86.2 Million Phone Scam Calls Delivered Each Month In the US

An anonymous reader writes with a report from Help Net Security which assigns some numbers to the lucrative fraud-by-phone business in the U.S. -- and it's not just the most naive who are vulnerable. "Phone fraud continues to threaten enterprises across industries and borders, with the leading financial institutions' call centers exposed to more than $9 million to potential fraud each year," says the article. "Pindrop analyzed several million calls for threats, and found a 30 percent rise in enterprise attacks and more than 86.2 million attacks per month on U.S. consumers. Credit card issuers receive the highest rate of fraud attempts, with one in every 900 calls being fraudulent."

What's been your experience with fraudulent robocalls? I've been getting them on a near-daily basis -- fake credit card alerts, "computer support" malware-install attempts, and more -- for a few years now, which makes whitelisting seem attractive. ("Bridget from account services" has been robo-calling a lot lately, and each time she says it is my final notice.) My biggest worry is that the people behind these scams, like spammers, will hire copywriters who can fool many more people.

Comments

I screen every call.

[AltGrendel]

Voice mail and/or a phone answering machine are my first lines of deference. Friends and family know how to get in touch ASAP if it's an emergency.

Re:I screen every call.

[smchris]

Yes, a DSL landline we give out to every place that wants a contact number and an old Uniden phone/answering machine somebody _gave_ me when he moved. Keep the volume low and we mostly hear connections and hang-ups.

Re:I screen every call.

[John_Sauter]

I have a simple but very effective screener for robo calls, built around the ObiHai 110. I connect the device between my incoming telephone line and my telephone. I then re-program it to send incoming calls to the Automatic Attendant, which I program to challenge the caller to press a key on his telephone keypad. If he doesn't he is a robo caller and doesn't get through. My phone doesn't even ring for robo calls.

Someday the robo callers will become intelligent enough to press a key when challenged, but until then my defense is adequate.

Re:I screen every call.

[Bigbutt]

Yep, if you're not in my contact list and I'm not expecting a call, you go to voice mail. I have carpet folks coming out today so a call a few minutes ago from an unknown number but local to me was answered and the appointment confirmed.

[John]

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps by then someone will come up with the telephone equivalent of CAPTCHA. "Please muliply the number in the middle of the top row of the keypad by the number immediately below it, add the day of the month, and enter the result to complete this call."

Re:I screen every call.

[TWX]

Voice mail and/or a phone answering machine are my first lines of deference. Friends and family know how to get in touch ASAP if it's an emergency.

I find that the vast majority of robocallers are actually robodialers, with an actual human being on the other end. My solution is to get incredibly verbally abusive to them. I'm entirely calm but I use language that would peel the paint on a battleship and get truckers to cry. The amusing part is when they stammer and get defensive that I'm treating them this way and I get to remind them, "hey, you called me, remember?"

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually I'll actually answer these calls on my landline as a public service, then just put down the receiver and let them talk until they realize nobody is responding. Every second they think they're talking to me is one less second they're calling someone else.

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

By then I'd expect Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Google Now, etc. to be more adept at solving "text problems" than the average user. However, then we can just let them talk to each other, can't we?

Re:I screen every call.

[Bartles]

That's great that you screen calls. I screen scam artists that show up on my doorstep as well. But that literally has never happened. These calls are illegal and need to stop. The FTC needs to do something about it or pay the price.

Re:I screen every call.

[budgenator]

And usually they're on another line, so if you want to talk to me don't call, then ask me to hold please.

Re:I screen every call.

[roc97007]

What do you do for cell phone robocalls?

Re:I screen every call.

[Moof123]

If you get a human, they are just trying to get paid to do a job. They know it is a crap job, and there is no need to be abusive or profane.

Just say "No thank you" and hang up.

If you want to take the time to throw sand in the gears, tell them you are REALLY interested in their product, but you left something on the stove, and to stay on the line. Come back and hangup in 10 minutes. It will slow down their system enough to lower profitability without being demeaning to another human who is just doing their crappy job.

Re:I screen every call.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I usually load a soundboard (Terminator, Dukes of Hazard, etc) and let them "talk" to it until they get pissed off. :)

Re:I screen every call.

[nbauman]

I find that the vast majority of robocallers are actually robodialers, with an actual human being on the other end. My solution is to get incredibly verbally abusive to them. I'm entirely calm but I use language that would peel the paint on a battleship and get truckers to cry. The amusing part is when they stammer and get defensive that I'm treating them this way and I get to remind them, "hey, you called me, remember?"

That's right. I have to spend all day forced to be polite to people who I would rather strangle (example: health insurance companies). Telephone solicitors give me a useful catharsis of letting me violate the normal social conventions with somebody who doesn't deserve any respect.

I was thinking about the downsides to that. Does it bring me down to their level? Then I heard how an elderly woman was getting scammer calls, falling for them, and getting bills of $500 or more a month. Her daughter had to disconnect her phone line to stop it. The woman had some cognitive decline, but she was capable of living independently. However, not having a phone put her in a dangerous situation where she can't call for help in an emergency and people can't check on her without going over to her apartment. We were talking about a phone with a whitelist.

So I think of how these unscrupulous scumbags are exploiting helpless people, and tell them exactly what I think.

BTW, I'm also on the federal do-not-call list, so their calls to me are illegal from the beginning. Can't the FBI send SWAT teams to them?

There's supposed to be some way to sue them for $1,000 a call, which would be a good living, but I don't know if it's an urban myth.

Re:I screen every call.

[TWX]

"I was just following orders" rarely works as a defense.

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone got paid to poke you with a stick, you wouldn't tolerate it, so why this?

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

I screen scam artists that show up on my doorstep as well. But that literally has never happened.

You've never had a Jehovah's Witness knock on your door? I came near to calling the cops to get them to leave.

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm entirely calm but I use language that would peel the paint on a battleship and get truckers to cry. The amusing part is when they stammer and get defensive that I'm treating them this way and I get to remind them, "hey, you called me, remember?"

This has never happened. You are lying to impress strangers on the Internet, and failing at it.

Re:I screen every call.

[John_Sauter]

What do you do for cell phone robocalls?

I cannot intercept calls to my cell phone, so I tell everyone to call my land line if they want to reach me, and never give out my cell phone number--only my Asterisk server knows it. If the number does get out, I can change it with very little hassle: just a one-line change in my PBX. If my cell phone rings and the call isn't from my PBX, I don't answer.

Doing it this way means I need an Asterisk server in addition to the ObiHai 110. If I didn't have a cell phone I could just use the ObiHai.

Re:I screen every call.

[mjwx]

I have a simple but very effective screener for robo calls, built around the ObiHai 110. I connect the device between my incoming telephone line and my telephone. I then re-program it to send incoming calls to the Automatic Attendant, which I program to challenge the caller to press a key on his telephone keypad. If he doesn't he is a robo caller and doesn't get through. My phone doesn't even ring for robo calls.

Someday the robo callers will become intelligent enough to press a key when challenged, but until then my defense is adequate.

My main defence against robocalls is not having a landline telephone.

Its become completely unnecessary to have one in Australia as you can get landline internet without phone services these days. Cold calling mobile phones costs a lot more money so its not viable to do that. Even bulk SMS is too expensive (for once, the high cost of everything in Australia is working out in my favour).

As for corporate phones, every phone system these days has a provision for routing external calls to an IVR menu these days. All you need to do to kill robocalls is to have the welcome message go for 10-15 seconds and then force a keypress, the same as your method.

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm entirely calm but I use language that would peel the paint on a battleship and get truckers to cry. The amusing part is when they stammer and get defensive that I'm treating them this way and I get to remind them, "hey, you called me, remember?"

This has never happened. You are lying to impress strangers on the Internet, and failing at it.

Second that.

Re:I screen every call.

[stoatwblr]

There are scamblocker apps for androids at least.

Re:I screen every call.

[stoatwblr]

"If you get a human, they are just trying to get paid to do a job. They know it is a crap job, and there is no need to be abusive or profane."

IN a lot of cases it's an _illegal_ call, and they are criminals.

I enjoy making them as uncomfortable as possible. I _want_ them to feel dirty and disgusting when they finish talking to me, because that way they won't last long in the job.

Re:I screen every call.

[stoatwblr]

"There's supposed to be some way to sue them for $1,000 a call, which would be a good living, but I don't know if it's an urban myth."

USA only:

Telephone Consumer Protection Act - it's $500 per call, tripled for wilful violations (if you're on a DNC then it's automatically wilful).

Fileable in small claims court. Caller and the company which hired them are jointly and severally liable (that means you get to go after both of them for $1500 apiece). Make sure you identify what they're advertising, as stinging the people who hire phone spammers is more likely to result in the practice stopping than stinging the phone spammers themselves.

If you get a default judgement then you can apply for interstate enforcement, etc and all the costs are charged against the spammer.

There are a lot of webpages devoted to this. Some people have made a cottage industry out of suing telemarketers.

Re:I screen every call.

[stoatwblr]

You don't need the cops.

Invite them in. Give them coffee. Tell them you will be extremely culturally offended if they don't drink it.

For added fun: Leave the door open, make sure they have a clear path from their chair to it and have a shotgun nearby. Tell them that if they are so confident in their faith in god and that he'll save them, you're more than happy to load it and shoot it at them to see if he will.

JW-baiting is fun.

 

Re:I screen every call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does happen, but right now calls to mobiles are cost prohibitive and come with built in and standard caller ID and smart phone call screeners, so I would presume are much less effective than land lines on all counts.

Best "nice try" was the guy in India...

[jpellino]

telling my mom that he needed to use logmein to help her, and if she hung up, disconnected or closed the computer that the Russian hackers were already in there and would destroy her computer.

