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The scam and spam call problem is really bad in Germany to this day. And has been for 10 years. A couple years ago I would sit at my desk thinking about a real
by bsdice 2y ago
The scam and spam call problem is really bad in Germany to this day. And has been for 10 years.
A couple years ago I would sit at my desk thinking about a really hard problem in silence. The phone rings. Spam call. Every 30-180 minutes another one. If you now think turn the phone off, well not that easy as CEO of a business when people expect you to be reachable.
It creamed my corn so much that I recorded my own voice samples as a senile "Opa Denny" (german grandpa Denny), modelled after Lenny. Complete with background ducks hanging out on the couch to Opas dismay, later in the call. It works on autopilot without interaction because on Asterisk, and with the largest German SIP provider at least, you can extract the calling peer identity from the SIP header. So I wrote a scoring system based on indicated number, black and whitelist regexs for number and for calling peer, greylist for the geographically surrounding number prefixes, etc. A legit mobile call would show up as number@t-mobile.de for example, while a spam call would say fakenumber@01012.com.
Asterisk would record the call in wideband stereo, normalize the audio, and mail it to me as MP3 attachment. Funny for a while, but these days I just throw all such calls onto the mailbox. Since they need a real person to scam or create a sale, the call is finished right away.
It works great to this day, because I never published it.
- Ocha 2y agoScreen unknown callers to VM. Solved all my problems
- SoftTalker 2y agoI simply don’t answer calls that aren’t in my contacts.
- ycombinator_acc 2y agoVM? Virtual machine?
- mcntsh 2y agoWow the HN crowd is younger than I thought. Voicemail
- arrowsmith 2y agoI’m old enough to remember voicemail and I’ve never seen it referred to as “VM”.
- tim333 2y agoNot only is voicemail still a thing but just yesterday my iPhone took it upon itself to identify an incoming call as 'suspected spam' and route it to voicemail. I didn't tell it to do that so I guess it's part of some update Apple have pushed. I sometimes wish Apple would ask me first before that kind of thing! Although I probably would have ok'ed that one if they had asked.
- Toutouxc 2y agoDunno about the US, but where I live (Czechia, in Europe), voicemail is simply not a thing. I've never used it in my life and I don't know anyone who's ever used it, young or old.
- dizhn 2y agoWe have it here for mobile but by default providers set it to "call waiting" instead. One of the reasons people don't use voicemail (other than not knowing it exists) is they charge you money to leave a message. Your plan minutes don't count. They probably charge you to listen to messages too.
- bdavbdav 2y agoIt’s what old folks use when they could just text or email.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- globalise83 2y agoI have both a German mobile number and landline number, and have never once received a scam and spam call on either in the 8 years I have been living in Germany. I guess it is a problem of having a public contact number on a website.
- filmor 2y agoDepends on the prpvider as well. Vodafone seems to have (had?) zero qualms about passing my old landline number to multiple shady call centers after taking over Unitymedia. The number was not known to anyone but my parents and I opted out of erverything I could find, still for some time got weekly calls. I haven't had that woth Telekom so far. Spam calls (and even more so: SMS) have gotten much more frequent on my mobile number in the last 2 years. But in this case, it's a number that has been in active use for the last decade and has by now probably been in multiple data leaks... :/
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> It creamed my corn so much Come again? Edit: I guess it is in urban dictionary, but my first thought was the last definition listed: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=creams%20my%20corn%21 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=creams%20my%...
- stevenpetryk 2y agoCream my corn again?
- adr1an 2y agoSure. Just don't eat it too fast.
- xelxebar 2y agoTwin Peaks reference, perhaps? https://twinpeaks.fandom.com/wiki/Garmonbozia https://twinpeaks.fandom.com/wiki/Garmonbozia
- valzam 2y agoSurprised to hear this as well. I have never received a Spam call growing up in Germany and living there again between 2015-2019. In 2019 I moved to Australia and spam calls have been a constant annoyance due to massive data leaks across all banks and public institutions.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- account42 2y agoThe only spam I have received with my mobile phone in Germany was the network operator asking me for permission to spam me with ads.
- sandos 2y agoWow, I am surprised to hear that. Is blocking calls not a thing there? In Sweden you can say that no sellers may call your numbers, companies where you are a customer excluded though. I never get spam calls or sellers calling me.