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Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

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Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#21

Post by ghaff »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

You can do it on an iPhone at least using Do Not Disturb. I've resorted to doing that when I travel overseas because otherwise I get woken up in the middle of the night. I don't really like doing it for the reason you say but I really don't have a choice.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#22

Post by ryandrake »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

I'm purely whitelist at this point. If I get a call and it's not from a contact I know, I send it straight to voicemail. Probably less than 10% of my phone calls are legitimate. The rest (2-3 calls a day) are vacation timeshare spam, "IRS" spam, solar panel spam, and some Chinese spam that I can't understand because I don't speak Mandarin.

Anyone who's important (including kid's school) is in my contact list, so I'm confident that I'm not missing anything important. And in the off chance it is important but not in my white list they will leave a message.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#23

Post by drewg123 »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

Me too. The vast majority of my spam calls are on the local exchange for my phone's native number. I use Google Voice on a Pixel2, so nobody should even be using the native number. I've often wished for a way to either:

Block any call for the native, non Google Voice number or Block any call claiming to originate from any number in the native number's local prefix. Eg, 604-233-

I haven't found a call blocker that can do this, but it has been a while since I looked.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#24

Post by jakewins »

Ugh, this guy calls me several times a week. I'm on the no-call list, I report them to the FTC every time they call, and twice I've waited to get patched through to the "travel rep" to ask them to remove me. It's infuriating.

On a related note, I'm curious about a scam that popped up when I added a Craigslist ad the other day; I normally include my number, because I live in the midwest and people buying construction material don't have email; that's never been an issue.

But this time, I've gotten two separate robo text-messages asking I reply via email to magalife3@gmail.com. Googling highlights this person is spamming a few public places as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=+magalife3%40gmail.com

Curious if anyone else has come across something like that - is it just a way to get past spam filters by having me make an outbound email to the scammer?

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#25

Post by bluGill »

ghaff wrote: post #16
inetknght wrote: post #4

I've frequently wondered why, in this day and age, telcos are permitted to provide telephone service without any guarantee whatsoever of the originating phone number being accurate.

Part of it is that their are legitimate reasons to spoof CallerID such as when a company wants to set all outgoing calls to show the main company name and number, even when the call originates from a direct inbound dial line. Carriers could block calls from numbers that supposedly don't exist or dial out--and I believe some are starting to offer than as a service. But if they spoof as a real number, that won't work.…

Those are legitimate, but they are technically easy to solve.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#26

Post by 1123581321 »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

I could see sending all non-contact calls to voicemail the first time, and letting them ring if they call again.

Anything more restricted would make you unavailable if, say, the police called because a family member was in a crash. I will put up with some inconvenience to be available in rare emergencies.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#27

Post by nemacol »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

In the US we just had congressional hearings over Facebook. While Zuckerberg walked a fine line and performed as well as anyone could under such situation, I was left disappointed. He (more or less) took a beating from congress without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA, or anyone else who is breaking trust and downright abusing existing platforms and ignoring privacy. Robo…

That is very entertaining. Thank you for the link.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#28

Post by rco8786 »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

After ~2 years of this strategy I've missed 0 important calls, the important ones always leave a voicemail.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#29

Post by pmcollins »

inetknght wrote: post #4

I've frequently wondered why, in this day and age, telcos are permitted to provide telephone service without any guarantee whatsoever of the originating phone number being accurate.

I'm baffled that telcos allow this, regardless of regulations.

I get so many robocalls, I stopped answering my phone. But when I get a FaceTime call or an iMessage, I'm on it.

Robocalls dilute the trust consumers have in the phone system. The telcos are rapidly ceding this trust to other forms of communication -- those provided Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. As robocalls proliferate, tech companies win and telcos lose. Unless they fix this, eventually the phone system might go away entirely. Consumers -- especially young people -- won't want or need it.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#30

Post by ghaff »

drewg123 wrote: post #23
fosco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

Me too. The vast majority of my spam calls are on the local exchange for my phone's native number. I use Google Voice on a Pixel2, so nobody should even be using the native number. I've often wished for a way to either: Block any call for the native, non Google Voice number or Block any call claiming to originate from any number in the native number's local prefix. Eg, 604-233- I haven't found a call blocker that can…

Most of the junk calls to my cell phone follow this formula. There doesn't seem to be anything to block the whole exchange. I'd be happy to do it. I don't actually live in the same city as my cell number so the odds that I'd be blocking someone who needed to reach me is pretty small.
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