Re:Best "nice try" was the guy in India...

[wgoodman]

I had one last week where they said they were calling about a problem with my computer. When I asked which one, they told me it was either my laptop or my desktop. I told them to try harder and hung up.

I immediately regretted not spending the time to really mess with them.

Re:Best "nice try" was the guy in India...

[Rigel47]

I managed to dick around with those same guys for a solid 15 minutes. I kept making typos, had to reboot my computer, oops, browser crashed. Finally he asked what I did for a living and I said I was unemployed.... which is why my internet connection got cut last month.

Re:Best "nice try" was the guy in India...

[jcr]

I've never gotten any of these calls, but my mom got one once. She has a Mac, so she knew immediately that the guy was full of shit. She told him she was calling the police and he hung up immediately.

-jcr

Re:Best "nice try" was the guy in India...

[billstewart]

My mom was amused by those scammers. She's used Macintoshes for nearly 30 years, and her Mac is only on the internet when she tells the modem to dial up her ISP. (Her vision's not good enough to use the web, and modem's plenty for email, much to the frustration of my siblings who don't like using sub-broadband speeds when visiting her.) So the "Your Windows machine is sending out viruses!" got a very quick hang up.

I've kept some of them on line for over an hour, when I've had time; eventually the caller's boss came on and yelled at me for wasting his employee's time. Other times I've told them I didn't have time for their lying bullshit right now, and got aggressively cursed at.

FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

I always report them to the FCC. I've been getting less recently, but that's probably a coincidence.

What we need is an adblockplus like system where you can subscribe to lists of spammers to avoid.

Re:FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

And how exactly do you know that a telephone fraudster is a telephone fraudster without answering the call and determining that from their pitch?

Re:FCC

[RabidReindeer]

One of the vilest calls I've ever received is one where a robotic voice says "IRS (sic) has filed a lawsuit against you".

"The" IRS, or as they'd be more likely to identify themselves, the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America" doesn't call like this. They use the US Postal Service, for one thing. For another, they don't use "English" phrasing constructs, because they're American.

This particular scam is blatantly intended to terrify the recipient into calling back the (Indian) call center who will then supposedly proceed to further the scam. However, if you check with the "who's calling" websites for comments, you may discover that like a lot of such scams, their agents are too incompetent to actually hook anyone not in advanced stages of Alzheimers or under 5 years old.

And speaking of "who's calling", such sites are a ready-made black-hole list for phone numbers someone else already answered so you wouldn't have to.

Re:FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point about scam calls using 'English phrasing constructs' instead of American phrasing. I'm always surprised by how even seemingly sophisticated scams often overlook their wording. For example, many Craigslist scams will use the term 'advert' instead of 'advertisement', or 'kindly' instead of 'please'. No one I know uses those terms Stateside (not saying those terms aren't used here, it's just rare to hear them).

My theory for this is seeing that many scammers are international, they use the English dialect they learned which is more often than not the British and not American version. The catch is they are not savvy enough to know what terms we do and do not use commonly stateside.

Re:FCC

[CronoCloud]

For another, they don't use "English" phrasing constructs, because they're American.

Yep, accent/dialect is a dead giveaway. I have been tempted to use my best impression of Hank Azara as Apu from the Simpsons the next time "Windows" calls. So far I've only had 1 "Windows" call and didn't have the time to play with them when they called. What I've thought about doing is this:

[apu voice]: I am glad to be you are calling. I am Mahatma from the Windows India. I have been monitoring your computer and you have the virus. You need to be installing the teamviewer so I can be having the remote access to fix the problem. But you are to be giving me your credit card number so I can be scamming you.

That should do the trick, unless they're in Bangladesh or Pakistan.

If I had even more time and ability I'd set up a Windows VM for them, but I really don't know very much about setting up a VM and don't have a Windows VM lying around. Wonder if I could set up a live CD of XFCE or something as a VM for them.

Re:FCC

[stoatwblr]

> "The" IRS, or as they'd be more likely to identify themselves, the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America" doesn't call like this

The IRS also has the ability and willpower to go after scammers like this no matter what country they're in. Fucking with Uncle Sam's income (or any other countries tax system) by impersonating their revenue agencies is a guaranteed way of getting their complete and undivided attention.

http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/...

http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/...

The tax department in most countries has more powers of investigation, search and prosecution than even the spy agencies. You do not want to cross them unless you have a deathwish.

I have rights damn it!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have rights against these scams. Where are my rights. Anonymous, wont you stand up for me?!?! I have to ask??? Hacktivist these scammy jerks, pretty please! Yaaaay ANonymous!!!1

asterisk, if you are up for it.

[lophophore]

If you have the patience to set it up, and keep it running, Asterisk can help you.

I use it at home to throttle phone spam.

all toll-free go to an auto-attendant that is a robot-check.
all "number unavailable" goes to another robot-check.
obvious fake phone numbers go to the blacklist auto-attendant, an infinite loop, basically.
known phone spammers go to the blacklist auto-attendant
it's easy to add a number to the blacklist.

On a typical day, 3 to 5 calls get gobbled up by asterisk. The phone rings once, the caller id is read, and the caller is sent away. It is *wonderful*.

She who must be complied with does not want to go to what I consider the ultimate solution, the white list for immediate pass-through, and a robot check for all other calls.

The spam callers that do get through are verbally abused before their number is added to the blacklist.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Scutter]

Care to share your setup? I've tackled Asterisk a few times and it's either prohibitively expensive (for home use, anyway - Digium's cheapest analog card is >$500) or unreasonably complex for someone with little background in telephony.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[The Cisco Kid]

I use google voice to a similar effect, but even more strict.

I only give out my google voice number.
Only calls from a select list of close family and very close friends (less than a dozen numbers total) ring through to my actual phone(s).
A few direct family members have my direct cell number in the extremely rare case where GV has an outage they need to reach me urgently.
EVERYTHING else, gets voicemail. If its important, they'll leave a message.
If they refuse to leave a message, I don't want to talk to them.
Occasionally I'll research the callerID of hangups, mostly just to humor myself.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

For a single home line, can't you just use a modem?

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[John_Sauter]

I do something similar. Callers are routed to an IVR which requires you to press a key to prove you are not a robo caller. Asterisk's follow-me feature then rings my home and cell phones. If I don't pick up, YouMail takes voicemail and e-mails it to me. I used to send clueless callers to Lennie, but stopped when my banker got all the way through Lennie's script before realizing he had been fooled.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[John_Sauter]

I use an ObiHai 110 to route incoming calls to Asterisk, running in an old used PC I picked up at the local computer repair shop. Good calls are routed back through the ObiHai 110 to my POTS telephone. No Digium equipment involved. Outgoing calls go straight through the ObiHai 110.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It borders on irresponsibility to recommend Asterisk to anyone who just wants to filter spam calls and be done with it. Asterisk is a dangerous weapon with which you can very easily shoot yourself in the foot. There are some rookie mistakes that allow anyone to use your VoIP account to call any number in the world, at horrendous costs to you. Unfortunately some of these rookie mistakes are perpetuated in Asterisk tutorials on the web, so even people who don't just blindly set it up with the sample configuration and tweak it from there are likely to end up with a many-digit phone bill eventually. At the very least only use accounts with Asterisk for which you can set a hard spending limit.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here...
A low-powered appliance that takes every incoming call...plays a message "Wait for your call to be connected..." and than music until it rings the extensions.
This extra step already trips 99.9% of robocallers/dialers. Certain CallerIDs and unlisted numbers get the "special treatment"
I keep a statistics of calls, and it seems that about after 50-100 tries the number is scratched from their list.
I have not got an unwanted call probably in 5-8 years...

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

forgot to add that terminating a call on a landline costs money.
I know that is incredibly cheap since the advent of VOIP, but would like to believe that after a robocaller had called me 100 times and it did not get through, they bled some...
The problem is that they still make more than enough on gullible ans stupid people to make the effort worthwhile

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[sydsavage]

This or something similar will do the trick. It has 1 FXO for connection to the POTS network, one FXS port for connecting analog phones, and ethernet to connect to your LAN. This model also has a built in router and a WAN port, so it could be your internet gateway if you wanted, or not. It should be able to connect to Asterisk via SIP, and allow the FXO and FXS ports to be configured as an Asterisk trunk and extension respectively.

https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

you really don't need an analog card if you go all digital
you can carry over your POTS number to a ITSP and replace your home phone with IP DECT station for several extensions and wireless coverage.
If you really want to go cheap, just use analog adapters for your existing phones.
There are also many knock-offs of Digium analog cards, so it is really your choice.
Or just get a hosted service for not much more...

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[RabidReindeer]

For a single home line, can't you just use a modem?

Yes you can. I did, in fact. I had the callerID route to a Perl script that screened incoming numbers. Not only did it filter out unauthorized callers, I even had it playing different ringtones.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Have you considered wrapping it up in a box with a simple UI and kickstartering it?

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[lophophore]

I'm using a Sipura SPA3000, which is now unobtainium, to gateway my POTS line from the telco into asterisk. The Digium stuff works better, but it is too expensive. My Digium card got blown up by lightning, so I switched to the Sipura. I think there are similar devices available now.

I'm using ebay-ed Cisco IP phones in the house, they are a pain to set up, but I have not found anything that works better.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

first thing to do with Asterik is have the "number no longer in service" recording play. All robo-callers have to respect that and will disconnect immediately. Any of them that don't, you report to the Telco as it's in direct violation of Telco Standards and for those that are violating that standard, is an automatic disconnect of their phone numbers and fines by the Telco instead of the FCC who also gets involved in it.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

To late:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/robocalls-are-annoying-so-this-man-is-using-raspberry-pi-to-stop-them/

"Even if he doesn't win the FTC contest, Ruiz says he is in it for the long haul. He's in the process of patenting his system, and he's planning to gather funding in an attempt to bring it to market."

