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This kind of thing is why a lot of people dropped their land line. Sure it was made largely redundant with mobile, but it also became primarily a nuisance. Fac

This kind of thing is why a lot of people dropped their land line. Sure it was made largely redundant with mobile, but it also became primarily a nuisance. Facebook and others keep that in mind as you relentlessly monetize without offering value to people.

vkou 3y ago
I get mobile robocalls, too.
- jiveturkey 3y ago
  sure, now. but at the time it was one of the drivers for cutting the land line
- EamonnMR 3y ago
  Most of them get a "scam likely" flag these days though.
CWuestefeld 3y ago
Although even today I still have a "house phone", I haven't used a POTS land line in 15 years or more - I switched to VoIP long ago because of related nuisances. The straw that broke the camel's back was that somebody had their fax machine to send something to a (wrong) number every night at 2am. The phone company said they had no way to just block that number for us, but that for abusive calls we could talk to the police. The police said they couldn't do anything because although it was an extreme nuisance, it didn't fit the legal definition of abusive. Since we were going to have to change our number because of this anyway, we decided to just move to a platform with which we really could manage blacklists and such. A prior experience had a debt collection agency calling us a couple of times a week, asking for some guy we never heard of. Each time we'd tell them that this was a wrong number, but they'd just call back a couple days later anyway. I tried using logic: the person they were looking for apparently had a Florida address, while the number they were calling at was a NJ number (back when you could pretty definitively link phone numbers to geography). The guy calling us agreed that it didn't make sense, but that didn't matter. I finally told them that the guy was deceased, and oddly, they seemed to buy that. Anyway, my experience suggests that the demise of land lines has been not just because of the nuisance itself, but also because the technology and regulatory situation didn't allow people any effective way to deal with it. Makes me wonder what that will eventually mean to email, SMS, etc., if anything. EDIT: my current solution for spam calls on our VoIP line is three-pronged. 1) Known abusers are blacklisted, never to be heard from again. I don't really use this, though, because they're probably just spoofing the number anyway. 2) Everybody on my contact list can freely ring our phone, no problem. 2) Otherwise, the call is intercepted by a voice response system. It just tells them that if they want to talk to us, to push "2". Bots never do that, so we're very nearly 100% free of spam calls.
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  Fwiw, the three-pronged approach is supported by household phones now. So if you went back to POTS, you could have the same features. Not that you should, but the tools are better now.
MiddleEndian 3y ago
>Facebook and others keep that in mind as you relentlessly monetize without offering value to people. Pretty much all of my communication on Facebook Messenger is with my friends, and the rest is with some groups I'm in to find local events, which I could leave hassle-free at any time with the click of a button. No communication with spammers or businesses, with the exception of someone with an obviously hacked account once every few years. With the rare exception, my incoming calls on my phone are either my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone), or spammers (who I don't answer). So I would say Facebook keeps this in mind much better than the phone company.
- smcg 3y ago
  This could deteriorate at any point. Facebook owes you nothing.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - MiddleEndian 3y ago
    Sure, I don't think Facebook is benevolent. I hear Whatsapp (also owned by Facebook) has plenty of spam, and I don't use that, much to the dismay of some of my non-American friends. The phone companies also owe me nothing, and they provide a worse experience and will likely continue to do so unless forced by the FCC (which seems to be getting better lately). I do use SMS/MMS but forwarded to my web browser so I don't have to look at my phone. At the moment, Messenger is better for both text and voice/video calls. If that changes, my friends and I will adapt.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  > my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone) My would you not answer if you don't expect someone? Pranks? Sellers? I have never experienced any door knockers that are obnoxious, except one seller once. Mostly it is friends, neighbours or missionaries who are unannounced.
  - 3y ago
miked85 3y ago
Mobile doesn't help very much - I ended up just silencing calls not from contacts, which I get at least 5 or 6 a day
baby 3y ago
I block all calls by default on my cellphone as well. If you want to reach me but you don't have my whatsapp/facebook/etc. then you probably shouldn't reach me anyway.
jeffbee 3y ago
I haven't ever got a robocall on my landline and I get a half a dozen a day on my mobile.
TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
You’re not kidding! My grandparents had this so bad. I stayed with them a few times over the last few years, for weeks or months at a time as we dealt with some family tragedies. One day I decided to keep track of how many telemarketer and scam/spam/Medicare/insurance/banking-fraud calls they got in one day. I lost count somewhere in the 15-20 region. It was constant.
- duxup 3y ago
  I was at my local credit union and the lady behind the counter was asking about the money I was moving around. It was a significant amount. She apologized and said "I'm sorry but we have to ask these questions, once in a while we get some folks moving money who are being scammed." In her situation they stopped some nice older folks from "bailing out their granddaughter", of course it wasn't their granddaughter it was a scammer. Dealing with my father-in-law's financials we found some odd "donations" to groups we never could identify, not a lot so it wasn't worth investigating further, but we also couldn't find any trace of some of these orgs either. I assume some were scammers. Thankfully we got his finances arranged so everything had to be approved later in life.
jjav 3y ago
> This kind of thing is why a lot of people dropped their land line. Really? I get just about zero spam calls (maybe 1-2/year) on my landline (which I've had since the 90s). But I could subscribe to extended car warranties twenty times per day on my cellphone if I answered those calls. I always answer the landline phone because it is just about guaranteed to be a real call. I absolutely never answer my cellphone because it is a lost cause.

vkou 3y ago

I get mobile robocalls, too.

jiveturkey 3y ago
sure, now. but at the time it was one of the drivers for cutting the land line
EamonnMR 3y ago
Most of them get a "scam likely" flag these days though.

