sure there are ways to do it on Android as well.
- tartoran 7y ago
  I agree, this only blocks legit numbers since they're spoofed anyway and next spam call will be an auto-generated number anyway (form a similar area code). My solution is to simply not pick up calls that are not in my phone's address book. I still get a lot of annoying calls, from a few a day to dozens. It's frustrating but I refuse to get annoyed, to keep my sanity. Most of the calls that I get are making an announcement in Chinese. I am not Asian and I do not understand Chinese. I've read somewhere that it's scam meant to swindle Chinese citizens in the US for money. My wife received a call from a person who was angry at some phone scammer and started cursing her and telling her not to call anymore. My wife tried to explain that she did not make the call, that the number was spoofed, but to no avail, the curses continued until they hung up. I find this kind of breach quite problematic and don't really understand how it can proliferate to this extent.

inkeddeveloper 7y ago

Same. There are seven other ways to contact me on my phone.

alkonaut 7y ago

So you get notified you have a few new voicemails and you need to take time checking them, and presumably robocalls leave robo-voicemail, and now each robocall ended up costing you more time than they would if you just hung up? (If robocallers don’t leave voicemail...why?)

woobar 7y ago
Both my VM providers transcribe voice mail into text. Glancing at a transcript to identify spam takes a second. More important I am not interrupted by calls and could check them at the time most convenient to me.

reaperducer 7y ago

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail. I don't do either, because the spam calls I get are in a language I don't speak, and my voicemail is full of messages in languages I don't speak. I have to resort to "if it's important, someone will e-mail me or send a letter," which ten years ago used to be the biggest vector for unwanted contact.

JohnFen 7y ago

Yes, this has been my practice as well, except that voicemail is mostly for unknown callers to get a chance to actually get a message to me (just in case). For people I know, if it's important then they need to SMS me to tell me that they're going to call. If they can't text for some reason, then there's always voicemail.

flavmartins 7y ago

I don't answer either. And I get voicemails with robocalls about Cigna health plans A LOT. Not sure why. I also get warranty spam calls that leave voice mails too.

flavmartins 7y ago

I never answer AND never check voicemails. If people want to get a hold of me they can text or email.