My elderly mother has been getting upward of fifty phone calls per day, often every two minutes, from varying phone numbers that seem to be spoofed since some of them are from unassigned area codes.
If she answers the phone, usually no one is there on the other end of the line but sometimes there is snickering or personal comments. No sign of a fax machine line AFAIK.
Bell initially suggested we contact the Canadian Antifraud Centre, which seems unlikely to help. Then they suggested paying $8.95 monthly for a “Call Privacy” service which does not seem to be doing much or filtering calls. Complaining to the CCTS suggested their mandate did not include harassing calls, possibly even when dealing with an ineffective solution.
I wondered if anyone here might have some further suggestions. I find it hard to believe Bell cannot do more or that this situation is rare.
This is a POTS land line? There are handsets and standalone devices that will screen incoming calls in various ways. You can only allow calls to ring the phone if the caller inputs a code, or if their number is on a whitelist that you maintain, or other options.
We have no particular reason to believe the bad guys are targeting her as a specific person, or her number as known to them somehow. With modern computers it’s trivial to make 100 or 1000 calls per second. They may well be slamming every phone in her area code.
What is your goal ? If it’s to find out who is doing it , you are probably out of luck. It may not even be the same entity every time. If your goal is to not hear the phone ring then you will need a device or service that will only let certain numbers though. If you just don’t want to race to the phone to find no one there when you answer , I use a plain old answering machine on my landline * and I only try to answer the phone once I know it’s a real call.
The only thing that’s rare is that your mother gets 50 a day - it’s not likely to be random chance. If it’s something like people misdialing a business or a business listing their phone number incorrectly ( in an ad, on a menu) then changing the number will reduce the frequency. But it won’t stop it because there are random dialers.
Do you know what sort of personal comments - I don’t expect you to answer, but it might give you a clue where at least some are coming from.
* which I only have because my internet/tv price will go up if I drop the phone service
We have a landline (because we’re walking, talking anachronisms ourselves), and almost never answer it. We use the answering machine to do our screening. Your mother could even turn off the ringer on her phone so it doesn’t bother her, and just check the machine a couple of times a day for messages.
I know it’s not much, and it’s annoying that the responsibility for ‘fixing’ it falls to her, but it’s also an easy fix.
Part of the question, for me, would be: how often in a typical day does the OP’s mother receive wanted phone calls on that line – from family, friends, doctors, etc.? And how many of those does the mother want to answer right away.
Am elderly woman should not change her phone number. The likelihood of losing contact with some of the people in her life is too high. There are plenty of better solutions, as evidenced already in this thread.
I do not know if Canada has special protections, but since you share the same country code with us here in the US, your mom is subject to all the American spam and cheap throwaway VOIP numbers that any spammer, scammer, politician or teenaged troublemaker can use and hide behind, and caller ID faking is a thing too.
Unless Canada has much better phone protections, I don’t think that appealing to the authorities would get you very far. They might not even have jurisdiction wherever the call originated from.
If this is a cell phone, there are numerous technological solutions (built in blocking or special apps) that should be somewhat effective, especially if you set it so that all unknown numbers not already in her contact list get screened. An AI bot answers for her and starts the conversation, asking what they’re calling about. That causes 99% of spammers or pranksters to give up.
If this is landline, it’s much more difficult.
Maybe you could record one of the AI answering services and just use it as the answering machine greeting, to fake having an anti spam bot.
I get those calls, too. Not the snickering, but the call from a weird number that no one answers if i pick up. I only get one or two a day, though. And i get lots of real phone calls on my land line.
I use an answering machine and a free service called nomorobo. Nomorobo hand up on robot calls after two rings, and that’s almost all of them. My answering machine also announces the number can caller id info of each caller out loud. So i only pick up if it’s someone i know, or the caller ID sounds real (call from local hospital, yup, pick up). Sometimes i don’t pick up a real call, but then the answering machine does. And real callers tell the answering machine who they are and why they are calling. Recruiter I’ve never heard of who knows I’m an actuary? Yeah, I’ll answer that, I’m curious what he’s offering. (That worked well!) So for those people, i pick up as they are leaving a message.
Would that work with 50 junk calls a day, instead of a handful? Maybe? Hard to say, really.
Obviously she still has a land line. Scammers know that only old people still have a land line, so they are prime targets. Get rid of the land line and get her a simple cell phone. Of course she won’t do that, but that is the solution.
I used to get 10-15 spam calls a day. I changed my number 3 months ago and have yet to get one.
Yes, I agree, she ‘shouldn’t have to’ change her number. What is more important to her, reducing spam calls, or losing contact with people who won’t get her new number? Whatever her answer is, that will be the reason for getting or not getting a new number
If she keeps the same number, they’ll continue to call her. And if she doesn’t, a lot of her old friends will lose the ability to find her. I don’t think that will help, either way.
Her child, the OP can let friends and family know on Facebook or some such. (In a way they don’t publish her number, out loud) Or sit and call her old numbers and let those, most likely, older folks to write it down where they keep their numbers.
Her current friends, her old friends, her long-lost friends, her distant relatives, her doctors, her lawyers, etc, etc, etc., all would need to be contacted - a lifetime of contacts. What about everyone you missed? I’d have trouble contacting everyone I’d need to just for myself, and I’m not elderly.
Just get a spam blocker such as nomorobo and an answering machine.