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 ...
My ph0ne is 951 area. IO get a lot of calls maybe 7-8 a day from sales and robots. 951 about half. I call some back now and then. Some of the 951 are peoples home numbers. The spammers use actual numbers to hide their own
The solution to my robocall woes has been my Sentry call blocker. Since getting it a couple of years ago, I have had one, count ‘em, one unwanted call get through. Plus, there is no black list to maintain if you don’t want to. With a one to five star ratings, this puppy gets a SIX.
If everyone would talk to these creeps and waste 5-10 minutes of their time ...
So the guy pulls over and walks up to the farmer and he says, “Wouldn’t it save time to just knock all the apples on the ground and let the pigs eat them all at once?”
And the farmer, confused, looks at him and says, “Yeah, but what’s time to a pig?”
Yeah - well i’m retired with time on my hands (and easily amused as you can tell). I enjoy the thought of building up their hope that they’ve got a live one on the line and are going to make some money - just to dash them at the end.
You are very welcome.
If I had a landline....
The robo calls I have gotten all to frequently have a recorded message and you have to press a button on your keypad to get the scammers. Pressing the button to opt out of of further calls is another scam... they just keep calling knowing there is somebody on the other end. Taliking to the scammers is a waste of time....they will hang up if you threaten them. The federal do not call registry is a total joke. For a time I immediately filed an online complaint for every robo call I received...sometimes 4-5 times a day. Once after more than 6 months of complaints I did get a letter from the FTC saying they were looking into my complaints, but the calls persisted. Only moving and changing my phone number ended the calls for a while, but now I am getting them again. Blocking the number is futile as the same scammers use spoofing software to constantly change the caller ID phone numbers. I even tried looking up the telephone carrier and complained to them that their network was being used for fraud...another waste of time. I understand that some scammers have been prosecuted, but that doesn’t seem to deter them. Perhaps making telephone scams a capital crime with mass hangings as part of the Super Bowl halftime show might slow the problem.
I’ve been getting those. Not sure what that’s all about.
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