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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Stop a Debt Collection Scam From Targeting You?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm currently being targeted by an overseas debt collection scam. My landline rings every 10-15 minutes all day every day. I considered getting a blacklisting device to block the incoming calls, but the call center spoofs a different number on my caller ID each time, and it's gotten to the point where I've just unplugged the phones. I'm already on the Do No Call Registry and have filed a complaint with the FTC. Aside from ditching my landline, changing my number, and/or blowing a whistle into the receiver anytime I actually pick up, are there any real solutions out there? Has anybody had luck with a blacklisting device?"
There are companies you can hire to screen your calls.
All your calls are forwarded to them and they'll answer the phone.
You give them instructions on how to handle your calls and they'll only pass through the calls that you want.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
put it on auto answer. preferably so that it doesn't hang up if it can't negotiate.
someone, somewhere, is paying for those calls somehow and this can maximize that and tie up maximum resources from the caller.
or an answering machine that has just "hello? helloo??".
obviously you aren't using the phoneline for anything now anyways..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Didn't some company come out with a device that would send out the tones that you get when you call a disconnected line? That way the auto-dialer that the scammers are using would mark the line as disconnected and stop calling. Or you could setup an answering machine to answer the line with those tones...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
I had a co-worker who was getting harassed on her work line from a fake money collection organization. So I started calling them, and calling them, and then they discontinued their number.
They then started calling her again a few months later and it took even less time for them to shut down that number.
As far as I know she hasn't had another call since.
Oh, and if at all possible try to figure out where they are calling from and try to use the differences in culture to insult them. Like calling them shoe lickers or something. Just calling them regular english put downs aren't as effective.
Also you may want to try the "why not do something better with your life" talk, after all a lot of times these people are better educated than many of their peers and could make a significant difference in their community if they weren't intent on trying to scam those rich dumb people from that rich dumb country.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Though the OP didn't state such, there is a rise of debt collection scams, eg, there is no real debt. It's just a matter of harass somebody using debt collection tactics until they give you money. It's criminal action, by the way, but doesn't garner much attention from the law enforcement because it's so difficult and costly to track. The fake collections agencies are basically using legitimate collections "tools" illegally.
Paying the fictitious debt is actually the worst thing one can do, since it simply causes you to be marked as a hitable target and thus escalates the situation.
@Whee
temporarily forward your number to another debt collection agency. let them battle it out.
let ur friends know to contact u via your cell in the interim.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Or do a credit check on yourself.
Arstechnica.com just did an article on how easy it is to steal an identity complete with a credit number for $30 on the blackmarket!
Someone could have just taken your identity and bought a car, home, and maxed 5 credit cards and the debt collectors are going after you to pay for it. Always watch your back as that FICO score is your life and you can't buy anything or move into a new job without that reputation score high enough.
http://saveie6.com/
You can also get a landline phone that has a whitelist function. (On my Panasonic phone it's called "night mode", because at night one only wants to be disturbed from important family and friends; you can set the "night" hours as you wish.)
This is why Google Voice is awesome. You can whitelist or blacklist easily, without knowing anything advanced about phone systems. Thus it's almost impossible to be trolled or scammed this way at your actual Google number, and since that's the number you would give out, your number you actually forward to can be changed whenever necessary.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Scammers? Get a 900 number and make EVERYONE pay to talk to you. I guarantee you'll spend LESS time on the phone. Why should you take a loss when people waste your time with their inane babble, needs, wants and desires? I suppose you could get a private cell for those close to you, but, the general public, business interests and anyone WANTING something needs to pay toll.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I've never once gotten a nuisance call on my cell phone. I wonder why I have been so blessed? They always come in on the landline, which is why we have an old-fashioned answering machine and basically just set up all the numbers of people we know with a specific ring and any other number has a silent ring.
So, using this old digital answering machine, and its ability to set up personal ringtones, we're able to create a white list. If someone needs to call me who is not on our phone list, they can send an email or call the celly.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Some years ago I coded an answering machine based on a voice modem. With it, any number that was not on my list of “friends, relatives, or businesses”, went into the game. The game consisted of a series of questions by a robotic voice which required a key pad response. Anyone willing to play the game finally ended up with a reply of “Invalid response. Goodbye.”. I used mgetty, festival, and a few minor pearl scripts to interface with an old US Robotics voice modem. Worked like a jewel once the bugs were out. My new computer doesn't have a serial interface so that answering system is on a shelf for now. But, it was fun to sit back and see if anybody wanted to play.
They had an epic screwup many years ago. One month I paid the bill, and instead of deducting the amount on the check from the balance, they added it so the next bill showed a past-due amount that was exactly double what the previous bill had been. Calling their customer service was useless - you would wait in the queue for 45 minutes only to find out that their "computers were down" and there was nothing they could do. This went on for days. Eventually I thought I got it all taken care of, and then out of the blue 6 months later I started getting calls from a collection agency. I started sending some rather rude letters to the CEO after this - eventually they admitted the problem.
It was nearly 30 years ago, but to this day I refuse to have anything to do with Sprint.
My VOIP service makes it trivially easy to blacklist numbers on it's web interface. They also make it trivially easy to change number. So if I were in his shoes, I'd add a second number and give that to friends, family etc. First number is sent straight to voicemail so I can screen the calls, with a whitelist to transfer the call to the new number where I can remind people to change their phone books After a month or so delete the number the scammers are using.
