It’s been over a year since I got those. All I get are the hotel travel scams and the occasional car warranty.
I got one of the social security ones (automated) just a little bit ago.
< wails > What am I doing wrong? < wails/>
I don’t answer cell phone calls from numbers I don’t know (unless I’m expecting a call). But any number that leaves a VM, I save in my contacts as ‘pick up hang up’, since blocking the number still allows a VM.
At work, known junk numbers I just pick up and hang up (or let my call zapper do it), I have next to zero interest in wasting any time with them. Calls that I’d say are junk/cold calls but are coming from “legitimate” but scam businesses I spend the 10 seconds it takes to file an FTC report that I know isn’t going anywhere.
Now, calls that are coming from actual real business that are cold calling me and refuse to stop doing so, I’ll report to the BBB. That almost always gets results. Sometimes they need to be reported multiple times, but eventually they realize any time they dial my number, they end up with another public facing complaint on BBB. Eventually they all figure out how to take my number out of their system instead of giving me excuses for why they won’t stop calling.
That’s a good one. When it first started, I cursed them out and they would hang up. I quickly realized it brought too much anxiety and negativity into my world. What if my kids overheard me? I like the idea of at least making the robo call connect and screw with the hit to miss ratio. I’m all for anything short, easy to remember, that can pray on insecurities.
I usually don’t answer, but this sounds like so much fun! I hope I can keep from laughing.
Y’all who string them along are potentially playing with fire.
There are scam calls that record your voice and edit the recording to make it sound like you approved various charges and services.
Don’t talk to scammers. You have nothing to gain and you don’t know what scam they’re running.
I get them all the time at work and I can’t refuse to answer the phone. They are almost always hotel-specific scammers. I play with them if I’m not dealing with guests. One of the scammers - Anydesk - wants us to download software so they can steal credit card numbers. I’ve told them quite cheerfully that we don’t have web browsers. You should hear the floundering on that one. Another guy got told the front desk doesn’t have access to computers.
If you aren’t in my contacts list on my phone I am not going to answer your call.
I have added a lot of numbers to my contacts that may have a reason to call. If you really need me and the number you are calling from is not in my contacts you can send me a text and tell me who you are. Drives my wife nuts! She asks, “What if it was one of your sons and they are using an unfamiliar phone?” Well then they better call someone who is a contact or text me. In years of doing this I have yet to miss an important call. Contacts include my doctor, mechanic, hospital, all work numbers, all people I work with, the local bar, anyone I meet who may have a reason to call me is in there, even if they only called me once 5 years ago.
I do not answer spam calls because answering, even to find out that it is spam, just confirms to the spammers that my number is valid. By not answering I have reduced the amount of unwanted calls to maybe one per week.
AnyDesk is not a scammer. It’s remote access software that has legitimate uses. Same for Teamviewer, Supremo, Logmein, etc. There’s a bunch. The problem is scammers use the free versions in their scams and the companies have only very recently made any attempt to prevent that kind of use.
Bwok, bwok, bwok…
I’m vice chair of a local arts organization that has fairly high visibility in the community, so I get valid calls from unknown numbers probably 1-2 times a month. I also agree with @ThelmaLou that there is a slight chance that a call from an unknown number could be critically important. So if I’m not super busy, I’ll answer. If I am busy, I’ll check voicemail as soon as I can to see if they left a message.
When it turns out to be a scam call, I respond according to my whim - just hang up, argue that their scam is so stupid I’m insulted they think I’d fall for it, put the phone down and walk away without hanging up, whatever. But I get surprisingly few scam calls, probably in part because I don’t have a land line and because I’ve had the cell number I use for over a decade but it was turned off for months at a time while I was living abroad.
In the past I strung them along if I had time. But recently the second I detect it’s a recording, click!
Has that ever actually happened? I remember all the ‘can you hear me’ scam calls, I remember all the news reports about them, but I don’t think anything ever became of it. Someone somewhere assumed (or made up) that that’s what was going on and every news outlet ran with it. Even that article doesn’t say it ever happened just that the FCC has received complaints about scam calls and were warning people to simply hang up when they get a call like that. But I don’t think there’s any documented cases of someone finding fraudulent credit card charges or bank withdrawals that relied on a scammer having a recording of them saying ‘yes’.
If they leave a message, I will hear them leave it in real time. A real person (like the police officer who called about my mom having fallen and broken her pelvis) will leave a message that doesn’t sound like a scam, and I can pick up while they are still talking to the answering machine.
That being said, if I am expecting a call, or bored, I’ll sometimes pick up.
- If it’s a recorded call about the police benevolent association, I will just hang up.
- If it’s a live person calling from a charity I support, I will ask them to send me a request via mail, or that I’ve already given this year.
- If it’s a live person telling me that there is a problem with my windows computer, I will ask him if his mother knows he is scamming old people over the phone. Every time I’ve said that, the guy has cursed me and hung up on me. That feels like a win, in some tiny way. If I can increase the odds of an employee quitting, and make it just a little more expensive for the scamming company to operate, maybe they will be slightly less likely to keep doing it.
Probably not, and it wouldn’t be a big problem even if it was. Since the legal standard for a contract is a “meeting of the minds,” you just have to say you didn’t consent to the deal and the scammers haven’t a legal leg to stand on. Credit card companies reverse charges for a lot less substantial reasons.
I installed nomorobo and it works pretty well, but calls still get through - but most are blocked after the first ring. When it is the “contractor is in your area” one, I always ask, “can you put something on my house that blocks calls like this?”
Recently, the phone rang a few times and I realized that the Caller ID voice was trying to say the name of a friend I hadn’t spoken to in years, so I answered it.
Turns out, he was trying to recruit me to The Landmark Forum, and after searching the SDMB, I realized that as nice as it was to catch up, it was essentially a scam call.
Almost all robocalls these days. If it’s a real person they generally ask “Is that Mr Treppenwitz?” - to which I will reply, “Depends who’s calling.” There are only two outcomes (with one exception) - either it’s legit and they’ll explain who they are, and I’ll say sorry, I didn’t recognize the number, how can I help you, etc etc. Nobody has ever been offended by this - they get scam calls too. Or, if it’s a scam call, they just hang up.
The exception: an Indian scammer who engaged me in a weird philosophical debate about whether my identity could really hinge upon who was on the other end of the phone. I was completely unprepared for this, but stuck it out and eventually wore them down, leading them (him) to shout “It’s your mother!” I just managed to get back with “What, back from the dead?” before they cut me off.
You can nail this one with two words: “Which one?”
If that doesn’t end it right there, it continues: “(pause) er…your Windows computer?”
“I have four.”
It ends there. I promise.
j
The last time I got one of those, I went along with it. After 20 minutes of being told it wasn’t finished downloading, the fool asked me to check the internet connection. I said I thought he was using the connection my computer sent the warning through. So I agreed to connect to the internet and kept him going for another 20 minutes before telling him I was on dial up and it be at least another hour to finish.
It doesn’t. I used to say things like that, and waste their time. But they would persist. Then one of them actually DID scam my MIL, and we had to change all her credit cards and wipe her computer. Since then I’ve been annoyed enough with them that I have switched to “does your mother know that you are scamming people…?” and honestly it’s been much more effective. They literally curse me and hang up on me. I have made their day a little more unpleasant, and it takes less of my time.