Posted on 07/18/2023 11:29:25 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
US regulators on Tuesday announced a nationwide crackdown to stop companies from inundating people with billions of unwanted and illegal robocalls and telemarketing calls.
The crackdown, known as Operation Stop Scam Calls, involves the Federal Trade Commission and 101 other federal and state law enforcement authorities, including the attorneys general of all 50 states and Washington, DC.
More than 180 enforcement actions and initiatives are part of the initiative, including five that the FTC formally announced on Tuesday.
“We don’t know too many people out there who enjoy getting scam calls,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC consumer protection bureau, told reporters. “A single unwanted call is one too many.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
That assumes I'm going to run to the phone a dozen or more times a day to check the Caller ID number. Ain't gonna happen, since I'm mobility handicapped.
Before you say it, no I'm not a person who has a phone handset surgically attached.
I was woke up by a call from local electric company. He stated there was nothing wrong with my account, but their computers went down and needed me to verify information. Person seemed legit, but this seemed strange. Not wanting to deal with it I told him my wife takes care of the bills and she wasn’t home. This made him mad and he demanded she call his number by 1:00 this afternoon or he would send it to collections.
I was getting coherent by this time having been in a deep sleep, and I told him he was a scammer. He replied no I am not. I said first of all, you stated there was no problem with my account and now you want to send it to collections. Secondly I do not get my electric from your company. He hung up on me after that.
Be careful! These people are getting trickier all the time.
Sounds like you have a landline,try this.
Get the 3 toned recording that indicates a disconnected phone and put it on your answering machine. The robo calls will pull you number off the auto dialer.
Sometimes that happens to me-I’ll get a call from a number I don’t recognize, and it’s legit. I can’t tell them apart from the scammers.
fines aren’t gonna stop this; onerous federal and state prison sentences are the only things that will actually stop illegal calls ...
They were supposed to do this 20 years ago.
The record goes to the outfit playing games with caller-ID spoofing. I got 11 calls that day, each of them displaying my name and phone number.
From where are you calling, I ask. Usually, they say some generic company name and I'll ask them to say where geographically.
When they say Austin, Texas or whatever, I tell them you are using a Wyoming area code and if you want to be deceptive on something that simple, there is no reason to trust you on anything else.
Especially something like a warranty that involves giving them cash upfront in exchange for a promise based on trust which you just destroyed.
I’d get 15-20 calls a day and once set up a responder “Please press 1...” type thing. Whatever they press they get some different options, then more. I made them choose maybe 7-8 times then to frustrate kicked them back to the original menu.
The bot calls hung up right off, but when a real spammer called they’d go right down the rabbit hole...at least until they caught on.
Friends knew not to call my landline. After getting rid of the landline, the spams got less and less.
She must've been cute and every guy coworker rushed to avenge her honor.
78 years old, living alone with health problems, my kids would freak out if they heard that. I'd have the sheriff here for a welfare check every time!
I know. It's so seldom the government does something that actually benefits the people, makes me suspicious about why.
When wife gets a robocall- one without a live speaker- she places the phone in front of the radio so that the robot registers replies to questions and sometimes it can go 10 minute or more before it hangs up. I tend to turn the hone face down on the table for live or mechano calls. My brother plays games with them and can tie up a call for half an hour. If you do that, though you have to totally avoid saying the words, “yes” or “no” or “agree.” Those words are instantly cut out and added to a prerecorded question that commits you to paying a very large amount of money that is legally collectible unless you spend a very large amount of money on a lawyer.
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