Facebook is basically the realization of the plot of Captain America: The Winter Soldier including giant flying platforms which can remain airborne indefinitely. Sure, these flying wings don’t have giant cannons designed to kill thousands of people instantly or are run by a cult of crazed maniacs advised by a rogue Austrian Nazi scientist who has been transferred to banks of obsolete computer systems buried in a closed Army barracks in New Jersey (that you know of) but they are looking to follow you everywhere and predict your future. They don’t need your phone number; they already have it, and that of your children, and your third grade teacher. As far as Facebook is concerned, you are just another bit of data to aggregate into a gestalt of society that it will then seek to tear down and remake in the image of Mark Zuckerburg, and I mean that in the literal since that they are going to send tracker bots to hunt you down, extract all organic materials from your body leaving a pile of zinc dust, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and Cheetos flavoring, and the construct Zuckerberg clones molecule by molecule like some kind of Luc Besson wet dream gone horribly wrong.
I had a point when I began this post but it has since escaped like a cybernetic killer android in a time vortex.
I am getting unknown calls much more frequently lately. If the number begins with my area code and I am unsure if it is legitimate then I call the number from my work phone to verify. Once I know for sure then it gets blocked.
What was developed as a feature has become abused and as a result turned into more of a flaw than a feature. Companies do not necessarily want calls returned to the employee’s phone that originated the call; they often want people to phone their main customer switchboard. Hence the ability to control what is displayed in caller id information. Any calls from a company doing this will appear to come from a single designated number.
As with many aspects of modern technology (many aspects of the Internet come to mind) lowlife cretins abuse the feature.
Due to rampant hourly faked caller ID telemarketing on my mobile I’ve adopted the following policy. In talking to others live face to face and reading posts here it’s clear I’m far from alone in this.
I ignore all calls from unknown numbers. I ignore all calls that don’t leave voicemails. I ignore all calls that leave voicemails that are silence.
I call back (or text or email) all calls like “This is Flyer. Call me” or “This is Flyer. I need the figures on the Schmutz case by noon. Blah blah blah (for another minute or two)” etc.
If, and only if, I know your number OR you leave coherent voicemail identifying your self will we ever have any communication.
For me personally you can leave your full message and I’ll act on it without just calling back off caller ID. Others may not. But rest assured calling somebody who doesn’t already know your number and leaving no message is pretty well guaranteeing you two won’t ever be communicating at all.
Bottom line: Calling strangers and leaving no message is IMO a guaranteed fail. Calling known people and leaving messages is admittedly iffy whether they’ll listen to them or not. But each recipient tends to be consistent over time. Bob always listens, Sam never does, etc. So for best results do what works for the recipient.
YMMV.
And yes, it’s friggin’ asinine that yet another useful communications tool has been wrecked by assholes because it wasn’t designed from the git-go to prevent abuse. And it’s doubly assinine that the rest of us are forced into these half-assed inconvenient efficiency-killing workarounds.