Re: asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I do one even better. The first sound my automated attendant makes for any toll free, out of area code, or no caller ID call, is disconnected line tone (whereby mass dialers recognize this and don't call back), followed by a short math check. Add two numbers, and you ring my phone.

My calls that actually ring the phone have gone from dozens per day to zero.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[wgoodman]

Why are you using an analogue line?

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Jason Levine]

I use Google Voice also. I especially like the "blacklist" feature where you can mark a caller as "spam." The next time they call, they will hear "This number is no longer in service." Scammer will remove you from their list (no point in calling a "disconnected" line) and you don't need to deal with them. Often, Google will block scammers without the phone even ringing or me marking them as spam. (In the same manner that they will send a spam e-mail to your spam box without any intervention on your part.)

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[jcr]

The next time they call, they will hear "This number is no longer in service."

How do I set it up so they hear "fuck you, die in a fire"?

-jcr

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[mjwx]

Care to share your setup? I've tackled Asterisk a few times and it's either prohibitively expensive (for home use, anyway - Digium's cheapest analog card is >$500) or unreasonably complex for someone with little background in telephony.

Switch to an IP voice provider. Then you just need an internet connection and a IP handest (or even a soft client). Only a fax machine requires an old style POTS analogue line in this day and age... and if you need a fax, get a separate line and a fax machine that doesn't accept calls.

I've set up Asterisk on an IP line for a few small businesses for just this purpose (killing spam and robocalls), just put it on a VM for no additional cost (well practically no running cost). Asterisk is not hard to set up at all and virtualising it makes backups and restores easy, all you need to do to kill most robocalls is to have an automated IVR menu that has a short welcome message (10-15 sec) and forces the user to press a key, something like "Welcome to Blah Co, Melbournes premier suppliers of organic, all natural, gluten free defence solutions. Please press 0 to talk to a representative."

At home, I've had my landline cut off for a decade. There is nothing I need it for and it's too expensive to robocall my mobile so I never get hassled.

BTW, if you really want the hardware for cheap, look second hand.

Re:asterisk, if you are up for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use CallClerk with a 56K USB modem. Same thing. $50.

Know who to blame?

[gstoddart]

Want to know who to blame for this crap? The corporations who pushed to be able to spoof their caller ID -- so they could call us from foreign call centers.

I'm sure the technology exists or could be added to the phone system to basically say "if your caller ID is faked, we're not even accepting this".

I've started seeing the fake caller ID get to the point that it has the same area code and exchange as my own number ... once I apparently even called myself.

Essentially incoming calls have to all be treated as fraudulent, because they've been just created by a computer to conceal where it's actually coming from.

It has gotten to the point where if I don't know the number by sight, and then the persons voice, I pretty much tell all callers to piss off and go away.

Sometimes the legitimate callers get all butt hurt, but I simply don't care ... because 95% or more of incoming calls on my phone are 100% fraudulent, and involve some clown in an overseas call center trying to scam me.

And the problem is that it is probably the same exact call center that legitimate companies use, or one which has decided scamming is more lucrative than tech support.

But between the Microsoft Service Provider, the people who want to clean my ducts, the automated call telling me I've won a free cruise, the automated call telling me I need to respond about lowering my credit card rate ... incoming callers find a hostile person who assumes they're lying to me.

Sometimes I yell at them, sometimes I mess with them, but most of the time I just hang up immediately or leave it to the answering machine.

It's literally not possible to trust incoming phone calls. So why bother even answering them?

Re:Know who to blame?

[JonahsDad]

I've started seeing the fake caller ID get to the point that it has the same area code and exchange as my own number ... once I apparently even called myself.

Are you sure the call wasn't coming from inside your house?

Re:Know who to blame?

[gstoddart]

We have two phone lines, we actually though it might have been at first ... but the line we were answering was the line it claimed to be on the caller ID.

Essentially the fraudsters have started to get really sophisticated ... if your number is 123-456-7890, the call shows as being from 123-456-xxxx

Sometimes it's kind of fun to verbally abuse the asshole on the other end, but mostly it's not worth even answering.

Caller ID is a complete joke.

Re:Know who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's literally not possible to trust incoming phone calls. So why bother even answering them?

Sounds like you aren't yet taking your own advice...

Re:Know who to blame?

[The Cisco Kid]

The issue is, if you're a big company with 50 phone lines, you want your "main" number to appear regardless of which line you call on.

If you're a small phone(VoIP/etc) company, that uses wholesale services from multiple providers, if your customer places a call and it is handled by one provider, but their number might be provided by a different provider. The providers have to let you specify what their CID is, for it to NOT be a false CID. And they have to trust you to set it appropriately.

And yes, callerID is not and will not be 100% trustworthy. Consider it an "advisory" only.

Re:Know who to blame?

[Ol Olsoc]

Want to know who to blame for this crap? The corporations who pushed to be able to spoof their caller ID

Even further back - when they broke up Bell telephone. Under the phone system setup at that time, you would not even have gotten to this stage. The stage was set.

Present day phone system, there is nothing blocking a person from being called by a trained chicken. Cheap, and easy.

In the meatime, on my landline, if there is no name, or "800 service on the screen, it never gets answered. If there is a location, but they don't leave a message after the first time, I just push the fax button on my printer. Seems to stop them after another call or two. On my smartphone - it's whitelisted.

Re:Know who to blame?

[Trailer Trash]

Want to know who to blame for this crap? The corporations who pushed to be able to spoof their caller ID -- so they could call us from foreign call centers.

Dude, you are clueless on multiple levels. First, "spoofing" caller ID is normal - the ability to tell the phone company (this is a *high* level overview) what your number is when making outbound calls when using a non-POTS line. Due to the way the phone network works this can't easily be changed. And companies have done this for decades, it's not something new. Big multi-line companies typically want outbound calls to come from a single switchboard number.

Second, Rachel from card services works domestically:

http://orlando.craigslist.org/...

Since that'll go away, I'm going to paste it here:

Fronters and Closers Come be a Part of the Best L.I. Sales Team!!! (Downtown Orlando)
compensation: Top pay in the industry

We are in the business of helping consumers with interest rate reduction.
We are completely computerized (no typing required), Fully Licensed,
We will pay for your, State of Florida Telemarketing Salesperson License.

Job position: Fronter/Qualifier
Your job responsibility as a Fronter (Qualifier) will be, gather the client's contact information, see if the client qualifies for our services, and then transfer to a closing manager to complete the sale.

Closers job responsibity and requirements:
Must have 2 years of interest rate reduction sales experience an order to qualify for this position.
Your responsibility will be to explain thoroughly to the client the services we offer,
explain the process in which these services will be provided, and to transfer them to a verification officer to complete their enrollment.

If you are an experienced closer who has been in the industry for at least 2 years and you are ready to come and work with a company that is 100% legit and provide a great workplace for you to grow and make a great paycheck to take home every single week for all of your hard,
then this is the call you need to make to receive an immediate interview!

This is a fantastic job opportunity! Top pay in the industry! Non-stop leads all day!
Work hours are Monday through Thursday, from 10:00 a.m - 5:30 p.m.,
Friday hours: 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. (No Weekends)!

Paychecks Every Friday with Company Lunch provided!

Great work atmosphere, nice work stations and work space, beautiful building!
Please call by phone for an interview!

Re:Know who to blame?

[Xest]

I don't know about the US, but it's similarly a sham in the UK.

I have two phone lines, the second always got spam calls, it was obviously a line some idiot had plastered everywhere and then given up only for BT to re-assign it to me, luckily I only have that line for my secondary internet connection so there's no phone on it anymore anyway.

But when I initially did have a phone, I asked BT how they intended to resolve the issue given that it was receiving junk calls through no fault of my own. The short answer is, they refused to unless I pay them money - fat chance given that it wasn't a problem I caused. The long answer is that there are actually two types of withheld number - there's a number withheld within the UK, which BT can see, but doesn't get passed to me, the owner of the line, there's a withheld number of foreign origin - they can tell where the call comes from, but not the original number. Both these types of blocked numbers can be differentiated at the customer's end point. I asked therefore, if they could simply block all calls from India, because I frankly have no interest in talking to anyone from there, and was told I could only block all international calls, or none at all, and as much as I'd like to prevent my mother in law from Canada ever calling, that wasn't an option because the other half would have something to say about that. Oh, and I'd have to pay them for the privilege, again, bearing in mind this was a problem of their making, not mine.

I similarly asked whether any of the withheld number calls I listed as unsolicited were from the UK and was told that they were, I asked what the numbers were but was told for data protection reasons they couldn't give me them, this was troubling for two reasons. Firstly, companies aren't protected by the data protection act and these were commercial calls, and secondly companies have a legal obligation to make their contact number available now.

But there was a common theme throughout the discussions - they couldn't do anything, unless I pay them more, whether a few pounds a month to block at their end, or about £130 for their fancy new BT phone that can magically block these things.

So it seemed perfectly clear that at least here in the UK, BT has everything it needs to help solve the problem, it could tell you details of companies calling you using hidden numbers if it wanted, and it could detect and block calls from certain countries if it wanted. Similarly, it could use market-led approaches to the problem, it could charge penalty costs to route calls from problem countries. India would soon get it's criminal call centre industry in line, if it's legitimate call centre industry was put at commercial risk.

