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Spam Calls Jumped Over 300% Globally in 2018 (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: According to the yearly report published by Stockholm-based phone number-identification service Truecaller, spam calls grew by 300 percent year-over-year in 2018. The report also found that telecom operators themselves are much to blame. Between January and October of this year, Truecaller said, users worldwide received about 17.7 billion spam calls. That's up from some 5.5 billion spam calls they received last year.
One of the most interesting takeaways from the report is a sharp surge in spam calls users received in Brazil this year, making it the most spammed country in the world. According to Truecaller, an average user in Brazil received over 37 spam calls in a month, up from some 20 spam calls during the same period last year. According to the report, telecom operators (at 32 percent) remained the biggest spammers in Brazil. The report also acknowledged the general election as an event that drove up spam calls in the country. As in Brazil, Indians were bombarded by telecom operators (a whopping 91 percent of all spam calls came from them) and service providers trying to sell them expensive plans and other offerings.
Spam calls received by users in the U.S. were down from 20.7 calls in a month to 16.9, while users in the U.K. saw a drop in their monthly dose of spam calls from 9.2 to 8.9. [...] Truecaller also reported that scam calls subjecting victims to fraud attempts and money swindling are still a prevalent issue. One in every 10 American adults lost money from a phone scam, according to a yearly report the firm published in April this year.
One of the most interesting takeaways from the report is a sharp surge in spam calls users received in Brazil this year, making it the most spammed country in the world. According to Truecaller, an average user in Brazil received over 37 spam calls in a month, up from some 20 spam calls during the same period last year. According to the report, telecom operators (at 32 percent) remained the biggest spammers in Brazil. The report also acknowledged the general election as an event that drove up spam calls in the country. As in Brazil, Indians were bombarded by telecom operators (a whopping 91 percent of all spam calls came from them) and service providers trying to sell them expensive plans and other offerings.
Spam calls received by users in the U.S. were down from 20.7 calls in a month to 16.9, while users in the U.K. saw a drop in their monthly dose of spam calls from 9.2 to 8.9. [...] Truecaller also reported that scam calls subjecting victims to fraud attempts and money swindling are still a prevalent issue. One in every 10 American adults lost money from a phone scam, according to a yearly report the firm published in April this year.
A simple Android App sends all calls not in my contacts list to voice mail. Voice Mail is a 90 second screed on all the reasons I WON'T call them back and 90 seconds seems to exceed the time limit on most automated systems.
Only people who really need to talk to me wait through all of that.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Get a premium number.
And if they still want to call, I'm more than willing to take that call and talk with them about whatever insurance they want to sell, about whatever problem my PC has and even about anything else that could trouble them.
For hours, if necessary.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My latest trick is to ask them to send round a sales representative (or equivalent).
When they arrive I tell them I'm deliberately wasting their time, I have no intention of buying anything and they can just fuck off. Repeat until they eventually leave.
It really works. I've got rid of some really troublesome companies. One that called me nearly every day for five years hasn't called once since I did it.
No sig today...
Scam Artists thrive in an environment where there are fundamental problems in the economy.
People are suffering, so offer them false hope.
People are scared, so offer them protection.
Life is complex, so give them easy solutions.
We have a fundamental failure in our safety net and support systems. So we can't trust our neighbors, government, religion, companies, families, and friends. So we are fighting for ourselves, and desperate for any sort of tool to help.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've seen a huge increase in spam calls in the past year (at least 6 calls over the past two days). Luckily, my cell phone area code is from a place where I only lived for a few years so that when they spoof a number it's always from that area and easy to determine as clearly spam.
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
"Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that." --George Carlin.
I'd like to have a way to explicitly reject an incoming call so that it does NOT go to voice mail. While I'm (cross my fingers) lucky that my cell phone doesn't get many spam calls, I don't want to waste my time even deleting their inevitable voice mail.
For my home phone, things got bad enough long ago that I put it behind Asterisk. Checking my CDR, the spam call situation is worse than ever, but they never get past my CAPTCHA, so the phone stays quiet. Some numbers are whitelisted to bypass the CAPTCHA, but anything unknown has to key in a randomly-assigned digit before the call goes through.
I also ended up ditching the landline in favor of VoIP; the VoIP service costs me less per month than what AT&T charged for Caller ID alone.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
"Just block everything not in your contact list".
Yeah sure, and if the phone number being spammed is for your business which depends on new people calling it, like for reservations? What if you're a freelancer?
Uh, must mean "jumped by over 200% in 2018".
100% = 11
200% = 16.5
300% = 22