Then the person sends you a 2 minute long audio over whatsapp
Not if I don’t have whatsapp.
At least I can get a transcript and speed it up a bit
The True Crime here is an 11 year old child with a (I suppose) Smartphone.
I would totally understand if it was in a place where your kids can take a walk or public transport to school or other places on their own. I would also want them to have means to call you.
EDIT: my bad, I ignored the ‘smart’ bit there. I just meant any phone.
Can be a normal phone which is what I would do if I where a parent and my kid would have to bike 12 km to school every day.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I’d just like to mention that it was perfectly normal for kids to go on 12km without a phone not so long ago, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it now. Parents worry too much. I mean, it’s a biological impulse that makes a lot of sense, but it’s often over done.
Well yeah, but it is always good to carry a phone with you especially when you bike through somewhere where there isn’t a lot of other traffic or it is off your unusual route. There is nothing wrong with carrying a Nokia 3310 or something
Ye, I think it’s fine either way, nokia or no phone at all. I cycled 17km to school from age 12 to 17 and only got my first phone when I was 18 and moved out. Of course I did get a flat tire a couple of times, but then I’d just walk or sat at the back of the bicycke of a friend.
And what if you fell while you where alone and broke a leg making it impossible for you to walk? Or you friend fell and hit his head open on the road being able to call for help is actually pretty handy.
Like it might sound absurd, but shit happens
I suppose living in the Netherlands, a pretty crowded place, assures you that you’re rarely ever alone in the middle of nowhere for very long. But yes that is handy and I can totally understand parents feeling comfortable with their kids being able to call for help if anything ever happens to them.
No you are never that far from society in NL, but at moments when every second counts I would rather just have a phone for my kid. Use something like a Nokia, give them a 10 euro prepaid card and if it is used up buy more and take it from their savings.
At least that’s what ill do when I have kids
I think a lot more kids got napped in the States before cellphones were common
Kidnaps are and were never common. It’s one of the most overrated risks that parents worry about. And also one of the most disastrous especially in the US, where people, riled up by media, seems to find it irresponisble to let your child roam around the world unwatched. Whereas experts have shown again and again that this is important for the childs development.
That paranoia came about when crime documentaries got big on TV (and now internet) rather than a consistent increase in abductions. People are really bad at reasoning with probability and undoing attentional bias from media, so they even think it can be likely kids would be abducted if left alone.
This is why 24/7 location tracking on kid’s phones is completely normalized. Sure, it’s not a bad thing to take precautions, but tracking your kids like a dog seems a bit much. And I’m sure a lot of parents misuse it for a lot less serious things (eg teens being at the mall unsupervised).
Normal Phone would be fine :)
Whatever you say Grandpa
Ok, brainrot
I think I was maybe 12 when I got my first smartphone, admittedly they weren’t really a thing much earlier than that and while I definitely have issues I’m pretty sure none of them were caused by the phone
There was no Instagram/TikTok back then, though.
Or Cocomelon, or other services and channels literally designed to break impressionable brains.
Since about 2006 my voicemail message has been “for a faster response send me a text message.” When I started my business I added my business name and rerecorded the rest. If a client can’t send a text instead of call then I’m going to charge them more.
That’s a greater idea I’m doing that
That’s actually really smart lol
This is perfect. At least boomers have an excuse. Millennials using voice notes is unforgivable.
But one could set up an Archer style voicemail prank!
Back in the day, I realized there wasn’t really a voice-mail message length limit, so I had a 20 minute rant about why I don’t want voicemails
I get voicemail from blocked numbers
You need to setup your phone to answer and then hang up automatically on the callers. On my Pixel I only get VMs from spam callers if I didn’t have any signal at the time.
That would tell them the line and number is valid. Not interested in perpetuating their tripe.
So does having a voicemail? How is that any different.
The difference is they can drone on all they want and I don’t have to listen to it. Can straight delete the voicemails without playing them
You can’t hear anything, the phone answers and then immediately hangs up and disconnects the call.
Yep. I also keep do not disturb active for that exact reason. If I have the phone in my hand when it lights up a caller and I recognize the number I answer it. Everyone else gets the block
It’s a double edged sword:
1.) Not all phone lines have text enabled (especially service lines).
2.) One reason you might not answer a call is because you don’t recognize it. So if the line in question doesn’t have text options then you might miss important calls if you don’t check your voicemail.
3.) If you don’t take unknown calls and you don’t check voicemails then you probably won’t answer random text messages either.
At the end of the day more people need to be grown ups and at least have a decent voicemail message and check their voicemails as they come in. It’s not an all or nothing discussion, it’s a do the minimum discussion. Screen your calls, check your voicemails, call people back who seem legit. It’s not rocket science, it’s adulthood.
Yup. Sucks to have to remember to take phone off “Do Not Disturb” to get business call backs.
Where I’m from, voicemail is just not used. If a person doesn’t pick up, you try again later. Answering machines were not a thing either. Always thought it was weird people used them in movies. I remember maybe leaving one message in my life, never had it myself.
Yeah, where I am from it’s primarily used by businesses these days. Most people don’t answer phone calls from numbers they don’t know so if it’s important business then they leave you a voicemail. The thing is that if you don’t then check your voicemails you miss important business. It has a lot of other odd impacts as well, I was in a car accident not to long ago and the guy that hit me broke his phone and tried to use mine to call his emergency contacts. As you might have guessed no one answered because they didn’t recognize the number and he wasn’t able to call anyone for help.
I hope this is your one and only pet peeve
Damn I’m so curious about the venn diagram overlap between pet who hate calls and people who love video “news” like tiktok. I bet it’s near a circle.