But as it stands, it's just too easy for them to make money from making sure the problem remains a problem, they're making a fortune charging people for simple features that should be part of the already astoundingly high £17 a month line rental, and there's too much profit in charging for phones with built in filtering functionality such as whitelists.

So yes, solutions are already either widely available, or technically or even commercially trivial to implement. What's missing is the will for telcos to solve the problem when they're allowed to share the profit for it. This is unfortunately I suspect something that will not change without legislation.

Re:Know who to blame?

[ebh]

Fronters may get lunch, but they don't get coffee. Coffee is for closers only.

Re:Know who to blame?

[swb]

Dude, you are clueless on multiple levels. First, "spoofing" caller ID is normal - the ability to tell the phone company (this is a *high* level overview) what your number is when making outbound calls when using a non-POTS line. Due to the way the phone network works this can't easily be changed. And companies have done this for decades, it's not something new. Big multi-line companies typically want outbound calls to come from a single switchboard number.

I think there's two kinds of "spoofing" -- legitimate spoofing, where you own the DID number that you send out outbound trunks (eg, main phone number, etc) and bullshit spoofing, where at best you're obfuscating the source of your calls (eg, some hired call center that sends their client's DID info as caller ID) or worse, deliberately sending false or nonsense caller ID information to hide and obscure your call origin.

Telecoms providers could filter client outbound trunks and drop calls with bogus calling party information, where bogus is defined as something like "you don't control that DID and have no written permission to use it". The FCC could require telecoms providers to do this very thing.

I'm sure it would be messy and complicated to get setup, but so many calls are handled by the major carriers (ATT, Verizon, CenturyLink, etc) that you have a natural choke point that limits the ability of rogue providers to hand off calls.

Re:Know who to blame?

[aardvarkjoe]

The issue is, if you're a big company with 50 phone lines, you want your "main" number to appear regardless of which line you call on.

If the phone system was sanely designed, the calls would have a "real" number that could not be changed as well as a "callback" number that could be. A big company could use the same callback number for all calls, but not spoof the "real" number that the call came from.

There are tons of things that could be done to reduce the number of fraudulent calls, but the reality is that the phone companies make loads of money off of having lax rules that allow companies to do whatever they want.

Re:Know who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

The situation is very similar to spoofing source IP addresses. There are good reasons for it to be possible, many end users are subject to egress filtering (i.e. cannot spoof), but it's not unusual to allow it on a business account. There is a big difference however, and that is that there is only one source IP address in a packet, but there are several different types of source numbers associated with a call, and you're not supposed to be able to spoof all of them, just the one that the end user sees. Unfortunately the phone system is built on the assumption that network access is only given to trustworthy entities. But with the cost barriers coming down, many new players are in the game, and not all of them play by the rules.

Re:Know who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think CallerID spoofing is a result of a "corporate push" - It's an artifact of how the telecom system works.

In any phone system bigger than a handful of analog phone lines you generally connect to the phone network through a "trunk" - A bunch of digital phone lines. Like an old-school BRI or PRI. (Or something a whole lot more modern)

In a typical organization you don't have all of your phones on the hook all the time so you don't want to pay for a 1:1 phone-line ratio. Your phone system will open a line out of your pool, connect you up, and then send the caller ID. Could be your external phone number that will route to your extension. Could be a phone number that will reach the front desk if the caller calls back. Point is, it's flexible.

But it's a very, very, very old system. Like email. And, like email, it has no built-in verification at all. You can send whatever number you want. With email, you can claim to be whoever you want. (Though with email there are now things like blackholes, trust systems, SPF, etc that try to reduce spoofing)

Also, like email, nobody foresaw the complete global internet and the ablity for some jackasses overseas to send out a whole lot of bogus messages trying to scam everyone out of their money.

Supposedly it's against the law to spoof your CallerID for fraudulent purposes, but there are still completely zero safeguards against caller ID spoofing. As far as I can tell the law has no teeth at all, since supposedly legitimate companies do it all the time. (Debt collectors mostly.. But the legality of many debt collection practices are grey anyway)

Re:Know who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

NAT manages this absolutely fine. Since businesses don't use switchboards but circuit switch electronics, there's no problem with "remembering" which phone things were connecting to.

Indeed, external calls to a number not specifically dialed to a company should ALWAYS go through the operator which should be the only number you give out with CallerID, else you can get random joes ringing up some named person for things they don't know about, merely because they're in the same company, and have to pass the customer on to the switchboard operator anyway.

Re:Know who to blame?

[Livius]

I'm sure the technology exists or could be added to the phone system to basically say "if your caller ID is faked, we're not even accepting this".

If the phone company offered this, not only would I pay them for it, I'd, well, they'd still be an evil monopoly, but I'd at least start speaking politely about and to them.

Fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them eat cake!

Which is why

[koan]

I give out only my Google voice number, because I can block calls.
So ask yourself this, for that phone bill you pay every month why is it blocking isn't included?

Re:Which is why

[Penguinisto]

Actually, it is on many of them (at least Vonage has it). For the mobiles, there's well... there's an app for that (okay, there's a *lot* of apps for that...)

Re:Which is why

[koan]

I think all phone companies offer it, for a fee, maybe vonage offers it as part of a package to compete.
I thought I would look at some apps that blocked and found this blurb at the end of the list.

Finally, try filtering by using a Google Voice number as your primary means of contact. Google Voice offers great spam filtering options with a database of known spam numbers, and it can automatically block potential spam. You can port an existing number to Google Voice for a $20 fee to enjoy first-class call filtering options no matter what kind of phone you're using. This method works for both iPhones and Android smartphones.

One thing about using Google voice is I can change my actual phone number and set it in Gvoice to route to the new number.
After reading about the apps that block calls I think I would rather route through Google than some app, they already know everything about me.

I do whitelist

[Anonymous Coward]

I only receive calls from people in my contact list. I only disable this when job hunting.

Re:I do whitelist

[RoverDaddy]

Would job interviewers or HR people really be put off by being sent to voice mail? I see no reason to -ever- answer the phone for a number you don't recognize, since any legitimate caller can leave a message.

Re:I do whitelist

[RoverDaddy]

Would hiring managers or HR people really be put off by reaching voice mail? Is it that much of a risk in a job search? I see no reason to -ever- answer the phone for a number you don't recognize, since any legitimate caller can leave a message.

Helpful Protip

[Shoten]

A large number of the people manning the phones for these boiler rooms have criminal records...most have done jail time. I've found that this provides me with no small amount of entertainment whenever these people come calling. Think of it as a combination of Jedi mind tricks and suddenly seeming to know more about them than they know about you. Sometimes it flops, but a lot of the time you can almost hear their eyes go wide on the other end of the line. Priceless. Even better, since the drones making the calls have no real ability to take people out of their database, you may end up recognizing the same people by their voice on subsequent calls...and this allows you to keep building on your past "conversations." Imagine a telemarketer dreading calling you :)

POTS security is broken.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The plain old telephone system evolved in an earlier era, security by obscurity was the norm. There were using simple whistling tones added/removed to regular conversation for data communication between exchanges. All analog. Blind phone phreaks were stealing just long distance minutes from the phone companies. But now the phone companies feel they have no liability to detect spoofed caller id. If some courts hold the phone companies liable for transmitting false phone numbers, using some lawyerly language like "aiding and abetting" "knowingly providing false information" "negligent" etc, then there could be some relief.

Even if some phone companies feel that this fraudulent calls will eventually destroy their entire landline business, they alone will not/could not do much because the dynamics of free markets. Unless there is some cost associated with not catching the spoofers, whatever marginal revenue they get by not catching them would always win.

Re: POTS security is broken.

[Anonymous Coward]

Courts won't do it, they can only do justice within the law, and juries will be overridden by judges even if they do see the offense.

What a world we live in, the least trusted may be the ones with the most responsibility.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't POTS. This is voip. If this was POTS then the phone companies could do something, but since it is voip you can inject whatever number you want.

In fact, this spoofing is useful for legitimate purposes. For example if I call externally from my company it shows the main switchboard number of the company instead of my direct number.

However this needs to be fixed because the number of fraudulent calls is off the charts now.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[RabidReindeer]

The plain old telephone system evolved in an earlier era, security by obscurity was the norm. There were using simple whistling tones added/removed to regular conversation for data communication between exchanges. All analog. Blind phone phreaks were stealing just long distance minutes from the phone companies. But now the phone companies feel they have no liability to detect spoofed caller id. If some courts hold the phone companies liable for transmitting false phone numbers, using some lawyerly language like "aiding and abetting" "knowingly providing false information" "negligent" etc, then there could be some relief.

Phone companies most definitely know which of their resources are being employed to make calls with. They BILL for those resources and each and every call gets logged. Those logs are also required to be available for (allegedly) authorized law enforcement agencies and they're one reason why the old movie trope of "keep them on the line while we trace this call" is bogus. If the connection was made at all, no matter how briefly, there's a record constructed by automated equipment.

Naturally, if the true origin of the call is coming in from some other source, the phone company can only trust whatever ID came in from that source, but they definitely know where the call itself came from and that means that law enforcement can then track back until such point where they cannot gain any sort of co-operation. Even spoofing via Internet phone can be tracked if you're determined enough.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The VOIP calls come through some point of presence over to the POTS system. At the transfer point, the POTS knows the originating number of the call, and it can verify the caller-id record and abort the call, if it wants to.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is broken and fixable and won't be done because it is "too expensive" i.e. cuts into short term profits. Capitalism at work; push as much cost as possible away from your revenue stream.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't come from POTS. These guys are using voip all the way. They aren't even using phones, but computers to do the robocalling/mass dialing. Almost all business now don't use POTS.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If you receive the call on a POTS phone, the call got transferred to POTS somewhere. If you get it in a cell phone, it too got into the cell phone network, probably through a POTS gateway. Only people who use VOIP phones would be able to get it all the way in VOIP.

