Detroit Free Press
Welcome to 2019, where the phone is a weapon of deception. A new study by the FCC projects that nearly half of all cell phone calls received this year will be spam. Junk. Uninvited voices designed to lure money or information.
Half of our calls? Half!?!
we have an old landline number we use when websites require a phone number. That way all the fake calls go to it.
If you’re not in my contact list you get no answer. I explain this to anybody I’m doing work for and tell them leave a message and I’ll get right back with you. Once you answer one of those scam calls they start calling you all the time.
This is why I rarely answer mine.
There used to be a “Do Not Call” list….
…..but the government “forgot” about enforcement. ….Lady in Red
And there’s no way the FCC can stop this?
I always answer as de KING AH TAIWAHn.
I so rarely get to do my Hop Sing impression in pubric… I mean public.
“dis de KING AHF AHHH TAIWAHn… wat u want, roundeye?”
“ahhhwwww, rife insuwance? I Chinee, Buddah protect me….”
Yeah… probably have too much free time on my hands.
Got a line phone with a call block box and an old 3g flip phone I only
turn on for my convenience while out.
Life is good. Life is QUIET.
Resentment doubles when you pay your cell phone bill.
Sadly, this garbage isn’t illegal, just a civil fine. $100 Mil fine? No problem, they made $200 Mil off the calls. It won’t stop until there’s jail time.
My most frequent caller is “Spam Likely”. Only second to that sex call in line, “Spew Likely”. Honest, I don’t answer either.
About half my inbound calls are unsolicited. One quarter are spam robo calls for products or services unasked for and unwanted. When I stay on the line, it just hangs up. Hmmmmm……
The other quarter are scam calls (“hi this is John Doe of Publishers Prize Patrol”). I eventually got tired of being “nice” and told the guy to go suck his mother’s dick, and lick his father’s c**t. Haven’t been bothered since. Hopefully the peace will last awhile.
My mobile incoming call volume is low, so the absolute number of spam/scam calls isn’t much of a problem, but I’d estimate that about 75% are crap calls.
I’m on MetroPCS/T-Mobile and they catch about half of them well enough to override the caller ID with “TELEMARKETER” or “SCAM LIKELY” which is handy.
Robo’s on my cell are non-existant.
On my land line… If it’s a computer, I hang up.
I long for the day when it’s a person… They are so much fun to mess with and see how far you can take them.
My fav is “you can’t talk to me like that”. My response is’hey, you called me’.
Usually it’s just a click, tho.
If the government were as persistent about finding, fining and ending this shit as they are about pushing abortions at every turn something would get done.
@Uncle Al – I’m on the same company/plan and I get almost no bogus calls. When I do, I just put the number on the block list.
I do a pretty convincing senile old man act. Spam calls usuallytself-terminate in under 10 seconds.
Does anybody ever get legitimate emails? About 95% or more of mine are solicitations…
The way to fix this is to change the way phone calls a billed. Instead of the receiving phone paying for the service the party calling gets the charge.
I get 15 to 20 calls a day about extended warranty, college debt, pest control, or asking for political donations. It has gotten very old. I have got to the point where I answer the phone “Sheriff’d office, fraud devision” for the spam calls.
Only half? I wish it were only half! They certainly didn’t check my phone records (most of my scam phone calls are from lying politicians wanting money)!
I keep my cell phone off. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. I turn it on at 4pm to check for messages before a 5pm business closes.
During that 4pm check, at least once a week a spam call comes in.
BTW, my battery charge lasts for a month!