I am NOT judging people for answering unidentified numbers, or calling back. I am just curious as to why someone would. Is it an age thing? A ‘friendliness’ thing?
To me, it is mind boggling that anyone would, but I also realize people aren’t all like me, so I was just curious.
I would say something like 90% of the calls that I get from numbers I do not recognize are telemarketers, political cold calls, surveys, or other ‘junk mail’ calls. I agree, they can’t hurt me over the phone, but why would I want to waste my time? An unanswered phone can’t hurt you, either. Why do some people get upset if it isn’t answered?
The remaining unidentified calls are, as noted above, friends calling from different numbers, or recent acquaintances that I don’t know their number yet (and must have cell phones that don’t display the name). But they leave messages.
The really confounding calls are the ones from business I actually DO use that have their caller ID blocked! Why are they doing that? They are legitimate.
Yeah, I’m the same way. I don’t even answer calls from an unknown area code 95% of the time, blocked calls never get answered, and it irritates me for some reason when I get called back after misdialing a number.
If I get a call from any number I don’t recognize, I’ll always Google it, or do a reverse search on www.whitepages.com, to find out if it came from someone I ought to know or a telemarketer.
Did you not read the OP? The scam is that the unsuspecting person calls back the number and is then charged huge phone fees. So yeah, you are giving something away if you call them back.
Same here. If I don’t recognize the number (or rather I should say, if a listed contact doesn’t come up, because really who memorizes everyone’s phone numbers these days? People give you their number, you type it into your phone, and never see it again.), and it’s not a local area code, I don’t answer. If they don’t leave a message, I don’t call back. Rarely has an unanswered number left a message (what few legit calls there were *did *leave messages) and in almost every single case of Googling an unknown number, it’s been a telemarker/scam number.
Why is that funny? They didn’t answer it, presumably because they thought it would be a pointless nuisance call…and you answered it to find that it was, in fact, a pointless nuisance call.
I’ve noticed the same thing, it’s another one of those “same planet, different worlds” differences in human behavior. Personally, if they don’t leave a message I will assume it’s a wrong number and think nothing else of it. After reading about the call scams I looked back in my cell phone missed call history and there was a number from one of those area codes. Glad I didn’t call it back.
Did you not read the OP? The scam is that the unsuspecting person calls back the number and is then charged huge phone fees. So yeah, you are giving something away if you call them back.