Number of Robocalls Placed in the US Surged By 50 Percent in the First Half of This Year (nbcnews.com) 147
An anonymous reader has shared an NBC report, which explores the state of robocalls in the United States. The report, which shares several anecdotes, also cites data from YouMail, a company that provides voicemail and call-blocking services, according to which the number of robocalls placed nationwide increased by 50 percent from February to July this year. From the report: Robo-dialed and unwanted telemarketing calls were the top consumer complaint to the Federal Communications Commission last year, and they are again this year. This puts those complaints ahead of billing disputes, service availability and program indecency.
Not all robocalls are bad. Some, like appointment reminders and flight updates, are usually welcome. But robocall scams, such as the wave of calls that targeted Chinese communities this spring, can be harmful. According to news reports, more than 30 consumers in New York City were tricked out of an estimated $3 million by callers pretending to be from the Chinese consulate and demanding money to settle a criminal matter.
According to YouMail, scams made up about 40 percent of the 4.4 billion robocalls placed to Americans in September. Not all area codes are equal: Phone owners with a 404 area code (Atlanta) on average received 68 robocalls in September. That's much higher than the next-worst area code, 202 in Washington, D.C., which got an average of 49 robocalls the same month.
Not all robocalls are bad. Some, like appointment reminders and flight updates, are usually welcome. But robocall scams, such as the wave of calls that targeted Chinese communities this spring, can be harmful. According to news reports, more than 30 consumers in New York City were tricked out of an estimated $3 million by callers pretending to be from the Chinese consulate and demanding money to settle a criminal matter.
According to YouMail, scams made up about 40 percent of the 4.4 billion robocalls placed to Americans in September. Not all area codes are equal: Phone owners with a 404 area code (Atlanta) on average received 68 robocalls in September. That's much higher than the next-worst area code, 202 in Washington, D.C., which got an average of 49 robocalls the same month.
Health Insurance (Score:3, Funny)
I sometimes answer these calls trying to keep them on the phone as long as possible. Yesterday I answered a call offering me wonderful health insurance options.
I pressed 1 to say I was interested. I answered the question of my zip code of a bogus one in my area. The caller verified the zip code was in NY and stated "You should know that you can't purchase health insurance over the phone in NY". I didn't know that as I have insurance through my employer.
I responded with "Why did you spam call a NY number then?" The helpful agent called me a name and hung up.
former telephone salesman here (Score:2)
many many decades ago I was a telephone solicitor. The worst thing you can do for these people is try to keep them on the line. Don't think about hurting the poor slob. If you make sales less lucrative the companies will have to pay these people more per sale. They will earn the same in the end but the employers will be hurt by using a spam model.
Re: former telephone salesman here (Score:2)
Wow. Some deep irony here. YOU are an asshole.
So it;s not just me. well that's good to know (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even answer my land line anymore. it's just for calling out. It's always a robocall coming in.
Now my cell phone gets 5 a day. Since I do bussiness on my phone I sort of have to answer numbers I don't know. I loath this invasion because it's so disruptive.
What I want is an answering service that
1. asks the caller to press a specific digit if they are human and know me.
2. A single button on my iphone that reports the caller to the Feds or anyplace that could class-action these mofo.
I don't want to have to cobble that together. I want it built into the android or iphone as a universal feature. If it was universal we stand a chance of making a dent in their bussiness model.
I don't want a third part app (Score:2)
I should add that I don't want those features from a third party because I'm not interested in sharing my calling receiving habits with anyone other than my telephone provider. THus I want the phone to handle the intercept and reporting itself not route my calls to nomorobo or someone who is making money off knowing who I take calls from. Yes verizin probably also monetizes me but they also charge me for the phone too so I think they are less inclined to burn me since selling me out egregiously is not th
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Re:So it;s not just me. well that's good to know (Score:4, Insightful)
How would you report the caller? The number is spoofed.
You collect 5000 examples of this spoofing, then you sue Verizon for allowing spoofing.
Straight To Voice Mail (Score:3)
I use an app on my android to route all numbers not in my contacts list to voice mail.
My voice mail is a 90 second long screed about all the circumstances under which I will not return a call. It seems to defeat most automated calls since I rarely get a message.
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What I want are three things:
1: US telcos to step in and stop CID/ANI spoofing. Every other country in the world, if you get a phone number, it is authentic. You can't just fake numbers from abywhere. This is a trivial step for them, but they just won't bother since it doesn't bring them cash. Stop the spoofing, so robocallers can't keep faking their numbers everywhere they go.
