Same here but every time I post that on this site I get replies about how they have to answer the phone because their kid could have fallen down a well and their wife could be in a coma and the police would be trying to contact them and if they don’t jump to answer the phone every time it rings their entire family could be murdered.
So IDK. It seems to be a problem, I just don’t have enough of a life for it to be for me.
You can cut through a surprising amount of spam by just reading the voicemail after letting an unknown number ring. If they didn't bother to leave one it was either not at all important or the vast majority of spam calls. If they did leave a voicemail you can generally tell whether it seems even remotely legitimate and, if it does, call back at the number. E.g. if you have a kid and the school calls they will leave something generic like "It's so and so elementary calling for <your name>..." you call the school's main number back and say "so and so called looking for me" and get directed to them.
OTOH it seems if you ever answer these even once you're no longer a random number to try you're immediately marked as a real person who can be tricked into answering at least some calls and will never hear the end of the endless ringing.
This is genuinely pretty shocking to me. Would e.g. the person calling from the school about your kid getting hurt during recess just hang up and assume you'll call back immediately during the workday on the basis you had a missed call?
If you mean for people you have relations with (friends/family/coworkers) most here gave up memorizing numbers a long time ago and none of those would show as an unknown number. This is common enough here in the US that the iPhone has a built in feature to only ring for known contacts and for unknowns only notify voicemails.
Does anyone still has voicemail enabled in the first place? Can't remember the last time I was connected to one. Can't remember last time I had one attached to my number either.
UK here, called my phone company many many years ago and had them disable voicemail. It's now impossible to leave me a voicemail. It's fantastic. In all those years I've never (that I know of) missed an important call, people call back if they need to.
If you don't have voicemail, they will send you an SMS. Parent's main point IMO was that if the call was really something important, the person on the other end will leave a message of some sort.
The person on the other end doesn't know if you are making yourself deliberately hard to contact, or if you are genuinely unable to answer the phone call.
This strategy works fine in my experience. Most important calls I get are from people already in my address book. If I'm in a job hunting phase, I'll answer calls from numbers I don't recognize during time frames when I am expecting them (e.g. the policy is relaxed for the duration of a job hunt). But, outside of that, it's hard to imagine a call from someone I don't know that is so important I can't let it go to voicemail, but so unimportant that the caller will deign not to leave a voicemail to let me know this is really important.
Wait a second, do you pick up any call you receive? IME Australia is one of the worst places with regards to spam calls (by far the worst out of all countries I lived in), if I allow calls from numbers not already in my contacts, I get an average of around 10 spam calls per week. If it's something important like my daughter's school or strata or the lawyer, they do leave voicemails.
Honestly pre-COVID I got spam calls maybe once a quarter. After giving out my number every second time I left the house, that number is more like a few times a week.
I would say I am pretty privacy conscious (when possible), so this may not be the average person's experience.
The problem with this strategy is that sooner or later, the spammers will find your "trusted" number. After all, phone numbers are easily enumerable...
That's surprising to me, almost everyone I know will leave voicemail. Recruiters especially, which tends to be myst of my legitimate phone calls TBH!
Though with people of my age "cold calling" isn't all that common, typically you text the person first to make sure they are available and keen on a call. Unless it's an emergency of some sort, of course.
Lol. T-Mobile has gotten good at flagging spam calls as "Scam Likely", but for the landline I do the same thing. (I don't believe landline carriers...at least in the US...were forced to implement Stir/Shaken, so it gets the full brunt.) My logic is always that if it's important, they'll leave a message. The landline message also includes the three escalating (line disconnected) SIT tones, which I would like to think helps. But if the spammer uses speech-to-text technology, I'm screwed.
> Instead, report the phone number that the call instructs you to contact.
Under the above scenario most callers aren't dumb enough to leave a message, and I'd be concerned that actually engaging with anybody would increase the number of calls, at least in the short term.
If you're a staffer running the honeypot lines at the FCC, it would be fine because you can go home at the end of the day, but for a personal number I would need convincing. Would love to hear testimonials from anyone who tried this technique and their interpretation of the results.
Some folks cycle throwaways over time instead of allowing a consistent identity to be built. The guidelines request nicely against doing so but some always do anyways of course.
Being able to delete an account allows you to decide to remove your information from the site after a certain point. Cycling accounts is about not letting someone who looks at a single account at any time find enough information to piece together your identity at any point. Both are privacy related but the former is not a lead-in to the latter.
As one who'd also like to see the ability to fully delete your HN account for privacy reasons I still think summarizing the alternative reasons as only aesthetics sells the counterarguments a bit short...
... but overall I'm getting myself and the whole conversation extremely off topic here. Probably best to discuss this in a thread about privacy on HN instead of one on robocallers.
doesnt matter anyway there is a 'ai' that can troll thru the posts and figure you back out. unless you change the way you type and the words you use every time too.
One thing I've noticed is that the majority of the spam calls I have received historically have had the same originating area code as my phone number. Perhaps this was number spoofing, or perhaps it was using local VoIP numbers to make spam calls. In either case, it was a great flag for "this call goes to voicemail" because I hadn't lived there in over ten years, I didn't grow up there, and anybody who needs to contact me without a "Hey this is _____" text/voicemail is already in my address book.
It also means that if I pick up calls from numbers originating in <current locale area codes>, it usually IS somebody I need to speak with. No hassle filter to help answer the right calls and ignore the spam.
I had someone call Friday night. I sent it to voice mail and they immediately hung up and called back. It happed again and I sent it to voice mail again. On the third call in under a minute I thought something must be wrong and maybe this was a friend of a friend in trouble. I answered and they said “Are you interested in selling your house at 1234….”
I hung up, mad at myself for falling for it, and at them for being so ballsy. Then they texted (it came through as an iMessage so I’m assuming it’s their real number) and they said “not sure what happened but we got cut off!”
Apple might be more incentivized to deal with spam using their communication rails more than a typical SMS provider. It might be worth at least marking this as spam in Messages.
>> My solution since 2002: don't answer the phone.
I have two children. Doesnt happen often, but I've received calls from my kids' school. Twice the kids got hurt on the playground and needed to be picked up. The call can from a random number from someone at the school, not the main number.
I have also received calls from pharmacies about order verification for much needed prescriptions. And received calls from doctors' offices about last minute re-scheduling.
Not answering voice calls seems like a solution that works 99% of the time and drastically fails 1%
I’ve disabled calls on iOS and it failed like twice in two years. Once it was a doctor appointment, and I’ve now learned to use their system to do online calls instead. The second time it was some insurance claim, which forced them to give up and send me an email after calling me a number of times.
I’d say at this point let the system fail if they don’t have email or whatsapp or something else they can use to reach you.
Send all unknown numbers (not in contact list) direct to voicemail...easy peasy. 99% spam calls don't leave voicemail and visual voicemail lets me delete and block quick. Very minimal intrusion into my device and time.
Couldn't imagine taking the steps in this post to try and block a number that's probably already been replaced with a new one by the time it takes for anything to be done.