You can purchase a commercial device that spoofs some sort of disconnected/out-of-service tone just as you pick up the receiver. To normal humans it sounds like a quick beep, but to the auto-dialer software it makes it think the number is no longer valid and removes you from the list without handing it off to a human rep. They tell you to expect some calls with no one on the other end for a bit, while you are in the process of being auto-removed from various lists.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
There's a better solution: whitelisting. You could really go the extra mile if you like and set up an Asterisk-based PBX to intercept incoming calls and route them based on caller ID - if it's on the whitelist, it rings. If not, you get the number-disconnected beeps or a fax tone, followed after two or three seconds by a prompt to press a number to speak to the inhabitants. Robodialers will never get to you.
I used to offer to help them get the FTC's $50,000 reward for stopping telemarketing abuse by turning in their boss. None of them took me up on it :-)
But that program's over, so I usually just ask them how their family feels about them scamming people for a living. Most of them just hang up, some of them get mad.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Or just put the receiver on the desk, and waste a bit of *their* time.
That only succeeds in informing them that your number goes to a live person, and further that said person isn't taking their calls; That's a good way to get out of the collections department and into legal. And legal will just take out a court order for the money against you ex parte in many states. You'll find your bank account zeroed and good luck fighting back then, since you won't be able to pay the court fees to file a counter-suit, or retain a lawyer.
Poor people are at a distinct disadvantage in our justice system. Whether the court action is legitimate or not, without money you can't prevail. And odds are, the money you'll spend will never be recovered.
That's for a LEGIT debt collection agency. The scammers won't bother calling their lawyers. For the legit agencies, they have to document the debt, show that it is a real live debt, give you 30 days to dispute it in writing by sending you a real live dunning notice that has the 'mini-Miranda' clause: 'This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information gathered will be used for that purpose'. In the US, these activities are governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Violate the 'rules' of the FDCPA, you lose your license.
Caveat: I used to be a debt collector. And yeah, you can collect on what they call 'bad debt', or debt that's so old it cannot be sued on because it's past the statute of limitations for that debt. A lot of 'bad debt' is sold for maybe 5 cents on the dollar to what we used to call 'chop shops' that called it 2 or 3 times to get a quick fast settlement over the phone for whatever they can get for it. The 'chop shop' collectors would bully the hell out of the debtor in an attempt to get what they can. The biggest thing to remember about old debt is, they can't sue you for it because of the statute of limitations. And yeah, it is a violation of the FDCPA to threaten to sue someone when you have absolutely no intentions of suing them. You can tell the debtor 'You may be sued, and if so, and we receive a judgement against you, you will also be responsible for court costs and interest on the debt, liens may be placed against your property in that event' and so on.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Fax tones are not something that will stop them. That strongly implies the number is live and capable of picking up the phone. Since this is a residential target it will be assumed that it's not dedicated. Only some very old people I know still have dedicated landlines for fax machines these days.
The only thing that I know works are SIT tones. That *is* interpreted by almost all systems as an indication the number cannot be routed to, or is out of service. Most of them receive that information via out-of-band signalling anyways so the fax machine negotiation noise isn't even looked at it either (that's in-band signalling). A debt collection service would be murdered on cost unless they were VOIP, so while it's possible that fax is supported, it's also highly likely it's not implemented in code. Either way, that's a shit disposition flag to be resting the fate of your sanity on.
Unfortunately, since the poster does not want to get rid of the landline, they need a blacklist device cheap. That's still going to require at least a dedicated machine and a pair of FXS/FXO ports. I know you can get some of that stuff as cards or USB devices.
Assuming you have all that it's rather trivial to set up Asterisk to drop the call before even answering it based on CLID matches. It's also fairly easy to set up a minimalist IVR that plays a message and asks the person to wait before it's connected. You could even go so far as to ask a CAPTCHA like question. Ask them to press a random number to be connected.
The most difficult part about this solution is needing to keep the land line.
I know many people that have debt collectors all over them. Very few walked away unharmed from Wall Street's greed finally blowing up. Anyways, I created a few systems with Asterisk, some old VOIP adapters, and a CLID based blacklist system for friends. Works quite well and after a few years now people hardly get any calls at all.
It costs $10-$30 to port a number to VOIP. I would highly suggest that and a nice VOIP phone for the house. Makes everything cheaper and more flexible for solutions in the future.
Debt collectors other than the original lender all tend to be committing fraud one way or another. Here is one answer that has worked for me. You get a nonsense collection call. Listen to the pitch and then ask that since you were polite enough to listen would they listen to you for a moment. If they say yes you have set the hook. Tell them you would bet money that they were recently hired. The chances are that that is quite true. Collection companies try to claim to pay on a percentage of recovered money. Then ask the collector if the people sitting around him seem to be recent hires as well. Next tell him it is a scam to get him to work for free. The way it works is the guy will get two weeks in and even if checks have come in they company will not admit it or post it. After two weeks they will fire him for lack of collections and he will never receive a penny for his efforts. I have done this and the collector instantly confronted the phone room manager and loudly quit on the spot. The manager was the owner and he called back ten minutes later and said I could not do that as advertising for new help was expensive. I told him i would do it every time a got a call. companies sell these debts for a couple bucks each so the initial lender can charge them off against taxes, The supposed collector owns the debt but he may only collect on one in 500 debts he purchases. So if you are costing him money by causing his employees to quit he will take your suggestion to rip up the debt paper absolving you of the debt. Get them any way you can.