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I have seen a significant decrease in the amount of spam telephone calls over the last couple of years. Is that what everybody else is seeing? That maybe Stir

• Ensorceled 2y ago
  It comes in waves; pretty much nothing for months and then 5+ a day for the past few days.
  • tyingq 2y ago
    If it is that the ROI is just real unattractive for spam calls now... I wonder if the waves are just new people trying to spam for the first time. And taking a little bit of time to figure out that it's not profitable. If so that's not great. Because there's probably an infinite supply of people ready to waste their money trying get-rich-quick crap.
    • imiric 2y ago
      Whether it's profitable is relative. For relatively little effort anyone with a bit of tech know-how can setup a spam/scam operation. If they also happen to live in a low-income region and target high-income regions, they only need to scam a handful of people a month to get a decent ROI. The amount of vulnerable people is unfortunately high, especially among the elderly. Jim Browning on YouTube does great work exposing this scum. There are huge call center operations in India and Pakistan, and the local authorities are useless if not complicit. This will only get more popular and profitable once AI tools get more accessible. There's no need to have a physical location and hire humans if they can just launch a army of bots that have perfect accents and can follow a conversation without deviating from the script. The next generation of robocalls is just starting.
• karlshea 2y ago
  Spam calls have decreased, spam texts increased.
  • op00to 2y ago
    Especially spam iMessage, which you'd think Apple would have a good handle on. Always iMessage from a foreign number.
    • neom 2y ago
      surprised to read this, never had imessage spam once, didn't know it was even a thing.
  • sumtechguy 2y ago
    I have had the opposite. I think it really just depends on which lists your number is on.
    • kmoser 2y ago
      I tend to agree about the lists. I get a couple of spam calls and texts a week, which seems to be much, much less than what most of my friends get. My father gets multiple spam calls every day. He lets them all go to voice mail, so nothing about his behavior encourages them to keep calling. Yet they keep coming. I've had my cell number for about 15 years, and for another 10 years prior it was a land line, so 25 years in total. My father's cell number is only about 10 years old. So despite having a much older phone number, I get way less spam calls and texts than he does. Part of that may be what lists we're on. Another reason may be that for the past 20 years, when ordering things online, 99% of the time I give a fake phone number. Companies claim they want it in case there is a problem delivering your order, but even before I started doing this, I never had a company call about an order they couldn't deliver. Once or twice they emailed me about an order they couldn't fulfill (out of stock, etc.), but I do give them a legit email. The 1% of the time I give a real phone number is when I'm dealing with a serious transaction, e.g. a bank or insurance or medical company.
• loeg 2y ago
  I still get regular spam calls and spam texts. Maybe half the texts are obvious scams (make $1000s a day from home reshipping stolen goods) and the other texts are conversation starters that shady telcos can explain away as plausibly harmless (but are likely to be the first step in deliberate pig butchering scams).
• kisonecat 2y ago
  I don't feel like I've gotten fewer spam calls. My favorite spam call was someone wanting to make a cash offer on the Ohio State University building that my office is in.
  • SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    "I tell you what, let's talk numbers. By the way, do you happen to have an interest in bridges?"
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      My favorite time waster story was an old guy who took a scrap junk car from me (his retirement career). Said some slick guy in a suit showed up on his farm property unannounced and made him an offer on it. Owner was so annoyed that he smiled and told the guy to come back tomorrow and they'd talk it over. Guy shows up the next (sunny) day with a colleague... both in suits... in summer... in the southeast US. Owner proceeds to walk them 6km+ around the perimeter of the property while dangling the possibility he'd be willing to sell. Then finally ends things with "But you know what it comes down to? My dog was born on this property, and she's pretty old now. I don't think it'd be kind to move her. So I appreciate your time, but don't think I'm interested in selling." Was impressed at how much time and ingenuity retired folks have to fuck with people, just because they can.
• x0x0 2y ago
  I may be atypical because I started a company and unfortunately used my personal cell is several places which got into sales databases. And made a political donation. For me, it got so bad (multiple calls per day) I've stopped answering anything that isn't in my contacts already.
  • monkpit 2y ago
    > I've stopped answering anything that isn't in my contacts already. Isn’t that what everyone does? Or is it just a millennial thing…
    • hydrolox 2y ago
      I think it's mainly a millennial and gen z thing-- older generations still answer all calls, at least those that aren't into tech. I think it's just easier to realize that anyone not in your contacts will either leave a voicemail or text you if it's that important.
      • sumtechguy 2y ago
        We ignore it too. But I can tell the ones who do answer. They get extremely irate if you do not pick up when they call. As if it is their personal line to you and you should drop everything for them. I dump them into voicemail too.
