I have been getting calls on my cell phone that show up as missed calls, but the phone doesn’t ring. Or rings once, then stops. Or no one there when I pick up the call and say hello. And they don’t leave messages.
For awhile, I was getting calls from Great Britain, I finally blocked that number. On April 14, a call from Russia; then over the next days: unknown caller; Huntington Beach,CA; Park Ridge, IL; Keenesburg, CO; Splendora, TX;Hogansville, GA; Birmingham, AL; Las Vegas, NV, and so on.
I know robo-calls happen, but they used to be infrequent. 7 unknown calls yesterday.
The robo-dialers are getting more sophisticated. It’s possible all of these are coming from the same source with spoofed CIDs. And you may not be targetted specifically; they may just dial all of the possible digits in one code block, which covers both landlines and cellphones.
As for why the premature hangup, that is often caused by robo-dialers – ones with no scruples, obviously – that try to maximize the calls handed over to live operators. To do this, i.e., to ensure that no live op has to wait for the next call, they make more calls than can be handled, resulting in dropped calls due to overload. No problem for the scam callers, as they will be dialing the same number again and again no matter what the outcome of each call.
today, was a call “about your credit card account”
My cell phone is my “work” number as well. I have clients who keep their cell phone numbers from all over the country when they move to Texas, so I can’t ignore these calls. But I block them if I get a recording, and don’t call back if they don’t leave a message.
And it mentions the “financial stimulus” at the end? Yep, that’s the latest incarnation of the “lower your interest rates” scam, the successor to Rachel or Carmen’s robo-plea. I get 1 or 2 of these per weekday, all of them using the same recording, but each one showing a different (fake) number and/or name.
They appear to be coming from a USA source, as the operators never have a foreign accent. Since they are very “touchy,” and will hang up on you at the slightest suspicion that you aren’t a gullible patsy, they must rely on volume to stay in business.
the sad thing is even legit credit card places are using spoofed numbers so its harder for people who owe them overdue payments to dodge them Caller id is becoming useless…
I have noticed this and also been able to duplicate it a few times unintentionally when I called one phone from another and found that other before it rang (though it didn’t), it flashes the number just for a sec then the other call goes to voicemail, however the phone that originated the call was ringing all along. I assume that the receiving phone got the message too late and the call was switched to voicemail. Perhaps there is a lag between the switch to voicemail and the call disconnection, which makes sense as the internet has lag.