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Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

#11

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

spartas wrote: post #7

Answer the phone when they call and conference in the Jolly Roger telephone bot http://www.jollyrogertelco.com The bot will waste the telemarketers time, which is the most expensive thing that these companies are paying for. Do this enough times and the calls drop off rapidly.

I don't understand how that could be possible.

I'm assuming the companies running these illegal calling scam operations, don't share a DO NOT CALL list.

I could see this working against each company individually. So if its only one bad actor that has your phone number, that would work.

Re: Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

#12

Post by slenk »

the_arun wrote: post #9

In US, you could register your phone in Do Not call list from Federal Trade Commission - https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0133-cell-phones-and-d...

I don't know who is supposed to enforce it, but I feel as if its almost a list of "hey this person will be MAD if we call, this could be fun"

Re: Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

#14

Post by timr »

I find that 99% of spam calls (at least for now) can be eliminated by simply not answering any numbers that match the first six digits of my own telephone number.

I don't know why telemarketers decided this would be a good strategy to increase conversions, but it certainly makes things easier for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

#16

Post by Uberphallus »

I have Sync.Net installed on my phone. It has an option for automatically declining calls from numbers that have been flagged by other users.

Disclaimer: it's very sketchy because it takes your contact list and uses it for other users in the reverse lookup feature. Which is a neat feature, you get FB picture and name of the caller on each call, but still a privacy concern.

Re: Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

#17

Post by RightMillennial »

the_arun wrote: post #9

In US, you could register your phone in Do Not call list from Federal Trade Commission - https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0133-cell-phones-and-d...

That doesn't help. I'm on it, and I regularly get spam calls that are all conveniently from my area code and a similar exchange code.

Re: Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

#18

Post by bsharitt »

CameronBanga wrote: post #13

On my iPhone, I've been using Hiya to help, and it's been pretty good so far.

I have this, but recently "local" spam callers have been getting through a lot more. I don't know if they're spoofing or buying up blocks of numbers but most of them have "valid" caller ids in Hiya.
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