      • technothrasher 2y ago
        I'm mid Gen X, and I can't imagine wasting my time answering all calls. I have my phone set to silence any unknown numbers. I'm not going to answer any call that isn't in my contact list. Voicemail a coherent message and I'll call you back and add you to my contacts.
    • reaperducer 2y ago
      That is only practical when you are young and life is simple. Get married. Start a business. Get sick. Buy a house. Have children. Make interesting friends. Travel extensively. Once life gets interesting, you start missing important calls with that strategy.
• gs17 2y ago
  I think it must vary a lot between numbers. My girlfriend gets a huge amount of spam calls. I get almost none, and we're on the same network. I do get a ton of spam texts though.
• naravara 2y ago
  The robocalls are more rare for sure. But there’s been a huge uptick in shitty recruiters calling me with lowball offers for shitty jobs. I’ve had to remove my phone number from my resumes and delist it from indeed and stuff but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I don’t know how they’re finding me and they refuse to tell me.
• m3047 2y ago
  I apologize for the commercial plug, but when I switched off of CenturyLink and onto Ooma last year my robo / spam calls went way down. Part of that is that they have some filtering options, part of that is that I believe they provide telemetry to something akin to NoMoRobo.
• sooperserieous 2y ago
  About 7 weeks ago I picked up a new AT&T SIM to use for data backup while my fiber connection was out. Never placed _any_ calls and only 1 text to my current mobile number to capture the new number. I get 4-6 calls per day, most labelled "Spam Risk". This period included the last couple of weeks of the US election and the volume then was much higher from what I am guessing was robo-war-dialing election campaigns. Even though I'm in an older generation and prefer voice over text I have adopted the habit of only picking up callers that I know I want to speak to.
• barryrandall 2y ago
  I've noticed a slight drop-off, but my phone is still useless.
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I've seen a significant decrease in both calls and text in the past months (though I haven't quantified it)
• Animats 2y ago
  I get very little phone or SMS spam. All SMS spam gets replied to with "STOP", which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer. I've been on the Do Not Call list since it started. Email spam is repetitive enough that the usual Thunderbird filters work. If a spam email has an unsubscribe link, I click on that and add the sender to the block list. If it doesn't have an unsubscribe link, I try to find out which service sent it and send them a notice of a CAN-SPAM law violation. The usual suspects (Mailchump, SpamGrid, etc.) do terminate accounts for that, to prevent being blocked themselves.
  • corytheboyd 2y ago
    > which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer. Huh, didn’t know that. I assumed that it was nothing more than baiting a response, verifying that the phone number is a hit.
    • Jeremy1026 2y ago
      In Twilio[1] a "STOP" reply is an automatic add to blocklist. Their user doesn't have control over how that is handled. I wouldn't be surprised if other providers have the same controls in place behind the scenes. [1] https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-for-opt-out-keywords-SMS-STOP-filtering#h_01FBWGDY78H0PYY28VC341JPKE https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-fo...
      • atonse 2y ago
        But you still get a webhook notifying you they said stop. So as far as telling whether it’s a legit number, the spammers still win.
  • kgc 2y ago
    How do you know STOP is a strike?
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• jandrese 2y ago
  I've not been asked about my car's extended warranty for months now. I think the FCC finally shutting down just one or two blatant bad actors made a massive difference in robocalls. It just took them months (years?) to do it.
• RajT88 2y ago
  I had a huuuuuuuuuuge increase the past couple months (10-20 a day). Almost all medicare fraud scams. They seem to be tapering down a bit (2-5 a day). It's interesting, because they have all my info (where I live, my full name, etc.), but somehow not my age? Because if they knew my real age, they shouldn't be calling me for medicare fraud scams... I wonder if maybe what's happening is that the people selling leads lists for scammers are willfully omitting age information, so they can charge more for a larger list which is not obviously 50%+ garbage scam leads for medicare fraud. I also had an uptick in text spam (used to be very rare until maybe 9 months ago, then it became about 1-2 a day, now it's back down to just a few a week).
  • TylerE 2y ago
    That's going to be naturally periodic as medicare enrollment happens in the late Fall (typically Novemberish).
    • RajT88 2y ago
      First year it's been this bad, to be honest.
    • behringer 2y ago
      These calls having nothing to do with Medicare and everything to do with stealing bank information. These calls occur year round.
