OT: Robo-Calls

It's gotten worse over the past years, and I've had an avalanche of calls this month. I have an app that flags spam calls so I don't bother answering, but it's still annoying

Last three months they are getting out of hand, I assume its due to the liquidation of the CFCB, weakening regulations, most of the calls are credit card solicitations, they spoof phone numbers so when you block them the next day the same solicitor calls you on another number,and they no longer respect cell phones.

Download Mr. Number from the app store, it catches most of my spam calls, might ring once but before I can reach for the phone it's already blocked it.

I've never had one on my cell phone. I believe that the reason for that is that I am extremely fussy about who I give the number to. Not even my doctors have it. I still use a land line with caller I.D. an an answering machine. The machine gets all of the unwanted calls.

^shadowcat, Most of these calls are auto dialed in a sequence, they just haven't gotten to that number grouping yet, I dont think it matters who you give your number to the numbers are sequentially ordered. I know this because at my business, I have 5 cell numbers that are only one or two digits off from each other and as the calls come in you hang up one phone and a few seconds later the next number starts ringing with the same call ID.

I’ve been getting a shit ton lately

For personal use, I only have a cell phone. There are stretches where I get 2-3 robo-calls per day, and there are stretches where I only get 2-3 robo-calls per month.

If I don’t have a number saved to my contacts, I just don’t answer it. If it is an actual person calling me about anything important, I think it is reasonable to expect them to leave a voicemail. About 99% of the time, no message is left, so chances are it was a scammer that was calling.

As stated above, Mr. Number is a good app to have. As these calls go to your phone, Mr. Number will flag a number as scam, fraud or potential spoofing in the caller ID.

If AT&T is your carrier, download the Call Protect app. It blocks a dozen or more a day for me.

I received 8 in a 3 day period last week. All were spoofed to look like my number. (Example - my number is 123-456-7890 and the spoofed number always start out: 123-456-xxxx the last 4 are always different).

I agree mine calls have been relatively low until the last 3 weeks, for some reason they’ve amped up again.

I've been getting them a lot lately too. It seems to go in spurts. There was a 2-3 month period where my phone was constantly ringing. The last 30 days or so aren't too bad.

I do agree with twentyfive though, its not about who has your number. They aren't pulling from some list of numbers purchased from somewhere or anything. It's just auto dialing. Sometimes its sequential, sometimes its something resembling random. The sequential ones are usually caught and stopped by their phone provider in a few days so the smarter ones go random or pseudo random. They usually spoof local or local-ish area codes. It's funny, in some of our offices we have floors of folks in cubicles who rarely get phone calls and they've all got numbers with the same area code/exchange and are arranged kinda in order. You'll see a spurt where they'll just all start ringing one after the next for a few minutes. The phone system catches the ones that don't change the number they spoof for every call, so they stop pretty quick. The more sophisticated operations can get through the whole floor without getting cut off.

My android puts up a little warning when it thinks its spam. There's an option to not ring for them, which I turned on a while back. I find it catches about 75% of the calls, all I see is a little missed call notification. I've never seen a false positive, but then again I never answer when it says suspected spam.

I never answer when its a number i don't recognize. When they don't leave a message, I see if there is a spam warning on it online (95% of the time there is) and I block it.

I got a lot of them for a while, but then I set my outgoing message to a fax tone.

I've been getting fewer calls lately.