The scammers mostly target elderly and not so tech savvy people. Most of them are not on VoIP phones. They all use trusty old POTS phones, probably the beige monstrosity pushed by AT&T back in the 80s.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[Wargames]

Back in the day a call starts on a originating trunk/port and ends on a terminating trunk/port on a telecom switch. That term trunk can be a local trunk or a route to another switch. Today, I suppose, that inbound trunk could be the internet and the outbound trunk could be the internet as well. Also, the outbound trunk may be a long distance switch which may or may not be owned by the same carrier.

Each switch has a record of where the call came from and its disposition true for sure, matching one switch's records to another's is a relatively simple. If all of the switches are owned by the same company it is possible to match all the call records from multiple switches and have a complete record of the call. I know it's doable because I've done it. If not all switches are owned by the same carrier, it is probably very challenging, (unless something has changed over the years to increase record sharing or something which I belive carriers were loath to do), since you have to get records from all the carriers for the call. Now throw the internet-originated calls into the mix and it's going to be very challenging unless you are somehow listening to everything or have access to everyone's database.

Correct me if I am wrong as it has been quite a few years since I did this telecom stuff. I was only familiar with SS7 and ISDN; it's probably SS10 and ISDN++# today.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[stoatwblr]

> using some lawyerly language like "aiding and abetting" "knowingly providing false information" "negligent"

Or "materially benefitting from a criminal enterprise" - _your_ telco gets about 1/3 of the call revenue for terminating the inbound call, so they're part of the problem.

Re:POTS security is broken.

[stoatwblr]

> the old movie trope of "keep them on the line while we trace this call" is bogus

Back in the days of strowger switches it had to be done this way but that was a very long time ago.

Ditch the godamn phone

[ArcadeMan]

Cable/satellite is too expensive for what it offers, so a lot of people dropped it. We have a few/lots of alternatives available depending on the country.

Phone service is also too expensive for what it offers, it's being abused by scammers and people still pay for it? Drop the damn thing. We're in the Internet age, there's plenty of alternative ways to contact other people, no matter which platform you use and no matter where you live.

Re:Ditch the godamn phone

[The Cisco Kid]

Expensive? My google voice is free.

I pay for mobile mainly for Internet access. Voice calling is just a side effect. And Its around 50 bucks a month. Pretty cheap.

And when you want to reach a business, many have no real-time want to contact them except phone. I doubt your local mom&pop hardware store has skype. ANd even if they have facebook, its unlikely they sit there monitoring it.

Re:Ditch the godamn phone

[ArcadeMan]

Google Voice, magicJack, etc.

Re:Ditch the godamn phone

[Jason Levine]

Expensive? My google voice is free.

We initially had a land line and then moved it to a less expensive mobile line (add-on to our main plan). Finally, we moved that number to an existing Google Voice account. The total cost for this last move was $40. $20 to keep our existing Google Voice number and $20 to port our number to Google Voice. This was a one-time fee, mind you, not a recurring fee. This was over three years ago, so we've saved hundreds of dollars so far.

What calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see articles like this fairly often, so I am sure that people are not making this stuff up - but what calls? I just don't get them. A 18 months ago, we still had a home phone although we didn't ever answer it. It had an answering machine and we would get political robo-calls and donation robo-calls. Once a week we got the carpet cleaning scam call. But none of these other ones including the financial ones or the fake infected PC. Yet many people were reporting that they got them once a week or more. Now that we only have mobile phones, we don't get any calls like this (on AT&T). Yet my mom is on Verizon and she gets a couple of them a week. Really odd...

Re:What calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see articles like this fairly often, so I am sure that people are not making this stuff up - but what calls? I just don't get them. A 18 months ago, we still had a home phone although we didn't ever answer it. It had an answering machine and we would get political robo-calls and donation robo-calls. Once a week we got the carpet cleaning scam call. But none of these other ones including the financial ones or the fake infected PC. Yet many people were reporting that they got them once a week or more. Now that we only have mobile phones, we don't get any calls like this (on AT&T). Yet my mom is on Verizon and she gets a couple of them a week. Really odd...

That was my situation until my wife and I turned social security/medicare age. When that birthday happened for me, the scam calls began at the rate of 2-3 a day and sometimes more. When her birthday came, those got added to my calls. I guess we got nearly a thousand calls one year, but it seems to be tapering off.
Do Not Call seems to only block legitimate companies, but that's no surprise. I wonder why did I even mention it.

Anyway, I suspect there are segments of the population that get way more than their fair share. Thanks to universal un-privacy, getting a list of seniors and their phone numbers is trivially easy. Or any other group for that matter.

Here's another thing that sucks.
When you're my age you have parents and relatives who have medical emergencies of the last chance to say goodbye kind.
It really really sucks to have your brother getting surgery in the hospital two thousand miles away, you're waiting for news, and you cannot know what number they'll be calling from, and no way are you going to send everything to voicemail to screen the call. Then "Kevin from Microsoft" calls.
I changed a detail, but this actually happened to me.
What makes me angry isn't that it happened, but rather that there is no way to find out the location of the company that asshole works for. If I knew only that, I could make myself happy about the incident.

86.2M per month...

[CrimsonAvenger]

...and I've never gotten one.

Note to self: ask wife and child if they've ever gotten one.

Hmm, but seems that I remember my mother telling me once that she got one....

Re:86.2M per month...

[Cro Magnon]

I've gotten the Microsoft help scam. My mom got the IRS scam. I also get a bunch of unknown calls (they call, I don't answer, they hang up without saying anything). Any or all of those might have been scams.

Re:86.2M per month...

[war4peace]

say there's 300M landlines in the US. 86M calls a year means 0.285 calls per year, per landline, on average. There's a high chance many people never receive one.

Re:86.2M per month...

[CrimsonAvenger]

86 million per MONTH, not per year. So an average of one per four months on each line.

Re:86.2M per month...

[Trailer Trash]

...and I've never gotten one.

Note to self: ask wife and child if they've ever gotten one.

Hmm, but seems that I remember my mother telling me once that she got one....

I'll tell you why I get them: I'm on the Do Not Call list. Yes, these people are brazen enough that they apparently get the list and use it as a calling list. Our government is too stupid to track them down and shut them down. But, don't worry, we're taking care of Dennis Hastert for making withdrawals from his own bank account.

Re:86.2M per month...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reread the title. It's 86M per month, not year.

Re:86.2M per month...

[LVSlushdat]

I have the house phone on Voipo, which includes that "Nomorobo" functionality.. LOVE it.. At least 3 or 4 times/day, the house phone will ring once then stop, which tells me yet another robocaller got eaten up by nomorobo.. Prior to moving the phone to Voipo, I'd been on Vonage for a few years, and it was one of the top requests by users, as indicated by their forums, to add a "blacklist" feature, yet they never did add it.. I discovered Voipo and its $149 for 2 years+included ATA and found that it did have a very nice blacklist feature... Moving was a no-brainer...

Re:86.2M per month...

[war4peace]

My bad. So there's a pretty high chance, instead of outrageously high chance, then.
If John gets one a month, it means Jack, Jason and Jill would get none.

Whitelist on iPhone

[WorldWarPi]

To support my whitelisting on an iPhone, I set up a phone ringtone which consisted of several seconds of silence. Unfortunately, Apple has the policy of silently (haha) deleting such a non-tone. So I have to combine the "do not disturb" along with explicit blocking.

Verified CallerID would help

[david.emery]

I've advocated (including to my senator, Warner (D) of Virginia, a former telecom executive) that the FCC should require changes to make CallerID Verified. By this I mean that the Telco/switch has to verify the CallerID (e.g. using payment data?), and mark the CallerID information as either verified or suspect. This would not solve the problem, but would, I believe, help both consumers and Law Enforcement.

As long as spammers can forge CallerID, we won't be able to depend on CallerID to screen calls, and DoNotCall registry violations will be much harder to enforce. "Brigitte from Credit Card Services" calls usually have a City/State CallerID value, rather than the name of an individual or organization. But I get some legitimate calls (e.g. my dog's oncologist) that also show up as City/State. (I know to answer calls from Vienna, VA - at least until the Spammers start forging local CallerID values...) My former employer removed its telephone number from the CallerID information, I know if I get a call from "732" (New Jersey area code) that it's most likely one of my former co-workers.

But recently I've been getting Spam calls on my cell, usually (but not always) the CallerID says "unknown". Until this month, such calls were limited to the Land Line (and this is the single strongest argument for ditching the land line.)

Re: Verified CallerID would help

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes that and a couple of star codes anyone can use to report these guys right after hanging up.
*50 scam
*51 do not call violator
*52 politician or charity
Each telco would have to help look up the originating phone and take action.

phone companies can stop this, if they wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever the phone company (any of them here in North America) tells me that they can't prevent this from happening because they don't know who is calling, I call bullshit on that.

If I had a "Premium Rate" telephone number (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number) how does the phone company know who's bill to put the premium rate charge onto if they don't know the (real) source and destination of every call being placed?

Clearly they can solve this problem. They just don't want to because it cuts into revenue.

Re:phone companies can stop this, if they wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

They were not lying for once. The originator pays retail for the call, the calls gets connected (via a series of tubes) to your number. Kickbacks for intercarrier rating are charged on the trunks the call is being deliverd from. The last carrier (the only hosting your number) only knows a call came in from a certain trunk, timestamp, connection time and a/bnumbers are charged to the other trunk endpoint, who will do the same whether the anumber is valid or not for the originator. You are not getting the money directly from your callers.