I, for one, hate both equally. I want to READ my news, and I don’t even care if it comes with static images.
Voice notes on WhatsApp/iMessage is essentially the exact same thing as voicemail but for some reason zoomers are happier with those.
Navigating the voicemail menu is really annoying
Agree, haven’t had to use it for a while. Not sure why I was defending it… maybe couldn’t resist an opportunity to dunk on zoomers.
Brilliant. I’m stealing this.
I am hard of hearing. I hate voicemail. And, I hate that I can no longer record voicemail. There has been too many incidences where I can’t understand the crucial details in a voicemail.
Yeah, until she applies for a job and the recruiter tried to call her to offer an interview.
For me the most annoying part of voicemail is navigating through the menu. But I’m also not scared of taking to people on the phone so perhaps my opinion doesn’t count here.
Good luck to her when she wants to start being taken seriously.
Depends on the industry. In my industry, Email is king and text is Queen. Unless its a zoom call, it ain’t happening.
lol, only production matters child, once you are ready to become a Worker™, then you you will be required to use voicemail
I work with engineers in an industry where not having a written exchange of info to refer to and/or CYA is unthinkable. I got my latest company phone 17 months ago and have not set up the voicemail yet.
Only production matters, so why use something slow, inefficient, that also does not provide an automatic written record to cover your ass.
If you call me with a request to do work or give me important information, I will tell you to text or email that to me.
I agree many meetings should be emails. But when meetings happen, generally someone takes minutes and notes down actions so, that covers that base I suppose. Secondly, if I’m your employer, or your client, and I call you with a request, or a job, then it’s probably in your best interest to get it done. Sure, a follow up email is sometimes warranted, but not always. People who refuse to use the phone to communicate verbally are only disadvantaging themselves.
If you call me with a request to do work or give me important information, I will tell you to text or email that to me.
Same I end every meeting where someone asks me to do something with a request for them to email me spelling it out. I don’t care if we covered all the ins and outs verbally and I already made notes, I want a paper trail of their expectations. The intention really being to train them that meeting first is a waste of time and they should just email me in the first place. If I don’t understand what you want I’ll set up a call.
See, for me, if you call me and don’t leave a voicemail, I’m going to assume it was unimportant (or spam) and I won’t call back. Businesses, which are most likely going to an unknown number, should leave a voicemail if they want any action on my part. I mostly don’t want businesses texting me because they tend to spam the fuck out of you. And I’m sure as fuck never going to pick up the phone for an unknown number.
Recently, I’ve been getting calls I’m pretty sure are spam. They are all from different numbers, but all of the area codes are from where I got my phone number, which is quite far from where I live now. Additionally, they all do leave voicemails, but each and every one is exactly thirty seconds of silence.
Spam or not, I can’t figure out the point.
They spoof a number close to your number to increase the chance you pickup, they don’t know you moved.
I’d bet the silence calls are to determine if a phone number is active.
I definitely know about the spoofing - that’s what made me figure it was spam initially.
The waiting for a voice response makes sense, but I’ve never encountered a system that didn’t at least say some form of “hello.” Not this persistent of one, anyway.
Thanks!
Interesting, one of the recent voicemails I received was a very high-quality voice courtesy one of everyone’s favorite text-to-speech companies (perhaps ElevenLabs)
Wonder if it’s possible they were trying to route on the fly, if they had such a low latency system that they’re able to wait for potential victims to say hello before instantly transferring to a human scammer.
Probably a bot waiting for a voice in order to start. It waits until it hangs up.
That makes sense, and I appreciate the information.
You’d think they would have marked me as inactive by now - they’ve been calling every day or two, including weekends, for more than a month. I haven’t answered once! The persistence is the only thing that made me question whether it was spam.
It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until
you are deadit’s no longer profitable to operate the automated service!I got that kind of call for four years after I got a new phone number. 2-3 times a day. Plus texts offering to buy Tuyet’s home, appointment reminders for her & her kid’s(?) doctor, occasional temp-staffing offers. You can’t beat them by not answering.
Had this problem too (phone number is from NM but I’m in MA now) so I just started messing with them. I’d answer “Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albuquerque district office, how may I direct your call?” Click. After about a week of doing this I haven’t gotten a single spam call, this was like 2 years ago. Who cares it it’s “impersonating a federal agency” or whatever, they’re scammers overseas, fuck em.
It’s AI, I’d be willing to bet. Waiting to detect a human before responding with whatever scam they’re selling.
that doesn’t really require AI lol
Playing back a message when you hear someone pick up? No, they’ve been doing that forever. But trying to determine whether you have a human on the line or just their voicemail recording? That’s something that could start to require more sophisticated language models, and the fact that the message didn’t just start rattling something off as soon as something picked up suggests maybe they’re using it. Actual phone scams using AI? Well, if they’re not doing it yet, they will be soon.
And I’m sure as fuck never going to pick up the phone for an unknown number.
You’ve gotta be diligent: if you do business with something, like a project or an appointment, you need to drop their number into your contact list. Every time. Yeah, it’s neat if you need to reach out to them, which will be never because it’s on the phone, but it’s primarily so they can call you and not be unknown.
I’d love a QR code with the org’s phone/mail/blah number on it at the front desk, because I do in-person a lot because fuck the phone.
Sometimes it’s fun, when you know it’s spam, to answer it while it’s ringing (which may let the operator know ‘hey, they answered, start talking’) and quickly hit Speaker and Mute and enjoy 5-10 sec of them being confused when they hear silence back.