2: Ability to copy known good contact phone numbers from my phone's contacts to the telco. Any numbers not on that list are g
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1. I don't think you know much about telcos ... since my still-limited knowledge tells me that preventing 'spoofing' is not nearly as easy as you claim. Also, is it spoofing if my company assigns an arbitrary number to my outbound call? What if it's an arbitrary number from within our DID pool? Etc. etc. etc. There are MANY legitimate uses for many different aspects of this. It's just annoying when people mis-use it.
2. Plenty of call filtering services. Pretty sure you could find one on google in less
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No one needs to spoof.
Just don't deliver a number. Caller ID gets an "UNKNOWN" tag and the customer can decide if it want's to answer "UNKNOWN" or not. Phone company must, for free, allow customers to block "UNKNOWN".
Businesses will probably accept "UNKNOWN" most other people likely not.
The place to make this happen is congress, so the present or next FCC commissioner can't kill it.
The phone companies make too much money from spammers. It will never happen.
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Doesn't google voice have an option for something like this?
Or ... i'm 99% sure they did at one point. It had an option which required callers to announce themselves then would ring you with 'XYZ is calling, do you want to accept'. If they didn't answer the prompt though I don't think it would pass the call to you at all.
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Yes. It works well.
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Re:Health Insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
I sometimes answer these calls trying to keep them on the phone as long as possible.
You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of robocalls. It's a recorded message. There is no one there to "keep on the phone as long as possible".
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Do you count an incoming call that has a recorded message that ends with "press 1 on the keypad to find out more information (i.e. get connected to a telemarketer) or press 2 to be added to our do not call list) to be a robocall?
That is the type of call I was referring to. When I do choose to answer my cell phone from an unknown number, I've been getting one of the following:
1. Offers for a discounted vacation package from Marriott.
2. Offers for extended car warranty
3. Offers for health insurance.
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AFAIK, I've never received a call like that, but I always hang up and block the number as soon as it becomes apparent that it''s a recording, so who knows?
I know that some people get a kick out of playing string-along games with telemarketers; seems like a pointless waste of time to me.
Plausible deniability (Score:3)
Europe has lots of laws that require businesses to police their vendors. In America folks say the laws are unfair and they don't pass. This is the result.
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Also, the companies just go out of business one day, pop up the next. The ABC logo gets chucked by the XYZ logo after the bankruptcy filing, while all employees and assets are owned by holding companies. No judge will risk their bench seat and pierce the corporate veil, so this type of racket is easy to do and maintain without consequence other than bankrupcy filings and new articles of incorporation.
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I got one of those last week. The guy asked why I was trying to get health insurance (after they called me, smh) and I said "Because I'm really sick". He hung up.
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It's a bad idea to talk to these people at all. A new trick is to ask you if you are interested. When you say "yes" they record it. Then they sign up up and charge you a large amount.
The merely slimey ones use your "yes" integrated into a fake conversation to eventually take you to courts for breaking a contract, and get the court to make you pay.
The outright criminal ones already have your account information before they call you and yank the money right then, using the recorded "yes" as a get out of jail
Chinese Robocalls (Score:2)
That explains those calls I was getting to my Google Voice number. I was trying to record them so my friend could translate but could never get my record app fired up in time.
At least Stacy with travel rewards speaks English. I just keep pressing zero until she goes away or transfers me to a real person that I anoy with my interest.
Is someone using bots to train their AI? (Score:4, Interesting)
Or are the scammers just trying to get our voiceprint to bypass the new "your voice patterns are stored to secure your account details" BS that credit card companies are now rolling out?
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That's what I do. I answer in my gringo Spanish with a fake Mexican accent. Sometimes the recordings don't even play.
However, I'd be better to simply know not to answer, and even better to not be interrupted in meetings or while I'm having quality time with the fam.
AI desperately seeking your data...
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Wish I had mod points for this. I'm a paranoid fuck and I didn't even think to think that way about it. You're a fucking genius. It's probably a good thing you never tried meth.
Yes it did (Score:2, Interesting)
I am getting multiple robocalls a day though, thank goodness for spam call blocker apps that keep almost all of them from reaching me... starting to think about a complete whitelist approach, as terrible as whitelists are it may be the only way to weather the storm.
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spam call blocker apps
How do those work? Do they actually keep your phone from ringing? Can you recommend one?
Robocalls to me are exemplary of the problem with regulation. I'll take big-government politicians seriously on the day that can actually stop robocalls (including their own), just like I'll take small-government politicians seriously on the day one of them eliminates the TSA. Until then I assume they only differ on who gets the bribe money.
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How do those work? Do they actually keep your phone from ringing? Can you recommend one?
They two that I use are Hiya and Nomorobo.
