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Cell phone spam calls

rh71

rh71

No Lifer
Growing frustrated with the amount of calls we get on the VZW cell phones, upwards of 10 a day. I was curious if for some reason we're in the minority. My wife got assigned a "new" number (new line) and almost right away the calls came. I used to not get much but in the last year it's grown worse. In the last few months, they're starting to leave voicemails, because there are apps like Mr. Number which pick up (intercept) right away and seconds later, we would have a voicemail from the spammer. I don't think there's an existing app that actually picks up and hangs up so that can be prevented, one that also shares a national database that would intercept these calls in the first place. Local call blockers that require proactive blocking aren't effective because of the number spoofing.

Yes we're on the do-not-call registry which nobody abides by anyway. Even nomorobo is failing to block more and more on the land line. Is this a losing battle, that nobody bothers to talk about?
 
I don't get many voicemails, but I have a program that hangs up on anyone not in my contact list. That way if it is important, I can get a voicemail, and call back. Dunno what I'll do if I start getting a lot of spam mail.
 
Hello. We are calling to notify you that your warranty on your..... 2006 ACURA has expired. Press 1 now to speak with a customer service representative.

Oh thank god they told me that my warranty had just expired on my 2006 vehicle!

Also OP, on my Samsung you can go into details of the calls and block the number at least.
 
Yeah, we both get quite a few spam calls on the cells.

Not really anything you can do about it except installing some call blocking program similar to what lxskller is using...the fuckers spoof phone numbers so they look like local calls...but are just robo-crap.
 
I flat out ignore probably 90 percent of my calls these days. Anything that shares the first six numbers of either my physical cell phone or my two Google Voice numbers are automatic ignores. Anything that the Android dialer marks as spam. The stupid thing is they would be better off at this point spam calling using numbers that don't match mine as I will not answer anything that I notice to match. It was a nice gimmick but everyone is fully aware of it now, they should probably move on.

Two spam calls in the last hour. Averaging 2-3 a day lately. The best part is my two Google Voice numbers are west coast area codes so they like to call around 11 PM. They've yanked me out of sleep on multiple occasions yet I can't shut my phone off due to work obligations.

Viper GTS
 
Wife got one last week The IRS has a warrant out for her if she doesn't pay up ! She hung up.
 
A few months ago, I went from perhaps 1 undesirable call per week to.... half a dozen per day, at least? I've installed nomorobo and it's cut that back down to a few per week. Which is, of course, still entirely too many.
 
Pick2 said:
Wife got one last week The IRS has a warrant out for her if she doesn't pay up ! She hung up.
Click to expand...

See - I get spam calls but most are recordings... I've always wanted the scammers to call, because at least I could fuck with them. I would find something new everytime.... talk back in an Indian accent, play with them like I'm actually going to the bank, etc...
 
Drako said:
I've got so many blocked numbers, my phone's running out of memory. 😉
Click to expand...

What are you hoping to accomplish by blocking them? I don't really see any repeats, unless I can block by wildcard to kill the 'local' spoof blocking is a waste of time IMO.

Viper GTS
 
Viper GTS said:
What are you hoping to accomplish by blocking them? I don't really see any repeats, unless I can block by wildcard to kill the 'local' spoof blocking is a waste of time IMO.

Viper GTS
Click to expand...

I get probably 3 or more blocked calls a day. Once you've hit "block" a couple thousand times ...
 
This must be just a Verizon thing. I rarely get robocalls on my T-Mobile number. Maybe a couple a month. And most of the time the caller ID for those pops up as "POSSIBLE SCAM".
 
dainthomas said:
This must be just a Verizon thing. I rarely get robocalls on my T-Mobile number. Maybe a couple a month. And most of the time the caller ID for those pops up as "POSSIBLE SCAM".
Click to expand...

I'm an AT&T user, not Verizon. And it's happening to several people I know on T-Mobile as well.
 
dainthomas said:
This must be just a Verizon thing. I rarely get robocalls on my T-Mobile number. Maybe a couple a month. And most of the time the caller ID for those pops up as "POSSIBLE SCAM".
Click to expand...

It's happening on AT&T as well, just started happening a couple months ago on my work phone. Ficking 8 am and 9 pm calls. Do not call list is a joke.

Also getting calls from "unlisted" or something like that.
 
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My Pixel does a fantastic job of identifying spam numbers. My friend with his 8 Edge apparently has to pay VZW to enable spam call filtering.
 
I'm pointing my fingers at Verizon too. I have AT&T, Tmobile, and Verizon. For the last two years, I've been trying to figure out who's giving out my numbers. I was pretty sure it's Verizon for a long time, but cannot prove it. The interesting thing was once I ported some numbers over to T-Mobile back in March and April, the spam calls dropped drastically from 2-3 a week to 1 a month....down the level of my AT&T line. It may be that T-mobile filters out the spam calls? I think not. T-Mobile does notify you that whoever is calling your may be a spammer via the caller-ID tag "scam likely."
 
That's one thing I find interesting, I never get any kind of telemarketting call on my cell, only my land line, but even land line ones have gone down quite a bit. I guess the DNCL is doing it's job and blocking all those calls.
 
My S7 has a built in yellow pages + spam detector. So whenever they call that's been flagged as spam, it shows on the caller screen. This is handy, BUT it doesn't stop them from ringing up your phone. I wish there was a way to auto-block the phone from ringing in the first place entirely.

samsung-galaxy-s7-comes-with-whitepages-dialer-caller-id-spam-filter-500879-2.jpg
 
We need to seriously start considering making massive changes to the POTS. Either take the spam fighting route - have carriers listen on calls and start blocking exchanges with bad actors - or heavily balkanize the system so that calls originating from a VoIP bridge or outside the country are subject to inspection. Otherwise it has become email without any of the effective spam filtering techniques.
 
Verizon user here.. YES! Lots..

Found this app called "Should I Answer" and have been using it a while - works pretty good. Is it perfect? Of course not.. BUT.. it maintains a database of all blocked calls of users so you benefit from their blocked calls too.. I've been pretty happy with it.
 
T-Mobile has free "scam block" service, and I also have nomorobo installed on the phone. Between the two of them, it has cut down on it a lot. The fake local numbers occasionally still get through, but if you aren't a known contact, I let your call go to voicemail anyway, so it isn't too bad with those other two layers. The only drawback of nomorobo is that it can't outright block the calls. It can just make them invisibly go to voicemail, so I get random "new voicemail" alerts that are, of course, just silence. I may not renew the nomorobo if the T-Mobile service seems to filter enough before it hits that layer.
 
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