Re:phone companies can stop this, if they wanted

[maxwells_deamon]

I think there need to be regulations similar to what they did to limit the spammers. Let us complain with a * code or something. Then if enough claims are made of fraud the provider gets banned from connecting to the phone network. push this trough and eventually the people providing the connections to the VOIP system will put some protections in place.

Yes, I know this did not fix all spammers but the phone network is a little different.

nomorobo.com

[zerofoo]

I'm going to keep posting this until everyone uses it. It's a free telephone filtering service. Just enable your simultaneous ring feature on your landline and nomorobo looks at every call that rings your phone. If the originating number is on their blocklist, they pickup the call.

It's a fantastic service.

Phone companies should embrace these filtering technologies. If it wasn't for nomorobo I would have gotten rid of my landline a long time ago.

Re:nomorobo.com

[LVSlushdat]

YES!! A THOUSAND TIMES YES!! Nomorobo ROCKS!! Hardly a day goes by where the phone doesn't ring ONCE. then stop.. Had to train the wife to wait to see if there was a second (or third) ring before she answered it... Just wish it would work on our cellphones, but I've yet to find a way... At least, on the cellphone I have call-control, which does a fair job of reducing the crap calls

Re:nomorobo.com

[Stan92057]

Phone companies should embrace these filtering technologies.

They do..for another 3.99 a month

Re:nomorobo.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Nomorobo FTW! Same as the asterik guys setup above. But so easy your mom can do it. Just turn on simultaneous ring with your phone company (Comcast, AT&T and most others have it).

Nomorobo watches all the cals, screens obvious robocallers. They just go away. Users can go to the nomorobo https://www.nomorobo.com/ site and add robocaller phone numbers.

My call block list is back down to zero and my phone only rings when someone is calling.

Re:nomorobo.com

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I should hand over all my telephone metadata to a third party service? What's the difference between nomorobo and sending all my e-mail to be scanned by nothtensa's spam filter before it hits my inbox?

Re:nomorobo.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost?
[captcha: quantify]

So, Ma Bell, Let's Talk...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is what baffles me about the zillions of scam calls, and the feeble 'well, the FTC announced a cute little prize for anyone who can do something about it' twitches of response: If I get a call, that's because one of a relatively small number of telco companies patched it through to me. And none of them are running a charity, being able to bill for service, on a very granular basis, is a feature that was baked into the system quite early and thoroughly.

So what's the deal? Does '862 million phone scam calls delivered each month' mean '862 million calls per month are being made, for free, by parties unknown and the nations telcos apparently don't give a damn about this theft of service'? Does it mean that 862 million scam attempts per month are being aided and abetted by the nation's telcos because 'pink contract' customers are customers too? A mixture of both? Why is it that Ma Bell's various misbegotten children aren't either baying for the blood of the people stealing their service(and pissing off their paying customers, sometimes to the point where they just give up); or getting taken out and shot for their complicity?

I just don't understand. With email, everyone knows that the system is just too open to be un-broken, the providers and the customers are mostly in it together, in terms of trying to mitigate what they can; but short of walled-gardening SMTP, that's just the nature of the beast.

With voice, though, you've got a much, much, more closed environment(there are a lot of corners of the world; but telephone traffic isn't nearly as international as packet traffic); and the providers mostly don't seem to give a damn(caller ID is a pitiful farce, by design, getting a number blocked, even if known, is like pulling teeth); and it's the case that either the providers are also being massively ripped off or they are massively complicit; and yet nothing seems to happen. Why?

Re:So, Ma Bell, Let's Talk...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand: there is no such thing as a "telephone" call anymore. It is all VoIP packets now. It just gets switched to your POTS at the very endpoint. The system is as wide open as email is, or any other IP service.

Re:So, Ma Bell, Let's Talk...

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not. The telephone company still knows the origination of all calls otherwise there would be no billing for them. See the post about "Premium-rate Telephone Numbers" in the "the telephone company can stop this ..." posting.

Re:So, Ma Bell, Let's Talk...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. The ISP also knows the origination of all packets too. It doesn't mean they do anything about spam. So just like email or any other IP service it is wide open to spoofing.

You are right though, the PROVIDER knows, but they don't care.

Re:So, Ma Bell, Let's Talk...

[captaindomon]

The problem you can run into is with the network neutrality / common carrier issue. I can see the value of blocking spam calls, but once you open the door to the phone company filtering calls, it can cause more problems. Just something to consider.

Recent favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

"We are the IRS and we are filing a law suit.
    Here is a number to call."

This is using robocall to crowdsource the pre-selection of gullible victims and have them spend their time getting in contact with the busy shark.

Totally evil, but you have to admire their wonderfully clever scheme.

Re:Recent favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is to use crowdsourcing to fuck with them:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forum...

People there have been posting the callback numbers of the IRS scam, and then calling it repeatedly to waste their time. They've had to change their number multiple times. Same with other scams. If you get a call and aren't particularly busy, you can just keep them on the line for 10 or 15 minutes while you are doing something else and string them along. It's actually pretty easy. If you get a call for the microsoft scam, tell them you have to get to your computer and wait for it to boot up. That's an easy 5 minutes. With the IRS scam, they're actually patient/greedy enough to wait for you to drive up to CVS, buy a prepaid credit card, and read them the number. So you just need to convince them you are in the process of doing so and they'll happily wait.

IRS/Canadian IRS

[Nidi62]

For about a week or so on almost a daily basis I was getting calls from an Indian call center with spoofed numbers claiming to be alternatively from the IRS, FBI, and the Canadian version of the IRS (I am not only not Canadian, I have never been to Canada and live in the Southeast US, which last time I checked a map was pretty far from Canada) claiming they had a warrant from my arrest. I just put the calls on auto reject then got a good laugh out of the messages they left me. I only answered the first time, told the woman that: 1. the IRS does not use Indian call centers, 2. the IRS does not issue warrants, and 3. the IRS does official business by mail not phone, especially when anything involving legal matters are concerned.

Re:IRS/Canadian IRS

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency)

submitter should not worry.

[sribe]

My biggest worry is that the people behind these scams, like spammers, will hire copywriters who can fool many more people.

Nope. Same as with spam. They need gullible idiots. If the initial pitch is more believable, they'l just waste more time with people of normal intelligence, who might get through a few minutes' of a pitch, but will ultimately balk at giving out all their personal info to a cold caller about their supposed account, or at rushing out to buy a Green Dot card to pay the IRS right now, etc.

Re:submitter should not worry.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Nope. Same as with spam. They need gullible idiots.

You do realise theres an electorate out there

Ditch the Land Line

[cruff]

I disconnected my land line a while back and almost never get these types of calls anymore. It was the best thing I've done in a while, as I got tired of maintaining the limited 25 number block list to stop the charity and fraudulent callers.

Re:Ditch the Land Line

[LVSlushdat]

I just wish I could block all of the Republican fundraisers *still* calling me after nearly 10 years of NOT being an (R).. I realized, back during BushJrs second term that both the (R) and (D) political parties were eeeee-vil and had no good ideas for America... At least its fun to tell them off when they call.. Kinda feel sorry for the poor guy on the other end, when I cut loose on them....

Re:Ditch the Land Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell them you are tired of the calls and from now on you will donate $X to their opposition every time they call.

Re:Ditch the Land Line

[cruff]

I just wish I could block all of the Republican fundraisers *still* calling me after nearly 10 years of NOT being an (R)..

I forgot about having received that category of annoying messages too. Don't miss them one bit either!

Re:Ditch the Land Line

[stoatwblr]

Politicians, churches and charities have gone and shat in their own nest on this one. (As they did with loudspeaker trucks)

The FCC has been looking at restricting political robodialling for a while due to the sheer number of complaints and it's highly unliklely that only the one exemption will be pulled.

It's not a restriction on speech, it's a restriction on the manner of speech (as are loudspeaker truck laws) and forcing speech on those who do not wish to listen to it.

imagine a business number...

[spywhere]

My cell phone number is the primary for my small business, and it has been in the Yellow Pages for over 10 years.
I get the usual spam aimed at personal numbers, plus an amazing array of business-to-business (OK, mostly scammer-to-business) telemarketers.

I can't tell them what I really think for fear of being Google-bombed...

There's products available

[Virtucon]

I got fed up with Verizon letting scam callers through all the time. Yeah, they have ways of blocking but the interface, *this or #that is retarded. There's also no incentive for any provider to block this horseshit and the FTC do not call list is a fucking joke. I've done the nomorobo.com route but since I'm also a small business owner I've resorted to OOMA and frankly I'm happier with it. If one of these scumbags does get through I'll just add them block them.

Let unknown numbers go to voicemail

[Anonymous Coward]

Let calls from unknown numbers go to voicemail, and for your voicemail greeting start it with a recording of the tones a fax modem plays while attempting to negotiate a connection. The spammers will think you are a fax machine and blacklist YOUR number. Write an app that that automatically forwards calls from unknown numbers to a seperate voicemail account and I would pay a few buck for it to avoid having friends & family deal with a crappy voicemail greeting when I am unavailable.

Re:Ring ring

[BenJeremy]

First psot

Wow, talk about missing an opportunity...

You should have used:

First POTS

We have a new winner!

[tompaulco]

I can beat 1 in 900 handily. I would say about 1 in 20 calls that I get are scam calls. Just 2 minutes ago I erased a message from a robotic voice telling me that the IRS is filing a lawsuit against me.