The way they work (on an iPhone) is you go into the phone settings, and can enable access to call data for specific apps - then after that the applications can block the calls.
There are a number of options for Hiya, where you can either have it block calls outright (no ringing), or warn you about them by changing caller ID to say "Scam Likely".
Both of them have a subscription fee
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Robocalls to me are exemplary of the problem with regulation. I'll take big-government politicians seriously on the day that can actually stop robocalls (including their own), just like I'll take small-government politicians seriously on the day one of them eliminates the TSA. Until then I assume they only differ on who gets the bribe money.
I doubt this is even about big vs small government, if you wanted to you could just follow the money and find the crooks, or at least block it upstream. The problem in the US is that you got two pro-business parties with differently fringed colors and zero pro-consumer parties (with any power, at least). Here in Norway I got a total of zero robot calls in the last year. We had a round of "Microsoft" scammers earlier calling from England (+44) but they all but disappeared. I think our telecoms get enough spa
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The problem in the US is that you got two pro-business parties with differently fringed colors and zero pro-consumer parties (with any power, at least).
That's it, all right. It's a bit more subtle (and worse) in that they're pro-huge-business. I'd be all for a "pro-business" party, if it were "pro-small company", but there's none of that.
Both US parties are coalitions, of course, and this is one of the seams where the coalitions are breaking apart - voters are willing to put up with anyone, even Trump or Bernie, to attempt to avoid the established groups. Both sides have voters very upset with this blatant pro-huge-company bias.
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On Android you can have any phone call not in your contacts list go directly to voice mail. It can be set to vibrate anyway, if you want to actually know when you get one of these calls.
I've found that legitimate calls: doctor's office, kid's school, old friend from collage, whose number you no long have; will leave a message and you can get back to them.
Robocallers drop the call as soon as it get transferred.
Best feature ever.
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And you're not in my contact list, so leave a message.
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I'd be reluctant to go that rout if I were you. It's not uncommon for various doctors from my health care plan (VA) to call me on their own cell phones rather than use the VA's lines simply because it's easier for them and you're going to want those calls to get through.
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Yep it's stuff like that which makes me very reluctant to go full whitelist. So far its not really bad enough to shut down all calls, if robocalling continues to get worse I may have to go that way though.
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Nothing -- that's the problem.
Worse is when the call "appears" to be coming from your phone number. Really? How am I supposed to block that? And aren't the telcos flagging the spammers doing this? Oh wait, because they don't care about spam as long as they get paid. /sarcasm
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Callcentric has incoming call filtering capabilities that work quite well (if you enable them). When I check the logs I see numerous calls that were sent to voicemail (my preference; other actions are available) and usually, though not always, those callers don't leave any voicemail. Non-spam non-scam calls get routed to my cell phone.
I went though the prompts on one .. (Score:2)
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Careful with going through those prompts, you could only be confirming a valid number [consumerreports.org], and get even more calls.
I've also heard you might trigger a call to a 'premium' pay to call [ctvnews.ca] if you press buttons or try to call back and you get a huge hit on your bill (think a 976 number for instance).
Good luck with that. Many of these calls have been shown to originate from the exact same call centre as legit companies outsour
Sanction India (Score:1)
Most of these are from India. The Indian govt does nothing to crack down on these scams. Sanction India as a country, watch it get cleaned up overnight. Heavy handed but the govt doesn't seem to care because they are in on it.
I gave up (Score:5, Informative)
Robocalls, telemarketers, et al are the reason I just quit answering my phone.
Unless the number shows up as a known number from my contacts, I just let it go to voicemail.
I don't even bother to try anymore.
We really need a whitelist app that functions like an ACL. If the number isn't on the list, it goes
directly to voicemail without ringing.
Question is: Will the phone makers even allow such an app to exist ?
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Call Blocker by Vlad Lee blocks all calls not on your contact list. Of course, this means they have access to your contact list.
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Of course, this means they have access to your contact list.
This would be fine if Android allowed us to outright block "any" internet access.
Most gurus fail to notice that the decoy option promising "blocking" of "full internet access" permissions doesn't mean what Google carefully worded it like as misdirection.
You'd think that with all the touting of app privilege blocking for location, contact list, sensor data and [external SD] storage we'd get that extra tickmark to block "any and all" net / radio / wifi connections as a logical extension of the same spirit of
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Here is how you "deal with it"
Set your default ringtone to "silence"
Create a "known contacts" group with what ever ringtone you want to use.
Assign all your contacts to the "known contacts" group you just created.
I know we shouldn't have to do this and yes it does require upkeep. Is it better than the alternative, well, that's up to you to decide.
