# What is the purpose of this new spam call tactic?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-this-new-spam-call-tactic/1015418>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 11, 2025, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-this-new-spam-call-tactic/1015418 "2025-03-11T04:35:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 16

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2025, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-this-new-spam-call-tactic/1015418/16 "2025-03-12T04:22:39Z")

</div>

> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#):
> >
> > When I do answer, I get the spammers that make no sense: they never talk to me. Just silence. What the hell kind of scam is that? I feel like yelling into the phone: “I’m stupid! Take my money!” But they never answer.
> 
> I’m hoping you really do understand what’s going on here. It’s very simple. There are two things going on.
> 
> 1. They are trying to learn which numbers get answered and which don’t. The ones that get answered are more valuable than the ones that are not. You are seeding your own crop of future spam calls by answering. You may as well stand outside in your lawn blowing the fluffy tops off dandelions you’ve collected from around the neighborhood.
> 
> 2. As one of their first level human agents is wrapping up their current call, the robo-caller makes a couple hundred phone calls to a couple hundred victim numbers. Of which you are one. The robo-caller can’t predict to the second which call(s) will get answered nor when. But whichever one is answered just as the agent becomes available is routed to them, and the other calls are hung up on, or are lft with silence for a few seconds, then hung up on. That maximizes the productivity of the human agent. Who, even at $2/day in Bangladesh or wherever, is far more expensive than the 200 zero-cost calls they made for each one the agent actually talked to.  
>   
> The computer logic gets more complicated when they have a group (or an army) of human agents. But the concept remains: have a fresh victim ready and waiting the instant a human agent becomes available to talk to them. All of this is an artifact of modern internet phone calls being free. If calls cost $1 each to place, answered or not, there would be almost no phone spam.

I wish there was an option to charge the other person for the phone call they made to you. Just a token amount like $0.50. If you wanted to charge them you could, if you didn’t you didn’t have to. The money could go into a fund to stop telemarketing scams and the person reporting it wouldn’t benefit.

It seems like that would allow free phone calls between people but cut down on spam.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-this-new-spam-call-tactic/1015418)._