A few

[mrkmpn]

I've received the "Your computer is reporting problems indicating that it is at risk" phone call once, but I was in line at a register, and couldn't try to have any fun with the guy. Years ago I received several of the "Our records indicate your vehicle's warranty has expired" calls. Which technically was true... since my car was over 10 years old and I was the 3rd owner of the car. On the 1st call, I asked how they got my number and they hung up. On the second call, I asked to be removed from their call list, and they hung up. On the 3rd call, I said I was going to report them to the FCC, and they hung up. I've received several calls from people "with google" trying to help us increase our presence online. They seem shocked that I don't want to do that. I've also received several of the toner cartridge scam calls for printers. I don't understand how they think it will work when they call acting like they know you, '"remind you" of a phone conversation you had a year ago, and then try to sell you Ink cartridges for a laser printer for a brand you don't even own. (at 1st I thought he was trying to sell me a printer). Honestly I think 90% of the sales calls you receive at a business are some type of fraud.

Re:Ring ring

[Anonymous Coward]

Frosty POTUS!

Facebook Hello app helps

[Theaetetus]

I was getting robocalls multiple times a day ("Hi, this is Rachel from Card Services!" or "[foghorn] All aboard for the S.S. Takeyourmoney!" or "Stop! Do not hang up! The FBI wants you to protect your identity with Identity Block!") until I installed Facebook's Hello app. I can't speak to its primary contact functions, as most of my friends don't bother putting their phone numbers into Facebook, but it has one neat feature: "Automatically block calls from numbers that have been blocked by a lot of other people."

I turned that on, and the calls dried up. Haven't had one in weeks.

ultimately, government collusion/apathy

[argStyopa]

The fact is that if they were aggressively and rigorously prosecuted, this wouldn't be an attractive business. As it is, they're assuming that they'll get away with it.

Personally, I invite anyone looking for a vigilante-cause to hunt down and kill some people, this would be a great subject. It doesn't have to be the LAW that punished these guys, to de-incentivize the whole industry.

I mean hell, by RIAA-caliber math, aside from their actual fraudulent scams, 86 million scam calls x 12 months x say 3 minutes per call average (to count the time it takes to get up out of my chair) = nearly 6000 person-years consumed annually just in time wasted. Assuming a median income of 26k per capita, this is nearly $160 million annually wasted.

Since you know the NSA is listening

[tekrat]

Use lots and lots of keywords.

When the scammer calls, no matter what the person says at the other end of the line, you say "What did you say? You want to blow up an airliner and kill the president? You're a member of Al-Qeda and ISIS?"

I guarantee that call will go dead and they won't ever call you again.

Re:Since you know the NSA is listening

[freeze128]

I guarantee that call will go dead and they won't ever call you again.

Is that a money-back guarantee?

Re:Since you know the NSA is listening

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you give tekrat money?

My experience with robocalls

[jeffmflanagan]

I never receive them, because if you're not in my address book, I'm not picking up the phone.

Re:My experience with robocalls

[Anonymous Coward]

Great if you don't expect to receive business calls, or calls from colleagues with new phone numbers, or calls from friends/family who hide their caller ID, or (possibly collect) calls from family/friends who are calling from something other than their normal phone, or reminder calls from your local doctor/dentist/mechanic/bank whose number you've forgotten to put in your address list or who use calling services with numbers you don't know, or...

Re:My experience with robocalls

[stoatwblr]

There is already malware circulating which hijacks android phones in order to spam out text and voice messages - it's believed this is precisely because of increasing whitelisting practices.

nomorobo has worked great for me

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I use normorobo (https://www.nomorobo.com/). It's free for non-business use. I have my home phone (yes I still have a home phone - my current home security system requires it) going through it and I think it's great. It only works with VOIP or wireless phone numbers though, not true land lines. It works by having you activate a feature to ring a 2nd number when a call comes in. The 2nd number is No Mo Robo's phone number. Let your phone ring once and their database will pick up the call before the 2nd ring if they feel it's fraudulent. I'd say it stops more than 95% of the robo calls I get, which to me is fantastic. Maybe once or twice a month a robo call will get through, but that's all.

Just as a point of interest, I work with a guy whose ability to judge scams is broken beyond anything I've ever seen in a non-elderly person. His ability to differentiate between the bogus and the legit is just about non-existent. Remember in the past decade when a lot of us US people were getting cold calls from some company telling us we could buy an extended warranty for our cars that would pay for any and every repair we needed for years to come? He bought one. I realized that it's guys like him who keep the robo callers in business.

Re:nomorobo has worked great for me

[ledow]

I find it quite sad that for a developed country you think that going this far our of your way, and then only getting 1-2 robocalls a month is anywhere near acceptable.

I have a landline. I have not had a phone call to it in 5 years, except for family and friends. We have an answering machine which records the fact someone called, so I know that we haven't (and not just they didn't leave a message).

We just don't get this crap. If we did, I'd complain like fuck because I've asked for my number not to be public - to the point that I would demand a change of number from my provider.

But, in fact, all I did was register with my country's "Telephone Preference Service" - which is free - and that's that. The two mobiles in the house are also registered. Apart from very, very rare (i.e. once a year or less) texts from random spammers, which I then report, we don't get that crap on those either. Generally, they have CLI information, and those phones have a call-blocker feature by default, so they're easily dealt with too.

Even in work, I have several direct lines and the switchboard. What makes it through the switchboard is actually worse than anything that comes direct because - well, they just don't have the number to dial me direct and I would complain if they did.

The switchboard girls, though, aren't as good as distinguishing "Hi, I'm a random joe just after some information, I'd like to speak to... you know... what's his name... the guy in charge of IT... John! That's it, John!" "Hi John, Susan in the office just put me through to you because...."

(P.S. Want to get me to blacklist your company and report your phone number? Do this to me. I've strung one company along for over a year and made them waste inordinate amounts of time setting up appointments, etc. only for me to "have to cancel" at the last moment. And then when they twig and ask why, I tell them it's because of their dirty sales tactics. If they can lie to try to get through to me, I can lie to string them along.)

When it come to scammers, spam, just random harassing phonecalls, unwanted sales pitches from companies you've never heard of, etc. why should it be any different?

I'd just unplug my phone forever if that's really the scale of unwanted calls you get. Or I would make you go through a compulsory automated switchboard - nothing rings in my house until you've passed a phone CAPTCHA, said who you are, why you are calling, and rung from a number that I can block.

Re:nomorobo has worked great for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it quite sad that for a developed country you think that going this far our of your way, and then only getting 1-2 robocalls a month is anywhere near acceptable.

You know what else sucks? People who post "We don't have that problem in my country" and then they go on for paragraphs and never reveal the name of the country. So what if you didn't get a call in the last five years, if you're in Namibia?
And how could I cajole my congressman with "They do it better in some country that I don't know the name of".

It's not just you, it seems to be a slashdot thing. And if you're hoping to avoid meat-stalking, just post AC for this sort of thing.
BTW, I give it a 90% chance that you're in the UK.
No one in the USA says "The switchboard girls".

Re:nomorobo has worked great for me

[ledow]

Google Telephone Preference Service.

Top hit: UK.

And, actually, I'm just returning the favour. Every website I read, including Slashdot, no matter the scope of its international audience just assumes that I'm American and understand what the hell it's talking about.

I'm European

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never received a robocall, fraudulent or not, in my entire life.
Just as everyone I know.

Re:I'm European

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't know enough people. Robocalls exist in Europe too (illegal schmillegal, who cares).

We're all two hops from each other

[Anonymous Coward]

Slight loophole.

Holy Crap!

[Sir_Eptishous]

So the other day I had to erase a ton of old voice mails on a phone in a part of the company where that particular phone/extension/did is hardly ever used.

I logged into the voice mail to discover that it had been receiving tons of phone spam. Somehow this outside number had been listed in the phone spammers database and there were loads of different phone spam/scams on there. At first I listed to a few, then I just deleted and went to the next message.

It took me about 15 minutes to delete all the messages in the inbox.

In Canada...

[Maury Markowitz]

> What's been your experience with fraudulent robocalls?

Didn't get too many until very recently, the last two months. They were originally from a fake number in one of the nearby area codes, but now they've started coming in using my own number. I wish there was a switch so you could reject calls from your own number.

Invariably they are of the "your recent reservation" variety. First was a string that lasted about a month for Marriot hotels, but the most recent I got was for Air Canada.

Interestingly, they all come in around 5 to 7PM.

Re:In Canada...

[Anonymous Coward]

5-7 being a time when you are more likely to be at home...

Dare to say YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just say yes to everything, and see what wonders this world has in store for you! --Carl Allen

I talk to them

[Jjeff1]

I get maybe 3 calls a week, used to be a lot more. It's either credit card scams or offering drugs to senior citizens. I put them on speaker phone, and continue with whatever I'm doing and just babble nonesense at the people on the phone. I figure my cell phone minutes are free, so I can save someone else who might fall for the scam.

Re:I talk to them

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally someone who understands the business model. Credit Card services depends on a quick qualification of the number called. Few of the numbers they call are going to respond in a positive manner, i.e. buy.
They are looking for the 1 in a 1000 number who will give them their info. If even a small percentage of people called would engage them in a conversation for as long as possible the business model would become untenable. Time cost them, and you can raise their costs.

Remember never give real info, don't pick up on first ring, and act stupid.
Make their business model unprofitable. (they are in it for the money)

Re:I talk to them

[aardvarkjoe]

I do the same thing.

If you want a real easy way to waste their time without wasting your own, just talk to them long enough to get them to ask you for your credit card number, and then tell them "oh, I better get my wallet" and put down the phone. It often takes them 5-10 minutes for them to realize that I'm not coming back.