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In doing a bit of research, it appears there are essentially three approaches:
(1) on an iphone with ios 11 or 12, it supports a variety of apps which integrate with the phone app to filter obvious robocalls
(2) on android phones, there are a bunch more opt
Surprising (Score:2)
The surge was only 50%?
Don't know if it helps, but ... (Score:2)
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I report repeat offenders, or any of them that just piss me off. All of our numbers have been registered since DNC list first came out. As for Cox (here in VA), they haven't been of any help with my landline, even though I pay them an additional fee to block unwanted calls. I'm going to look into some of the tools mentioned here.
All robocalls are bad (Score:2)
Not all robocalls are bad. Some, like appointment reminders and flight updates, are usually welcome
If you want to send me an appointment reminder or flight update, just send an SMS.
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As someone who runs a legal dialer for an acutal purpose (debt recovery, not tele-sales). We looked into utilizing SMS as a reminder system for payment arrangements. You would be amazed the cost associated with it even on a mass scale. Phone calls are just infinitely cheaper.
I set up an alert system for a former employer Twillio has a straightforward API, and charges $0.0075 per short code SMS message. If you're sending hundreds of thousands of messages, your aggregate bill may be expensive, but it's still less than a penny per reminder.
Against my better judgment... (Score:4, Interesting)
Against my better judgment, and for the first time in months, I actually answered a call from an unknown number a few days ago. The call was coming in on my wife's phone, which I was holding for her at the time as I waited for her to finish up with whatever it was that was indisposing her. She's been getting multiple robocalls every day, so I was expecting more of the same. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I answered, since I was absolutely convinced it was a robocall. Maybe I was just bored.
Pausing the show I was watching on my tablet, I tentatively raised the phone and said, "Hello", intentionally withholding my name or any other identifying information that could be sold for profit or otherwise used by someone unscrupulous.
"Hello, is this Mr. [my last name]?", came the reply from a real human being speaking in a perfect American accent. Talk about odd and unexpected, especially so since they were asking for me specifically, but they were calling my wife's phone.
"Yes, this is he."
"Oh, good. We've been trying to reach you on your phone for the last 10 minutes, but the call hasn't gone through. This is the nurse's station at the hospital. Your wife is out of surgery and awake. You can bring your things from the waiting area and come back to see her in room Blue-3 now."
Right. I was supposed to be expecting a call from an unknown number...
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My phone wasn’t ringing. The call really just wasn’t going through for some reason. A voice mail from them came through about 10 minutes later on my phone. And yeah, they were basically calling from down the hall and around a corner.
Sorry to Bother You. (Score:2)
You should really watch the movie "Sorry to Bother You". It's a dystopian telemarketer movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5... [imdb.com]
It's gotten out of control... (Score:1)
How to defeat them. (Score:2)
Robocalls are annoying but they rely on the fact that most people will hang up or ignore the call. The "take me off you list" option just gets you on another persons list, so I've discovered the best way (sans legislation) is to answer the call and press '1' immediately then '2' and put your phone back in your pocket. This will get you connected to a call center and waste about five seconds of their time before they hang up. It requires almost no effort to do this and imposes a slight penalty. If more p
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"Simply ignoring robocalls wont fix the issue."
I ignore all calls, if it is important they can leave a message, otherwise they can fuck off.
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More and more calls nowadays are being handled by basic AI systems which use human-sounding auto-attendants to walk you through a Q&A and only hand you off to a human to close the deal. Within a few years, the entire call, from "hello" to sale/hangup will be handled by computer. Just like email spam, technology has reduced the human cost required to initiate the transaction to nearly zero.
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At that point, it would be interesting to see a company fielding an AI app which would dick with the AI app calling...shades of the Electric Monk...for those of you who recall that gem.
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It's Lenny: https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny [reddit.com]
yeah (Score:1, Informative)
Death of voice calling - just wait for text... (Score:2)
The vehement increase in these this has essentially destroyed the value of voice calls. I just keep my phone's ring set to "off" at all times, because of the 8 phone calls I got yesterday, 0 were legitimate. But at least I can rely on my text messages being safe. But once the scammers realize nobody answers their phones any longer, you can be sure robotext messages will start arriving. I might as well turn off my phone at that point.
What amazes me is that anybody still does this. Sure, I can imagine a
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I guess I live in a cocoon. My landline almost always is shut off except early on weekend mornings when my friends know they can call. I have a feature phone in my brief case but I never turn it on except to check that it works once a month. One time, it vibrated and beeped at me. Puzzled, I discerned it wanted me to listen to a voice message...or text message...well, one of those. So I hit the Lay-It-On-Me button (I forget what I hit) and it wanted my passcode. Hmmm...I have a passcode? At this point, I re
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It's like email span. Obviously someone is actually giving the Nigerian Prince their bank account number or the spammers wouldn't keep sending out the email
Obviously someone is actually buying the stuff the robocalls are selling or their customers wouldn't keep paying them.
