Don’t participate in contests where you get a code, and you have to go to a site to verify that code and give your data. They’ll sell that phone number immediately to telemarketers.
If I was magically in charge, I would make it so if you got an unwanted text or call you report it and the phone company has to pay you like $10.
They don’t deal with this problem because they only care about profit.
How are people getting so many spam calls? I’ve gotten maybe 2 in the last 5 years. Not that I want spam calls but people consistently reporting getting several a week, or even day, makes me concerned I’ve done something wrong. Like some government system I’m supposed to be signed up to but I’ve somehow missed
Some mobile networks have spam protection that’s enabled automatically.
You could also have a “clean” number, especially if you don’t use your phone number anywhere online, haven’t answered a spam call before, and nobody used it before you (or the previous user was a long time ago).
Spam callers can’t robodial literally every number, so they rely on lists of phone numbers that are known to be good/active, for example if they’ve answered a spam call before, if the number has been in a data leak, etc.
Call screening features are great. iPhones recently added a call screener that pre-answers the call to ask who is calling. I know at least Pixels have had it for a while.
This is the way.
From what I understand there seem to be some sort of lists that mention activity of any given number based on whether you answered a call so I literally never answer if I don’t know the number and now I rarely get a spam call. Like maybe 4-5 times in a year. My number is probably flagged as inactive or something on these lists.
Unfortunately, some of us have to. I need my (and my bosses) phone number on danger / caution tape so people can ask me why its there & if can they ignore it.
Ah, that explains those roving gangs of overseas scammers and their cross-country caution tape tourism excursions
I’ve been pretty successful at reducing spam calls by simply reporting the calls to the USA’s donotcall registry LINK HERE and also pretending to be a robot trying to take up as much of the scammer’s time as possible.
Of course the BEST defence is to have a company find and remove your number from online as much as possible, but that’s trickier for businesses.
since STIR/SHAKEN rolled out, the scam and robocalls here have really dropped off. only a few per week now… even to the phone numbers that are published (intentionally) online.
of the ones that get through, nearly all of them are coming through new voip points-of-presence popping-up in small towns all over our very rural part of the country.
I’m still getting about 5-10 per day. They’re all spoofed numbers with different area codes and the same or similar AI recorded voice lines.
I’ll answer almost every call I can, but not say anything. I’ve learned that they wait for an answer before starting their shpeel, so if I answer and remain quiet, they hang up thinking I’m another bot. Then I block the number to be safe.
i do that too. if it’s from a number i’m gonna answer (but don’t recognize), i do. and then watch the call timer on the phone and don’t say anything until after three seconds. legit callers are always still there, the computers–never are.
if a call rings through that the phone company has tagged in caller id as probably bogus. i just answer and hang-up right away. they don’t call back.
You gotta at least start with your most white-person “hello” possible. If its a human they might just assume silence means the call was dropped.
Anecdotal, but several people I know who used to get loads of spam calls noticed a very significant and lasting decline in frequency after signing up for https://www.easyoptouts.com/. Seems like a good thing to do anyway, might be worth trying if you struggle with this.
