Posted on 11/11/2017 6:14:57 AM PST by SandRat
SIERRA VISTA — Unsolicited automated phone calls are a top source of complaint for the Federal Communications Commission, which is way the government agency is trying to enact new restrictions in order to protect consumers.
A proposal brought forth by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai last month would allow voice service providers to block certain calls that “falsely appear” to be unable to make outgoing or taking incoming calls, according to an October FCC fact sheet. The commission estimated that U.S. consumers received more than 2.4 billion automated calls per month in 2016, many of which included a caller with a fraudulent identity. The FCC reported that it’s typical for these types of calls to occur during all hours of the day and are made by fraudster who try to lure customers into sending money or personal information over the phone.
Allowing voice service providers to block potentially fraudulent calls can protect U.S. consumers from annoyances and scams, according to the fact sheet. The proposal would adopt new rules that would allow providers to block calls coming from invalid numbers, phone numbers that are not allocated to a specific provider and numbers that are associated with a provider but no longer in use.
The proposal targets illegal automated calls which can take many forms, including the IRS scam. During an IRS calling scam, consumers will receive a call from a person or recording claiming to be an IRS employee, when in fact they are trying to gain personal information or money from the consumer over the phone.
These calls are common across the U.S. and in southern Arizona. The city of Sierra Vista issued a press release Thursday about a recent IRS phone scam that involved a fraudulent caller claiming to be a Sierra Vista Police Department police officer and an IRS employee.
Brian Sebastian, SVPD public information officer, said in the release that the department will never ask residents to provide any personal information over the phone.
“Scammers often ‘spoof’ caller ID information to make it appear like the call is coming from a credible source,” Sebastian said in the release. “Neither the police department nor the IRS will call a suspect in a law enforcement matter and ask for payment of any type through any kind of electronic transfer.”
MAN ON STREET QUESTION:
How many automated calls do you receive every week? What do you do when you get them? How do you feel about receiving these calls?
Chelsie Wilhelmsen, Sierra Vista
“I get maybe two or three, not a whole lot. A lot of times I don’t answer the phone because I know what it is. But when I do answer I usually just say ‘no’ as soon as I can because I know that I don’t want it and then hang up. It’s a little bit aggravating when you know that it’s not an actual person you have to say ‘no’ to and your phone is ringing at inopportune moments.”
Beth Young, Sierra Vista
“I used to receive, probably, two to three per day. I installed an app on my phone that blocks them now so I don’t get them at all now. It’s called Hiya and anytime you get a phone call (from a reported number) it just blocks it. They are really annoying.”
Willard Braswell, Palominas
“I hang up on them. I feel like if they can’t identify themselves, then I don’t want to talk with them. I get probably four or five a day. I don’t want them but it’s a fact of life, everybody has your number. You do what you want with your computer or your phone, you’re going to give it (your phone number) away.”
Rebecca Cranfield, Sierra Vista
“I get at least one daily – at least. What I’ve done is tagged them in my phone to block them so I can still see in my call log that they’ve come through but what my phone does is just automatically reject the calls...I’ll just go through and keep sending them to auto reject. It’s frustrating because it’s sending to your cell phone, which you pay for, and also it’s at inconvenient times and it’s just aggravating for them to call over and over again.”
Eileen Ostrander, Huachuca City
“I probably get about five or six, at least, a week. What I mostly do is I hang up on them and when I get ones that I know right away that they are trying to scam me, I tell them ‘I know you’re trying to scam me and if you don’t behave yourself, you’re going to go to hell.’ They don’t bother me because I know they are scams, but it bothers me that they’re scamming people who don’t understand and they’re losing money. It’s sad.”
I try to have fun with spoof callers. The ones where the caller ID is in my local exchange, and has, say, a name of “John Deere”, but the guy on the phone says “Hi, I’m Gary. How are you?”.
Me: “Oh really? I thought you were John.”
“Brian Sebastian, SVPD public information officer, said in the release that the department will never ask residents to provide any personal information over the phone.”
That’s alright. I always give out the ex-wife’s info anyway.
Well, our wire-line (now VOIP) is unusable for incoming calls. The only reason we keep it is that it is a quasi-lifeline service and we’re in our mid-70’s. Actually though, without battery backup for both the phone and the wireless router, it really isn’t any better that cell phones, but since we have to have a microcell (which is connected to our wireless router) in our home for our cell phones to function, none of it is truly lifeline service. We have been forced to put a “greeting” on our home phone that says that we don’t answer it because of telemarketing calls. The phone logs as many as twenty telemarketing calls a day, many of which are from “spoofed” numbers. I would put the blame squarely on AT&T and other phone service providers because they sell the telemarketers the access that they need to carry out their assaults on the public.
When I have nothing better to do it's fun to see how long I can keep one of these jerks on the line.
You can hear the excitement when some creep named "Eric" in Mumbai begins to think that he has a live one on the line and that his family might actually eat today. Yes, it's cruel, but who would deny me these little pleasures.
When we had telephone service with Time Warner we had many options. One that I used often was to send the telemarketer to another telemarketer’s number. Or, to a recording at a movie theater...or to the weather report.
Is English the first language of this journalist?
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” . . . to block certain calls that “falsely appear” to be unable to make outgoing or taking incoming calls.”
What ever happened to the “Do not call list”? That was W’s greatest accomplishment.
Note, for some fun with telemarketers, search the web for Lenny.
Those automatic ring-back calls where when you answer it immediatly sends you to a call center? Just hang up. No need to explain or be polite. They are trained to leave no openings in their speel until they get the entire pitch out.
I do similar with these callers, only I say I’m the brother of the person they are seeking, say he was recently murdered, then proceed to chastise them for harassing the family at such a grieving time and insist they take his name off their lists.
Another game is to act like I’m retarded and speak in gibberish.
I can no longer answer my landline. I must have thousands of numbers blocked and yet the scam calls keep rolling in daily.
I have been hoping that someone will start a class action lawsuit against the phone companies (loss of use). No matter what they say, all calls are instantly traceable (try making a threat against POTUS). The scammers are known and seemingly allowed to operate.
Spam emails are another thing. I get an average of 100 per day that make it past multiple spam killing filters.
I get several a day. Many have my area code and the first 3 digits of my phone number. Whenever I get them, I ignore them.
I got 3 fake IRS calls in two days. The computer voice sounds like it was generated on a 20 year old computer. And the English is bad, too. I listen for a few seconds, laugh and hang up.
I like give them the number to Dial-A-Prayer.
I will miss chatting up Betty from Credit Card Services.
Try YouMail.com
One feature is blocking using the wildcard “????”. That takes out the ten thousand digits from 0000 to 9999.
This started showing up several months ago. It really angers me because sometimes when you are expecting a call from doctor/pharmacy you can't afford not to answer it for fear of missing an important call.
Then you get the calls purportedly from the IRS threatening you with arrest IF you don't call their number. Elderly folks can get scammed over this easily. The FCC and the telephone companies could shut them down cold if they wanted to.
I have 17 vehicles warranties on my car now.
Contractors trying to collect Federally owned student loans are the worst in my family. The Feds should clean their own house first.
25-40 years ago, the IRS was the worst offendor in my experience. Intentional...planned harrassment to intimidate.
LOL!
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