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Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

reportphonespam.org

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Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is genuinely pretty shocking to me. Would e.g. the person calling from the school about your kid getting hurt during recess just hang up and assume you'll call back immediately during the workday on the basis you had a missed call? If you mean for people you have relations with (friends/family/coworkers) most here gave up memorizing numbers a long time ago and none of those would show as an unknown number. This…

Does anyone still has voicemail enabled in the first place? Can't remember the last time I was connected to one. Can't remember last time I had one attached to my number either. (Geo context: Poland, EU)

UK here, called my phone company many many years ago and had them disable voicemail. It's now impossible to leave me a voicemail. It's fantastic. In all those years I've never (that I know of) missed an important call, people call back if they need to.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#62

My solution since 2002: don't answer the phone.

My ATT mobile stopped getting spam calls in mid 2022. It was quite a sudden drop off between the couple years before that.

US cellular did too, but it's picked back up in the last month or so. So I'm guessing scammers figured out the system again.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#63
I got a spam call seemingly “from Verizon” (their main number) on my Verizon phone.

I called them and told them and they said “oh yeah that happens all the time don’t pick up when we call”

That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#64

I wish we could euthanize this garbage, antiquated phone system. It shouldn't be expected/required that every adult has a phone number when the system is so irredeemably broken and dangerous. If the web didn't have HTTPS, it would be illegal to conduct sensitive business over it. Yet we're stuck with this entrenched telephone system, the best we can do is STIR/SHAKEN, and that's not real security.

100%. My son got sick at school last week and I ignored the call from the school nurse because I have been so thoroughly conditioned by daily scam calls to ignore any unrecognized number. It’s insane that this is still a problem.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#66

I mainly stopped using phone calls years ago, and I hope more people also do. I ported my main number to voip.ms and created a couple others to use for pseudonymous accounts. The service is cheap at about $1/month per number, but it is a little technical to configure and is sometimes spotty. My phone number has sometimes been unregistered/out of service for long periods which has been a bonus. Nobody who really knows…

> If you want a slightly more expensive but simple and reliable number on Android, I highly recommend jump.chat.

What? This is just a video chatting service like zoom...?

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can cut through a surprising amount of spam by just reading the voicemail after letting an unknown number ring. If they didn't bother to leave one it was either not at all important or the vast majority of spam calls. If they did leave a voicemail you can generally tell whether it seems even remotely legitimate and, if it does, call back at the number. E.g. if you have a kid and the school calls they will leave s…

This might be a cultural thing, but at least in Australia nobody under the age of 60 would ever leave a voicemail. If you're deliberately making yourself hard to contact this way, a lot of people will just stop calling you.

Wait a second, do you pick up any call you receive? IME Australia is one of the worst places with regards to spam calls (by far the worst out of all countries I lived in), if I allow calls from numbers not already in my contacts, I get an average of around 10 spam calls per week. If it's something important like my daughter's school or strata or the lawyer, they do leave voicemails.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#69

My Voip provider allows for sending receiving text messages as well, and I can certainly set the outgoing number. In our office, there are about 10 different phone numbers, but all outgoing texts are set to come from our "main" number no matter who sent it. And I've been able to change this number to my cell phone number and other numbers that aren't from the VOIP provider.

This is good to know. If you're comfortable sharing, could you email me your VoIP provider or a phone number they're sending from? Address is in my profile. I'd like to learn more. For anyone else reading, this service is called "10 Digit Long Code" AKA 10DLC. Many business-oriented VoIP providers eventually use a vendor like Syniverse or Sinch for the outbound SMSes. Those wholesale carriers usually either strongly…

I’m going to confirm I can still use a number that’s not in my “block” from them, and if so I’ll tell you who it is…. I haven’t had it on my cell number in at least 6 months.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#70

This is enabled by essentially free communication --- while it's probably not feasible to go back to the rates Ma Bell used to charge so as to fund their infrastructure (and generous pensions, and stock dividends).... Why not have a system where a small amount of money is put in escrow when a call is placed? If the person who answered the call is displeased by it, they can punch in a command at the keypad after the c…

This is equivalent to having a “premium number” (like the pay by minute or per txt)
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