Just a sampling from last week. Every single one of these is the same scam. I had another seven yesterday.
I never answer and they always leave the same prerecorded voicemail message (although that message seems to change every few days) about me owing taxes, which I absolutely don’t.
I also get most of them within an hour, which makes it even more annoying.
And yes, I’m on the do not call list.
Someone please make it stop!
you cant stop them, unless you make it not worth the effort and get removed from the call list.
Maybe answer the call like this https://youtube.com/shorts/2JYzH_CZ3Xo?si=EBugfIt-EXiGxATl
Can confirm. I used to answer the calls to waste their time, ask them to hold while I go take a shit etc. I started to get more calls after doing this, until about a week in when the scammer told me to fuck off and stop wasting his time! After that, not so many calls.
The voicemails are prerecorded, so I wonder if you ever actually talk to a human or just enter your bank details via the number pad?
I answer unknown calls and then immediately mute my mic. Most of the time it’s a bot that might call back once more, occasionally it’s somebody that gets an explanation of why i just made things weird. been doung that for years and now I only get spam calls maybe once or twice a month tops, if even that much
It’s likely a robocaller, in which case, send them to a recording of the SIT intercept tone.
This thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IC_SIT.ogg
It needs to be the first thing the machine hears, so might not work as a voicemail welcome message if your provider has their intro before your message.
It might take a few calls/days before you’re purged from their multiple instances of robocallers.
Settings -> Apps -> Phone -> Silence Unknown Callers
Might make it more bearable if you’re not already using it. But it’s still annoying even then.
Thanks, that will help. Although I hope the legitimate unknown calls I get, and I do get them not infrequently due to things like medical issues, will know to leave a voicemail.
They will unfortunately also get filtered. What I do is to direct important callers to ensure they leave a VM, or send an email or text.
Yet Another Call Blocker has worked brilliantly for me, for years how. This stuff doesn’t even show up in my call log.
Does anyone answer if you call back?
I love fucking with the actual scammers. Last time I actually paid for an eFax subscription and kept spamming them back with fax calls.
It took a day or two but they stopped calling.
I’d be worried about trying because they’d think I was doing it because I missed their call and would be a good mark.
That’s when you’ve got them on the hook. Then you string them along until they finally realize that you’ve been messing with them the entire time and start angrily cursing you over the phone.
I make it my personal mission to waste as much of those shitbags time as possible.
These scammers generally call from spoofed numbers. If you call them back, some very confused person is doing to answer and have no idea what you’re talking about.
I’ve never personally used it, but https://www.trapcall.com is a service that can reportedly unmask spoofed/blocked numbers and provide you with the actual number a person is calling from.
I did computer telephony work many years ago and have a general understanding of how this works. Caller ID is trivial to spoof, but there’s an underlying protocol called Automatic Number Identification (ANI) that was historically used for long distance billing when those calls were billed by the minute. Since it involves billing it can’t be spoofed by the caller, and the telephone companies are careful to ensure it’s accurate. What Trapcall apparently does is replace the spoofed Caller ID with the ANI.
That’s cool I didn’t know about that. But what prevents the telcos from always using the ANI to identify every call?
This looks like a cool service, but I can’t find their subscription plans/cost anywhere on the website. It looks like I have to sign up for the free trial without knowing how much I’m on the hook for if I forget to cancel in time, and that seems sus.
I had an older lady call me to ask why I had been calling her phone. Had to explain that scammers were faking caller ID numbers, it wasn’t me, and everyone was dealing with the same garbage phone calls. She was initially ready to chew me out, but deflated pretty quickly when she realized her vexation would have to be vented toward someone else.