  • eleveriven 2y ago
    It’s wild how these scammers seem to have a patchwork of your info
• snailmailman 2y ago
  I still get multiple a day. Have had multiple a day for months (maybe years? My call log doesn’t go back far enough to know for sure). I can’t block them because they are different numbers every time, so I have all unknown incoming calls set to go straight to voicemail. I don’t even know what they are calling for. If I ever try to answer there is only silence on the line. But I haven’t even done that in months- hoping the calls would eventually stop. (They haven’t) One infuriating thing is that there is some sort of “verified” checkmark in my call log for some numbers? Or maybe not verified, but “valid number?” Why are they even allowing non-verified calls through? It wouldn’t stop the problem, as 1/4 of my spam calls have the icon anyway. But it would help, surely.
  • gosub100 2y ago
    I don't wish android didn't offer to block the numbers as they are all spoofed.
  • GoblinSlayer 2y ago
    >silence on the line I guess, it's a remote spam farm. The machine calls you, and when you answer, it calls a remote spammer who works from home, so it can take them a while to answer. I guess, it's a clean comfy job: they work from home even without profession or education, maybe even subscribed to several spam farms.
• delichon 2y ago
  I thought my girlfriend had abandoned me. My most frequent phone call by far was from a nice sounding recorded lady informing me that the extended warranty I never bought on a car that I never owned was in danger of expiring and this was my last chance to renew it. Ever. She would sometimes call me three times per day with that message but I haven't heard from her in months. I was afraid that my last chance had come and gone, or that she is no longer that into me. But it's just the FCC coming between us.
  • pxmpxm 2y ago
    Hate to tell you but I'm fairly sure she's dating the previous owner of our condo now; we keep getting their love letters in the mail.
    • delichon 2y ago
      That's OK, life goes on. Love finds a way. I met another nice lady on X. She cares deeply about the diversification of my crypto portfolio. I don't know why I keep attracting women who want to take care of me, I just do. It may be my gravitas. But the three letter agencies are watching so this time I'll have to move fast.
    • plagiarist 2y ago
      Those "SECOND NOTICE" scam letters that aren't from my bank but have my bank's name on them make me mad. I report them to the USPS as mail fraud, an act which I find therapeutic.
  • eleveriven 2y ago
    But can they ever silence the memory of her persistent devotion?
• jabroni_salad 2y ago
  I haven't had a junk call since 2023 (aside from political polling) but I receive a fake usps text from international numbers pretty much daily. google's messages app is pretty good at corralling them into a spam folder but I do peep in there every now and then. I hope that whatever provider is allowing these gets disconnected.
  • gpspake 2y ago
    I've been getting a ton of those USPS and Amazon shipping and return related phishing texts. The first couple of times I genuinely looked at them but they always have bitly URLs and sometimes they have little thoughts at the end like "May the day ahead bring you peace and clarity, from USPS!" Which is so funny to me because it reveals a complete cultural unawareness of how American companies communicate.
• jeffbee 2y ago
  I haven't had to handle any scam calls or texts since I switched to Android. I had no idea the feature was so effective. They should advertise it more.
  • kmoser 2y ago
    Do you think having an Android phone has something to do with the drop in scam calls/texts?
    • jeffbee 2y ago
      Yes, because the calls and texts get classified into a "Spam & blocked" folder that I can go glance at if I feel bored. Some feature of either Android or the Google Pixel phone is doing this.
      • kmoser 2y ago
        Oh, so you're still receiving the same number, but now you have a way of filtering them before reading/listening?
• thephyber 2y ago
  My anecdote: I get no calls anymore, but I attribute it to pruning where my contact info is distributed and using the spam filters available on call/text. My father got (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day, consistently, until I realized why he wasn’t answering his phone. He had used zero of the tools that the cell service provider and smartphone OS made available to him. Additionally, he likes talking to people, so he wouldn’t be “mean” to tell callers/testers to take him off their list.
• 29834u98 2y ago
  Exponential increase over the past decade. Currently I get 5-10 calls per day. I'll get the same robocall from the same LA phone number (I've never lived anywhere near LA) three times a day for a month advertising roof repair or some shit like that (I don't own a home).
  • TylerE 2y ago
    Why not block the number?
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I briefly saw a dropoff of spoofed calls, after STIR/SHAKEN. I have a business line, and pretty much every call to it is spam. The spoofed calls have picked up again. It looks like STIR/SHAKEN means squat.
• accrual 2y ago
  I almost never get spam calls yet I started to receive them almost daily preceding and after the election. Fortunately iOS is great at filtering them. I'd just like a feature to not see them at all, they don't deserve a single missed call notification or unread flag on my device.
• behringer 2y ago
  That's definitely true. I answer each one that I can to get a Guage on their business model and then make fun of them for how much they spent on my lead. I think they are all different and resell to eachother because they keep calling no matter how horribly I've trolled them day after day. Most other scams never call back after my trolling. I'm wondering if the Medicare calls are the "setup your own turnkey business" flavor of the day.