Yeah, that was how I pictured something like that might go down. I started this thread partly because I recently read about how Emmitt Smith started a communications company in the 1990s and was very hands-on about his business, so much so that he often called clients himself to ask how they were doing, but they were often incredulous on the other end of the line and had a hard time believing they were being called by the Emmitt Smith.
Luckily, enough people will just take the word of the person on the other end of the line to fill countless hours of morning radio time.
My phone rings multiple times per day from scammers using spoofed numbers. If I acknowledge them in any way, such as by picking up the phone and saying “hello” they will tag my number as valid and I will experience approximately a hundred-fold increase in bullshit spam calls. If by some miracle an actual person intending to actually call me is on the line they will hopefully be smart enough to leave a message on my voicemail. If they aren’t smart enough or if I hear a recorded bullshit message on my voicemail, that number gets blocked and marked as spam to aid others in avoiding these nuisances. Basically, I am ALWAYS too busy to waste time on stupidy shit like this.
I have literally not received a single phone call in the last year not from a number I recognized that wasn’t an unsolicited sales call, a scammer or a pollster/campaign. Not one. And I have been working from home this entire time with my cell phone as the only number on which you can reach me via phone. I have all my coworkers in my contact list as well as my parents, siblings and close friends.
When I have my car in for service, I recognize the NPA-NXX of their phone number. Similarly if I’m expecting a call from my doctor. I answer my phone a lot, even numbers I don’t recognize. It’s just habit, drives my wife bonkers. But 100% of the time, if I don’t recognize the number, it’s unsolicited crap. I have literally never had a voicemail left from an unrecognized number that wasn’t one of these either.
It could be useful for the scammers, spammers, pollsters, etc, if I answer, but it bloody well isn’t any use to me.
Odds are you’re doing a disservice to the rest of us. The spammers aren’t calling from displaying fake caller ID from a fixed number. By and large, they are simply faking a random number.
So when you block that number, you are
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Doing substantially zero to reduce your own future spam calls since the odds on some other spammer randomly chosing that same number are very low.
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Casting a “vote” that whoever really does own the faked number is a bad guy. Poor Milred Jones in Kansas City may find her phone rendered useless to call anyone once spammers have used her number enough times and misguided folks like you have voted her number down often enough.
By all means screen your calls. But blocking a number, and especially in a way that goes to some central server/databank of blocked numbers is not helping.
There are some semi-legit sales callers who use fixed numbers. For those I wait until my phone recognizes they’ve called before a couple times, then I block them.
What do you work for one of those companies that saves people money on electric bills or something? 99% of any call I receive from an unknown caller are spam or robocalls. The other 1% is someone I know with a new number and if it’s important they’ll leave a message or follow up with an email.
No one offers anything actually “useful” by randomly calling people on the phone.
They offer a chance at entertainment if you have the time and inclination to mess with 'em.
What? My grandmother lived to be 103 and had over 120 living blood relatives at her funeral. She still had a son and two daughters alive. She received a letter from the President on her birthday but no phone call. But she didn’t speak english very well anyway even though she lived in Texas for almost 90 years.
Must…resist…joke.
Do it!
Ok you two, we’re waiting.
Only if you’re using Truecaller. If you aren’t then absolutely nothing I do is helping or harming you in any way, but thanks awfully for your concern. BTW, the majority of the numbers that come up have already been tagged by my carrier as “Scam Likely” so you’d likely have more luck taking it up with them. In the meantime, I’ll continue to block and report so that other Truecaller users (all 500+ million of them according to the Play Store) who’ve asked to be notified will be.
In the early 1990s, a former bandmate of mine got a call at his day job from Harry Shearer. He thought it was someone pulling his leg, until Shearer did several Simpsons voices (Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns). He was calling to ask our by-then-defunct band to open for Spinal Tap on a reunion tour.
If their product is something that is useful to me, I would be calling them. If a business is calling me, they’re trying to sell me something I don’t need or want.
I don’t amuse myself by harassing some poor minimum wage schlub who’s making the phone call.
Now if I could get the company’s owner on the line, that would be different.
They’re scammers and looking to steal money. They’re criminals, plain and simple.Unless you’ve specifically given a company permission to robocall, a sales robocall is illegal. If the caller is spoofing a number to look local, they’re a scammer and a thief.
And what’s worse, they- like most scams and con-men, are preying on the elderly.
My experience working with the Feds, and now with AARP has shown that unlike TV and film, con-men prey on the elderly- not rich assholes.
Truecaller has more users than there are people in North America? I know they are big in India, but 500+ million users?
Nice timing
On Christmas night, President-elect Joe Biden called Wilmington, Delaware resident Elizabeth VanYahres, who is in her last weeks of life, suffering from three glioblastoma brain tumors.
It’s the same type of aggressive brain cancer that claimed the life of Biden’s son, Beau.
Elizabeth’s husband, Keith, tells me: “I couldn’t think of any Christmas gifts that would be appropriate. She’s been a lifelong fan of Joe Biden. 37 years. I thought, ‘What a cool thing if he called?’”
Keith says he reached out to Beau’s father-in-law to request it.
Biden, he says, called at 7:30PM. Keith put it on speaker phone – “She can’t hold a phone anymore” – and held it to her ear.
He says Biden was “very empathetic” and encouraged her to “keep the faith.”
It’s the kind of outreach Biden is known for, given his own life of loss.
How would I know? Went to the Play Store, it says over 500 million downloads. The exact number doesn’t matter, it’s more the point that it’s a metric fuckload of users. Definitely more than any American cell carrier that’s for sure.