Posted on 12/25/2018 4:25:50 AM PST by sodpoodle
With phone spam on the rise, a plucky band is fighting back with practical jokes, air horns and inane conversations about spaghetti
When he gets a robocall, Robert B. Eckhardt doesn’t necessarily hang up. If he isn’t too busy, Dr. Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics at Pennsylvania State University, stays on the line and asks random questions, such as, “Do your parents know what you’re doing?”
If he can string the caller along for 10 minutes, Dr. Eckhardt considers it a minor victory in the war against telephone spam.
Most people get annoyed by calls from telemarketers or scam artists. Some try to get even. One tactic is to play dumb. Another is to ask callers to spell their names and drag out the process, trapping them in a futile conversation for as long as possible. (“Is that L as in Lima, Peru? Or L as in Lima, Ohio?”)
James Haefele, a management consultant in Oxford, Conn., subjects suspected scam callers to a blast from his air horn or puts his wisecracking teenagers on the line. When it comes to unwanted calls, he sees two choices: “I’m either going to be mad about this or have some fun with it.”
Despite Do Not Call lists, the shrieking of obscenities and other defenses, rogue calls have only been growing. YouMail Inc., a provider of voice mail and call-blocking services, estimates that robocalls in the U.S. increased to 5.1 billion in November from 2.8 billion in December 2017. That’s nearly 16 calls last month for every single person in the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I’ve done this on occasion especially with Dem political operators.
I just use my block phone number feature and because i don’t live my life through the phone i turn it off most of the time.
I’d love to read it but not going to subscribe to the wall street journal.
If I am in the right frame of mind (eg. being called during dinner), I will sometimes ask how I get rid of the blood stains in the carpet now that the body has been disposed of. Quite often they don’t hang up right away. More like stunned silence.
I use nomorobo to block calls. It works by stopping the calls after one ring - calls from unknown callers. And it does work. Sometimes the occasional robo call gets through but then you just text nomorobo with the caller ID and the phone number of the caller and they will block it the next time.
When they start telling me about their ED meds, I tell them how I love those, and how they work. In great detail.
The longest that’s gone on is about 20 seconds.
The numbers are spoofed so that many appear to come from my local area code so blocking them doesn't work. They rarely come from the same number twice.
Got a spam blocking app. That only catches about one in five numbers.
Finally I went to the trouble of Whitelisting my contact list. Here's how you do that.
1.Get a silent ring tone.
2.Set the silent ring tone as default.
3.Set no vibrate as default.
Now the hard part....
4.Go through your contact list and set each contact its own ring tone other than default.
There Whitelisted!
Problem....If someone from a business says that they will call when, for instance, a product comes in. You have to make sure that the number that they will call from is in your contact list otherwise you'll never get the call.
Second problem....when I'm in the car the car's bluetooth connection has its own ringtone so the spam comes through although without contact information so you'll know what it is.
That’s quite funny. Mr. Mabe is very convincing as the hard-boiled detective.
ATT has an app that catches many of the spam robocalls and shows a alert when the phone is ringing....my wife often answers the unknown caller calls with, “Police department, fraud division, how may I help you?”. She gets a kick at all the quick hangups...I sometimes engage such a caller in conversation and ask lots of questions just to frustrate them....I usually don’t bother picking p but there are times when I’m expecting a not-in-my-contacts call and have no choice....when they ask if I’m so-and-so, I respond with, “Who am I speaking with and what is the purpose of the call...”then hang up while they’re trying to figure out how to respond....not as satisfying as loading a AARP envelope with bulk materials to increase their postage charge but it’s something.
I have my iPhone Do Not Disturb settings set to manual. No ring tone, no vibrate.
I’ll still see the spam calls listed in my call history. I have the option to block them, but as you say, the spoofed calls will continue using other local numbers.
People/businesses I choose to hear from are set as favorites and allowed to ring through.
I’ve had incredible fun with telemarketing callers. I mean, really....
Best ever was the guy who imitated a homicide detective to a spam caller. Epic
Also a viable solution, though I wanted to actually use my favorites list for favorites rather than have my entire contact list stuffed in there.
thanks for posting this
I just clicked on the link at the bottom of the excerpt and it opened right up, no subscription required.
A deeply voiced, slow and moist, “What’re ya wearin’?” usually gets rid of ‘em.
Caller id and the “do not call” list are now completely useless. The callers display a fake number, not their real number. The fake number is often that of a known business. I have received calls showing the number of the SSA, ATT, my cell phone, numbers belonging to real humans in the vicinity with the same exchange as me.
It serves no purpose to block these. You’re blocking the real owner of the number.
I favor public execution of the violators.
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