Re:I talk to them

[Rigel47]

I think I'm going to record an mp3 on my computer that is minutes of:

hold on.. (shouting at someone else) "I'm on an important call!! It's about our credit card debt"
Ok, hold on, looking for wallet, think it's in the kitchen..
Pots crashing, cat screesch
Wait hang on here it is, ok.. aw crap, I forgot the credit card is buy the computer upstairs, hold on.. How's your day going?

Might wrap it all up with a clown honk and some profanity.

I've never received a single one

[dave420]

I guess they're not too popular in Germany, as I've yet to receive a single call since I moved here nearly 10 years ago. I wonder what's different?

Re:I've never received a single one

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you constantly stalk and harass apk for? Your post history is littered with massive amounts of evidence of doing it so don't attempt to deny it. Are you so obsessed with him doing better than you have in computing that you must stalk him harassing him constantly, psycho? He's challenged you to do better. It's clearly evident you can't. You can't even prove his lists of points favoring hosts files wrong, agreeing with him he is correct on them from recent replies of yours in exchanges with apk you've had.

Re:I've never received a single one

[dave420]

APK, give it a rest. No one believes you have people looking out for you, as no-one would defend a serial spammer of this site.

Re:I've never received a single one

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't answer the question Dave420. Why'd you run from it http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

fax machine

[dizzy8578]

tiny usb fax adapter put on the wireline for a couple of days a week seems to have gotten me dropped from most robo call lists. It is automatic so I assume it is the software that edits the list on the fly. The drones / scammers may not be able to remove you from a list but simple efficiency in programming certainly can.

My wireline reached the 100% scam level several years ago but cannot remove it due to dsl. The ringer is turned kinda low and I use it as a reminder to get up from my chair and stretch or walk a bit.

How Can I Be A Shill Too?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to be a shill like you. Can I be a shill like you? And the other guy who is also you.

Astroturf burns baby it burns

So it turns out that these calls respond to DTMF..

[Anonymous Coward]

I get these calls all the time. The "Your computer has a virus" folks seem to leave me alone after I tell them I'm running Linux. Well, first I drag it out for about half an hour. Then I tell them I'm running Linux. Then they teach me all these great new expressions in the field of profanity. But they don't call back. That's the important part!

Unfortunately, there's this one legal fraud team that insists on calling me every single day. Apparently I'm going to be sued. Legal papers will be served at my place of business. Yada Yada. All unless I settle out of court with them "right now". You know, it would be a lot more convincing if they had gotten my name right. Even just my first name right. Or if I wasn't retired.

Anyway, they won't leave me alone. So I got bored listening to their spiel, and I started playing the the touch-tone keypad on the phone. Turns out whoever build their autodialer, well they didn't work for Google. DTMF touch-tones interact with their phone system spiel in all sorts of interesting ways. Did you know you can download DTMF touch-tones off the web? Play them with the SOX play command under Linux (or whatever)? Add a while loop in the shell of your choice, and a sleep command. Acoustically couple the speaker to the phone. (Lay the phone down nearby.) And, ya know, it takes them a couple of hours to hang up on me.

Though I think they're getting annoyed. They don't seem to want to call anymore.

Next up, I need some sort of Eliza-type program to see how long we can keep Rachel from Cardholder Services talking on the line without actually giving out any useful information. I wonder how to make a computer stutter...

Peak robocall?

[netsavior]

I wonder what percentage of voice communication is currently robots talking to robots. I mean, personally 99% of voice traffic attributed to accounts I pay for is simply robocalls hitting my VoIP mailbox, being transcribed into text, then emailed to my inbox.

Eventually it will be an unprofitable model right? right?

The only possible explanation is such a small percentage of voice calls need to actually be heard in order for scammers to get enough money to be worth it. God, how do stupid people have so much money to lose?

Can you play a SIT tone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you play a SIT tone?

Do you know of any device that would automatically play a "Number changed or disconnected" Special Information Tone (SIT) .wav file for all incoming calls that would fool robo-callers into thinking this is an out of use number, and they would take it off their list?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tones

800notes.com

[kimanaw]

Funny coincidence, just as I started reading this thread, I got a call from an unknown number. I let it run out, then looked it up on 800notes.com. Sure enough, a scammer. Now added to my cell phone's (rather lengthy) reject list.

Also, 800notes.com has a few humorous recordings of someone scamming the scammers...good for a few chuckles.

I get a call EVERY DAY from "cardholder services"

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been calling me every day for 2 years. I have tried ignoring it. I've tried cussing them out. I've tried threatening them. And lately I just answer and play around with them, pretending to be interested for a few minutes to waste their time. But they still keep calling me.

Everyone that can should accept every call...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anytime I get a call and am able, I take the call and try to waste as much of their time as possible (while using as little mental energy as possible). If I could get even 10% of the people to do this, it would render the calls unprofitable and eventually kill them.

The best call was the time I got the to the real human on the other end, and simply said, "Get a real job!". He replied, quite earnestly, "I'm TRYING!!!".

Nomorobo works

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Ooma VOIP which includes the Nomorobo service. I setup all the junk calls to receive a "This number has been disconnected" message.

With Nomorobo the phone will ring once before the robo call is intercepted. When I first activated it I was getting several one ring calls per day coming in. After a couple months these stopped completely. I suspect that my number was removed off the robo caller lists as they now think it is a disconnected number.

Google Voice stops spam

[ITRambo]

Google Voice does a great job of blocking spam calls. I hope that Google never kills off Voice. It's so damn good. I've had it since it was Grand Central and was advertised as "one number for life".

targeting old people

[roc97007]

I used to do tech support as a business. I still do tech support for friends and family and a few legacy customers. I've asked all of them to let me know if they get any cold calls regarding PC support, and to not do anything to their equipment unless they've talked to me first. (This being easier for some people to understand than the concept that *all* cold tech support calls are bogus. No, really, "The Microsoft" does not call you when your computer is "infested with the viruses", and there are no tech support people who are "from The Internet".) From my admittedly small sampling of 20-30 people, I have noticed a tendency for fake support calls to specifically target people over 55. This has been such a positive match that it's made me wonder if maybe AARP had their membership list scooped. (Or maybe Denny's?)

Re:targeting old people

[vandamme]

I'm 67, retired, and run Linux, so I just love it when "The Microsoft" calls.

"wait a minute while it boots."

5 minutes later:
"Hold on while I get my credit card".

10 minutes later: treat them to the audio of me sitting on the loo, micturating. Extra points for a #2.

Re:targeting old people

[roc97007]

My interactions tend to be shorter.

"Hello. I am from The Microsoft and we have noticed that your computer is infested with the viruses."

"Hello. Does your mother know that you steal money from people for a living? How does she feel about that?"

(click.)

One catch...

[Thelxepeia]

Not available on traditional analog landlines.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Scammers? No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dealing with scammers is very simple. You just have to not give a shit. I stopped answering my phone years ago and most of the time I don't even bother turning on the cell unless I need to make a call. Voice mail, baby! If you can't wait for me to get back to you....go get a slushie.

IRS Scammers

[billstewart]

I've had some interesting conversations with them, when they called my cellphone instead of my home phone. One of them was telling me how stupid Americans are, we only speak one language while he speaks lots (I asked him in French, German, and Spanish if he spoke any of those languages, but he was on a rant.) Eventually he decided to just start insulting me, thinking that telling me I was a "black n-----" would be a useful insult. Since I was in the lobby at work, I didn't go into a long rant about how racist that was and how he probably didn't get along with the various colors of people in his country, but hung up on him. The other guy was mainly bragging about how I'd never be able to trace his call, and he was using Magic Jack for VOIP, and how he could break into my mobile phone (which he demonstrated to me by calling with his caller-ID set to my number), and was at least more amusing to talk to, for a shameless thief.

Re:IRS Scammers

[stoatwblr]

> he was using Magic Jack for VOIP, and how he could break into my mobile phone (which he demonstrated to me by calling with his caller-ID set to my number),

The only reason he was able to do that is because your phone company passed the call on.

Telcos get paid for terminating calls. The fact that they don't filter obviously scammy callerID, etc should make them liable as accessories to the crime (financial benefits, etc)

Spammers with Broken Robots and Bad VOIP

[billstewart]

Look, it's one thing for spammers to call up and waste my time. But more than half of them these days call up and don't ever play a message or put their agent on the phone so I can waste their time. I don't know if they're just badly understaffed (at least they could play a recording), or their equipment is broken, or their call center is checking my number against the Do Not Call List after I answer instead of before (presumably because of how they charge each other for various services.) And lately I've been getting people with bad VOIP systems calling up and playing crackly versions of the "Rachel from Cardholder Services" tape - at least they could use a higher bit rate.

I work from home most days, and my wife usually get up a couple hours after I do, so I answer the phone on first ring to avoid having it wake her up if I let the answering machine get it. Real calls at that time are usually the pharmacy's robot saying there's something ready, or the gas company robot saying they're still going to be digging up the street; other calls are usually spam robots.

Most phone spammers are thieves

[billstewart]

Sorry - anybody who works for Rachel from Cardholder Services or Fake Microsoft Technical Support or Fake IRS is a scammer, and knows that their job is to rip people off. Thieves don't rate the "just doing their crappy job" excuse, unlike the people who call up trying to sell me legitimate services when they know (or should know) that I'm on the Do Not Call List so I'm not interested.

Waste their time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just answer the phone and put it on speaker. An occasional uh-huh and yeah, etc. while I do other work gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I think how I've forced the charlatans to call one less person today.
Everyone join me. Waste their time and hopefully they should find something else to do.

those calls come in handy when I am bored

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to play a game with them to see how long i can keep them online with giving them what they are looking for. Sometimes it is hard to wait for the click before I can start laughing.