Posted on 08/08/2017 10:50:57 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Telemarketers have a new trick to get you to answer the phone — and it’s hitting close to home.
Caller ID spoofing, a technique to fake the number a call is coming from, makes detecting pesky robocalls more difficult. One increasingly popular way telemarketers are getting people to answer the phone is by mimicking the user’s number — copying the recipient’s area code and sometimes even the first few digits of their number.
Not even the head of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates phone lines and telemarketers, is immune. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told NPR he’s been targeted by telemarketers using the tactic.
“(The call will) seem to be coming from the 202 area code, which is here in Washington, and then our prefix for these BlackBerries,” Pai told NPR. “And I know for a fact that, you know, it’s probably not someone calling from the office.”
Joel Whalen, a professor of marketing and business communications at DePaul University, says caller ID spoofing can make consumers more comfortable answering a call.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
If I detect one of these “fraud” calls I immediately launch into my “Sheriff’s Office, Fraud Division” act:
“This is Detective XXX....You have reached the fraud division of the XXX County Sheriff’s Department....WHO IS THIS?!”
“Do not hang up, I have traced your location...WHO IS THIS?!!” ANSWER ME NOW OR WE WILL SEND THE LOCAL POLICE TO YOUR ADDRESS IMMEDIATELY!”
They are usually gone once I get the first “WHO IS THIS?!” out. They NEVER call back.
If you have to say Hello more than once...HANG UP!
Never had a problem with this one. I tried another brand first and it started blocking my cell phone at random. Returned it.
I got some with my own area code and prefix, then my last four, incremented up one or two.
And my Region’s highway patrol initials for caller ID.
Because it costs nothing to have a computer dial numbers all day long.
If you wanted to hurt them, pick up the phone and then don’t buy anything, that actually costs them money.
That is FUNNY!
In the old days, a phrase I use more often these days, we didn’t have this much of a problem because nearly all calls were long distance. You had local long distance, if it was across town, and then out of area long distance. Telemarketers were limited in their reach. They weren’t going to pay for a WATS line and they could only reach a small number of people for free. We need a way to require that telemarketers have to pay $1 or so for every call they make. When a number is reported, that number is charged for every call it makes. Let the phone companies keep half, the rest goes to the US.
For IP phone calls, it would be a little tougher. How about they just get shut down if they don’t have a way to track their marketing calls? Probably not possible, those guys are pretty clever.
She actually had one person who was willing to talk, so she told the lady about Jesus & the Gospel for about 10 minutes.
double that. DNC is a gutless farce kinda like the RNC.
+1 <—THIS!
If I don’t recognize a number, I don’t answer. If the caller leaves no message, I block them, thanks to my iPhone. Love that thing. Sometimes.
Phone companies make money off telemarketers. The telemarketers make a million phone calls versus the few that we make. Guess why nothing gets done to stop this.
A candidate who promises to execute telemarketers will win in the greatest landslide in history.
I had one the other day which appeared to be a human, but I suspected that it was using canned phrases and a decision tree based on the answers I might give. So, I gave it an off-the-cuff Turing test, by reciting the first line of "Casey at the Bat".
The answer came back, "What are you saying?" And I replied, "I'm just reciting poetry."
"I'm sorry to have trespassed on your time." <click>
I reasoned that a human would have made some remark relating to the subject, or even laughed, since after all, it is a famous comic poem, at least to Americans, and the script reader did have that sort of accent. It was the best I could devise at such short notice.
Conclusion: It was a machine.
Democrat pollsters?
And since they apparently are doing NOTHING to prevent this abuse - I hold the telecommunications companies EQUALLY at fault as co-conspirators.
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I worked for Sprint and Cincy Bell , they all cheat ,, for decades they allowed collection of scam 3rd party billing on landlines for services that were not ordered.
I have an iPhone with AT&T and was on the phone with them the other day and asked about these calls. He told me to download the ap, AT%T Call Protect to help block such calls. So far it’s helped.
Check for a big donation to Soetoro from the telemarketers.
It’s amazing to watch someone struggling to convince a caller that he doesn’t want to buy X, when all he needs to do is hang up.
Yep. Used to be I just said; “No thank you.” And hung up.
Now I’ve cut my response by three words. Then I hang up.
The ones we get are actual local numbers. I looked them up & one was a local business, the others were residences.
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