Posted on 12/25/2018 4:25:50 AM PST by sodpoodle
With phone spam on the rise, a plucky band is fighting back with practical jokes, air horns and inane conversations about spaghetti
When he gets a robocall, Robert B. Eckhardt doesn’t necessarily hang up. If he isn’t too busy, Dr. Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics at Pennsylvania State University, stays on the line and asks random questions, such as, “Do your parents know what you’re doing?”
If he can string the caller along for 10 minutes, Dr. Eckhardt considers it a minor victory in the war against telephone spam.
Most people get annoyed by calls from telemarketers or scam artists. Some try to get even. One tactic is to play dumb. Another is to ask callers to spell their names and drag out the process, trapping them in a futile conversation for as long as possible. (“Is that L as in Lima, Peru? Or L as in Lima, Ohio?”)
James Haefele, a management consultant in Oxford, Conn., subjects suspected scam callers to a blast from his air horn or puts his wisecracking teenagers on the line. When it comes to unwanted calls, he sees two choices: “I’m either going to be mad about this or have some fun with it.”
Despite Do Not Call lists, the shrieking of obscenities and other defenses, rogue calls have only been growing. YouMail Inc., a provider of voice mail and call-blocking services, estimates that robocalls in the U.S. increased to 5.1 billion in November from 2.8 billion in December 2017. That’s nearly 16 calls last month for every single person in the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
An oldie but a goodie. I love that bit.
That’s what I use too - an occasional one slips through but works for me...A lot of silence in the house after getting it.
Oh. Thanks!
1. Won't spam calls get through to your voicemail anyway?
2. It seems like an awful lot of maintenance if one has a large contacts list to set custom ring tones for those contacts.
What am I missing in your solution?
BTW, I use "Should I Answer?" and "Mr. Number" on my Samsung Galaxy S9 to deal with spam calls. I don't recall the last time a spam call got through. It uses Social Media and user submissions of bad numbers and/or bad prefixes to block spam. I think it works great.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
The folks with the Microsoft scam seem to hang up quickly when I ask what country they are from. At least they use live people. The loan scammers with their robocalls are the worst. They need to be beaten with baseball bats. Maybe include the duct cleaners with them. It’s unfair to not provide a real person for me to engage with.
And the corrupt FTC does nothing. Fire them all, abolish the agency, and give the responsibilities to someone that will take them seriously.
NoMoRobo doesn’t seem to work when the number on the caller id matches the number being called. Perhaps spoofing numbers on a robocall should be made a capital felony.
So sweet. Thanks! Turns out my carrier offers it as a service automatically in the Call Forwarding setup.
What am I missing in your solution?
BTW, I use "Should I Answer?" and "Mr. Number" on my Samsung Galaxy S9 to deal with spam calls. I don't recall the last time a spam call got through. It uses Social Media and user submissions of bad numbers and/or bad prefixes to block spam. I think it works great.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Merry Christmas to you as well!
I long ago turned off voice mail. It's one less thing to do every day. If you didn't get me live on the phone then you didn't get me. Email or message but no voice mail. Voice mail is so 20th century answering machine simulator!
Yes it's a lot of work if you have a very big contact list. Though you only have to do it once and remember when you put a new contact on to give it a ring tone. When I did it I also cleared a lot of really old contacts from my list....mostly business related that I no longer needed. Heck I even had dead people on my contact list!
Don't want to string along the caller?
WANT THEM TO STOP CALLING!
WANT HEAVY FINES AND EVEN JAIL TIME USED AS PENALTIES FOR THOSE (COMPANIES) DOING THE CALLS!
“not as satisfying as loading a AARP envelope with bulk materials to increase their postage charge but it’s something.”
My dad kept sending “Good Sam’s” stuff back and calling them to be removed from the mailing list. Finally he taped their prepaid envelope to a chunk of granite about the size of a pet headstone with a warning “I have bigger rocks.” They took him off of the mailing list.
Have you published your method somewhere? I'm sure others will find it very useful!!
I still sing show tunes to them. Now, we get about half the number of calls...someday, someone will appreciate my “audition”!
Noborobo works for me, but if one gets through, I give them the gospel. Recently, I started getting chinese robo calls.
Mine has a limited number of room for blocking numbers. In one day, I’d use the limit three times over in one day just for the Apple, Inc. scam calls. That’s not counting the ones from Holiday Inn, State Bank, and the unknowns. No, I don’t answer.
The political ones are the easiest to get rid off. Just tell them you were going to vote for them but now you’re not because of all their calling.
You all should try the Jolly Roger Telephone Co.to stop all of those calls
MAGA dittos.
100% of the robocalls I received are recorded.
No. Don't do social media or blogs. If you do feel free to take it.
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