CWuestefeld 3y ago

Although even today I still have a "house phone", I haven't used a POTS land line in 15 years or more - I switched to VoIP long ago because of related nuisances. The straw that broke the camel's back was that somebody had their fax machine to send something to a (wrong) number every night at 2am. The phone company said they had no way to just block that number for us, but that for abusive calls we could talk to the police. The police said they couldn't do anything because although it was an extreme nuisance, it didn't fit the legal definition of abusive. Since we were going to have to change our number because of this anyway, we decided to just move to a platform with which we really could manage blacklists and such. A prior experience had a debt collection agency calling us a couple of times a week, asking for some guy we never heard of. Each time we'd tell them that this was a wrong number, but they'd just call back a couple days later anyway. I tried using logic: the person they were looking for apparently had a Florida address, while the number they were calling at was a NJ number (back when you could pretty definitively link phone numbers to geography). The guy calling us agreed that it didn't make sense, but that didn't matter. I finally told them that the guy was deceased, and oddly, they seemed to buy that. Anyway, my experience suggests that the demise of land lines has been not just because of the nuisance itself, but also because the technology and regulatory situation didn't allow people any effective way to deal with it. Makes me wonder what that will eventually mean to email, SMS, etc., if anything. EDIT: my current solution for spam calls on our VoIP line is three-pronged. 1) Known abusers are blacklisted, never to be heard from again. I don't really use this, though, because they're probably just spoofing the number anyway. 2) Everybody on my contact list can freely ring our phone, no problem. 2) Otherwise, the call is intercepted by a voice response system. It just tells them that if they want to talk to us, to push "2". Bots never do that, so we're very nearly 100% free of spam calls.

LeafItAlone 3y ago
Fwiw, the three-pronged approach is supported by household phones now. So if you went back to POTS, you could have the same features. Not that you should, but the tools are better now.

MiddleEndian 3y ago

>Facebook and others keep that in mind as you relentlessly monetize without offering value to people. Pretty much all of my communication on Facebook Messenger is with my friends, and the rest is with some groups I'm in to find local events, which I could leave hassle-free at any time with the click of a button. No communication with spammers or businesses, with the exception of someone with an obviously hacked account once every few years. With the rare exception, my incoming calls on my phone are either my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone), or spammers (who I don't answer). So I would say Facebook keeps this in mind much better than the phone company.

smcg 3y ago
This could deteriorate at any point. Facebook owes you nothing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MiddleEndian 3y ago
  Sure, I don't think Facebook is benevolent. I hear Whatsapp (also owned by Facebook) has plenty of spam, and I don't use that, much to the dismay of some of my non-American friends. The phone companies also owe me nothing, and they provide a worse experience and will likely continue to do so unless forced by the FCC (which seems to be getting better lately). I do use SMS/MMS but forwarded to my web browser so I don't have to look at my phone. At the moment, Messenger is better for both text and voice/video calls. If that changes, my friends and I will adapt.
rightbyte 3y ago
> my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone) My would you not answer if you don't expect someone? Pranks? Sellers? I have never experienced any door knockers that are obnoxious, except one seller once. Mostly it is friends, neighbours or missionaries who are unannounced.
- 3y ago

miked85 3y ago

Mobile doesn't help very much - I ended up just silencing calls not from contacts, which I get at least 5 or 6 a day

baby 3y ago

I block all calls by default on my cellphone as well. If you want to reach me but you don't have my whatsapp/facebook/etc. then you probably shouldn't reach me anyway.

jeffbee 3y ago

I haven't ever got a robocall on my landline and I get a half a dozen a day on my mobile.

TheNewsIsHere 3y ago

You’re not kidding! My grandparents had this so bad. I stayed with them a few times over the last few years, for weeks or months at a time as we dealt with some family tragedies. One day I decided to keep track of how many telemarketer and scam/spam/Medicare/insurance/banking-fraud calls they got in one day. I lost count somewhere in the 15-20 region. It was constant.

duxup 3y ago
I was at my local credit union and the lady behind the counter was asking about the money I was moving around. It was a significant amount. She apologized and said "I'm sorry but we have to ask these questions, once in a while we get some folks moving money who are being scammed." In her situation they stopped some nice older folks from "bailing out their granddaughter", of course it wasn't their granddaughter it was a scammer. Dealing with my father-in-law's financials we found some odd "donations" to groups we never could identify, not a lot so it wasn't worth investigating further, but we also couldn't find any trace of some of these orgs either. I assume some were scammers. Thankfully we got his finances arranged so everything had to be approved later in life.

jjav 3y ago

> This kind of thing is why a lot of people dropped their land line. Really? I get just about zero spam calls (maybe 1-2/year) on my landline (which I've had since the 90s). But I could subscribe to extended car warranties twenty times per day on my cellphone if I answered those calls. I always answer the landline phone because it is just about guaranteed to be a real call. I absolutely never answer my cellphone because it is a lost cause.