What the HELL? HOW IS IT ONLY 68? (Score:2, Insightful)
68 is barely over 2 calls a day. I get ONLY half a dozen A DAY if I'm lucky! A dozen or more A DAY is commonplace! It's reached the point where I'm blacklisting numbers whenever they are reused. I have to unplug my phone when I want to sleep!
I gotta say, the ones that leave voicemails, filling up my mailbox, are the worst! And I pay per minute on my cell plan to clean them out.
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I gotta say, the ones that leave voicemails, filling up my mailbox, are the worst!
Can't you just let it fill up and leave it at that? I have yet to see a human listen to, or intentionally record, a voicemail.
For some reason phone companies don't let you disable voicemail or make it hard to do so, but since you (at least here) don't pay for storage, you can just ignore it.
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I have yet to see a human listen to, or intentionally record, a voicemail.
Then you're not paying attention. I get and leave VM frequently. I'm often on conference calls, and can't drop to pick up an incoming call from my disabled mom or mother-in-law, or doctors office, or one of the ~50 people I supervise. I have to clear out my old VM about once a month just to keep it available.
These spoofed # scam calls are... (Score:1)
These spoofed # scam calls are devaluing the telephone.
I know a good amount of people, myself included, that simply don't answer their personal phone anymore because of these calls.
For every 1 call that is a friend, expected or genuinely good to receive, I get 9 that are spam. My phone rings all day with spoofed numbers. One of these scammers robo calls is now leaving me voice mails too which means I can no longer ignore them, as I have to listen and then delete them or my vm box will get full.
I am seriou
Created filters using MacroDroid (Score:2)
1. if a number I'm being called from is not in my contacts it changes the ringer to silent and disables vibration.
2. after a missed call it changes the ringer back and turns on vibration
I wish this was part of Android itself but this will work for now
What I don't get (Score:2)
Who TF still answers unknown or blocked phone-numbers nowadays?
(I mean beside actors and screenwriters)
Your kids us Whatsapp or messenger, your friends too ...
Are people afraid to miss a call from the famous Nigerian Prince?
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I own a small business and sometimes get calls from customers.
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"I own a small business and sometimes get calls from customers."
OK another actor and screenwriter case I guess.
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"Disclaimer: I live in Belgium, Europe where cold calling with robocalls is very much restricted and calls will not be free for the caller, especially not to cell phones (although they can be cheap in volume)"
I'm from Luxembourg myself, I also get rarely such calls, but I never answer them anyway.
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Who TF still answers unknown or blocked phone-numbers nowadays?
Anyone who has parents that they're caring for in a nursing home, or hospital does. I get calls all the time from people I don't know, about various issues with my mom. And while you probably don't give a damn, the vast majority of people over 50 aren't using Whatsapp or messenger. Now, GTFO my lawn.
SMS Spam (Score:2)
I'd like to log that 2018 is the first year I started receiving spam SMS. Not a lot, but a few. I'd also like to report, I have stopped telemarketers from calling me.
My secret? Abusive behavior. Lots of swearing and belittling the human on the other end of the phone, encouraging them to question their life's choices. They stopped calling.
And no, no sympathy for telemarketers. You sign up for that job and call me, I will run you into the ground.
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Sorry, I'm gonna call BS. Your internet toughguy approach isn't going to stop any telemarketer.
StraightTalk has the program CallDetector (Score:2)
One of the better call blockers, free of charge to it's users.
http://dsweb.straighttalk.com/... [straighttalk.com]
Ignore (Score:2)
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It's not like this is a new thing.
My mother in law way back in the 1990's had an answering machine. You want to talk to her? Leave a message. Once she heard your voice she might pick up. Or she'd call you back.
My policy is the same. If you're in my contact list you'll get through. Else you go straight to voicemail. If you're a real person and don't want to leave a message you must not really want to talk to me. If you leave a BS message that makes it sound like you're a sales person and I don't know you, go
ET Phone Home (Score:2)
Scammers can DIAF (Score:2)
Scammers can go die in a fire.
My phone numbers are on the do not call list. I get robocalls all the time; when I pick up these calls I tell them I'm on the do not call list so I know they're low life scammers (to which rather than disconnecting they start cussing me out, proving my accusation to be true) and invite them to consume copious amounts of strychnine, because suicide is far more honorable than being a fucking scammer and they'll be doing humanity a favor. Alternatively I'll play along and then aft