Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

dahart · 7 years ago

I'm fairly convinced that the only way this gets fixed is if enough people complain loudly to the phone companies & cancel accounts. Verizon / AT&T / T-mobile / etc. absolutely have the power to fix this, and they're choosing instead to largely ignore it, and productize the solutions for anyone who cares enough - let the spammers pay to create the problem, and let the consumers pay for the remedy. Telcos win on both ends.

I registered on the US national do not call list a decade ago. I'm not sure how much it helped over the years, but in the last few years, the phone calls illegally ignoring that list are increasing like crazy. All the telemarketer strategies are changing too, to get around whatever blocking method you have. They're spoofing random local numbers now, so you can't use your phone's number blocking feature. They're hanging up and calling back later to avoid time wasting. They're offering fake do not call lists to confirm a human is listening. I think it's hopeless, my only strategy now is just decline any call not in my address book. If it's someone who needs me, they'll leave a voicemail.

Symmetry · 7 years ago

My understanding is that the regulation of phone services in the US is fairly prescriptive and it would be a violation of FTC rules for a phone company to just go ahead and cancel accounts without legal authorization. Or to proactively screen your calls and not deliver the ones the phone company thinks are spammy. Though presumably the phone company could also tell your phone "Hey, we think this is spam" and let you know before you decide to answer.

dredmorbius · 7 years ago

The telcos write the rules.

AT&T's lobbyists include Joan Marsh and Robert Quinn, and a few others:

Wayne Watts, Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel, James W. Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President—External and Legislative Affairs, Robert Quinn, Jr., Senior Vice President—Federal Regulatory, David Lawson, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Hank Hultquist, Vice President—Federal Regulatory, Michael Paradise, Vice President—Global IP Operations and Infrastructure Services, and Gary Phillips, General Attorney and Associate General Counsel, of AT&T; and Richard Rosen and Maureen Jeffreys, of Arnold & Porter LLP.

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/60001116224.pdf

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342942A1.p...

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1011263448484/Status%20ATT%20ex...

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521067059

dahart · 7 years ago

I was suggesting that consumers close their accounts, not that the phone company should close spammer accounts.

Also the telcos will not violate any rules by allowing consumers to opt into a service that blocks calls originating from companies reported as spammy by a large number of other consumers.

It is absolutely within their power to give consumers some control and choice about receiving spammy phone calls. The reason they are choosing not to give consumers this choice is because it would effectively eliminate their income from phone advertising, the public by and large does not want unsolicited phone calls.

bluGill · 7 years ago

How do we get their attention though? Right now they are lieing and saying there is nothing they can do about it, and have convinced congress that they cannot. (in fact it is easy, it just require that they filter the from numbers that companies are allowed to use - it would however cost them money to implement the filter for each company and they prefer profits)

dahart · 7 years ago

In theory the things that help are a critical mass of public opinion, and/or a critical mass of loss of sales, and/or a competitive advantage.

As an individual, getting critical mass is beyond most of our energy levels, but it helps to talk about it, with your friends and family, on HN, etc.

You could call your telco and complain about as many spam calls as possible. Their support time is expensive.

You could request better spam blocking services. I'm on Verizon and they offer blacklisting for a fee. This is completely ineffective now, so a total waste of money. Cancel your account and switch to another provider, cite the phone spam and their lackluster service as the reason.

Maybe things could get better if there was a new telco, or if one of them broke ranks, and offered great spam protection. Not holding my breath, the spammy business accounts are probably worth more money.

What sucks is it takes a lot of energy to fight this no matter what.

LyndsySimon · 7 years ago

> I think it's hopeless, my only strategy now is just decline any call not in my address book.

I've gotten about a half dozen calls this week where the spoofed caller ID shows that they are in my address book. One of them was ostensibly from my wife. I figure they've gotten ahold of my social graph, associated phone numbers with some of my friends, and are targeting their spoofing to me.

alex_duf · 7 years ago

>If it's someone who needs me, they'll leave a voicemail

Then the next step is for spammers to leave voicemails

greenyoda · 7 years ago

The next step has arrived already. I never used to get voicemails from phone spammers before, but now I'm getting voicemails in Chinese from what's apparently the "Chinese Embassy Scam":

https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/beware-of-the-chin...

I'm not Chinese, so I'm definitely not being personally targeted by the scam. But apparently, there are enough Chinese speakers in NYC to make randomly calling people and leaving voicemails in Chinese a viable form of crime. (I've also had the same cell number for 17 years, so I know it hasn't been recently owned by a Chinese person.)

ceejayoz · 7 years ago

iOS now transcribes voicemails (I suspect Android does the same), which makes it incredibly easy to go through them.

"Hi! This is Rachel from card[DELETE]"

delecti · 7 years ago

I get several voicemails a week from unrecognized numbers that are ~3-5 seconds of silence. I suspect it's the spammers' autodialers not recognizing that there's not an actual person on the line, and giving up once there's a few seconds of silence (post "leave your message at the beep" beep).

dahart · 7 years ago

Ugh, you're right. The political robo-calls have already started doing that to me, I keep getting calls from the Orrin Hatch campaign. If it starts happening with all of them, I'm going to resort to whitelist only. Auto-block all unknown numbers.

MrMember · 7 years ago

Christ, I hope not. I get enough spam calls that I ignore, I don't need them leaving voicemails too.

Deleted Comment

basch · 7 years ago

>All the telemarketer strategies are changing too, to get around whatever blocking method you have.

My phone is in do not disturb mode, if i expect a call (2fa) i turn it off temporarily. They havent got around it yet. I can whitelist saved contacts. Check missed calls with Hiya or equiv.

ajeet_dhaliwal · 7 years ago

I hate that we have to default to not answering the phone from unrecognized numbers and wait for a voice mail if it's legit.

That's what I do, expect if they leave a voice mail I almost know 100% it's a recruiter or a scammer because my family and friends don't live in the 1990s. Everyone else I want to be contacted by is either in my contacts or has organized a specific time to call me via email or some other means first.

spartas · 7 years ago

Answer the phone when they call and conference in the Jolly Roger telephone bot http://www.jollyrogertelco.com

The bot will waste the telemarketers time, which is the most expensive thing that these companies are paying for. Do this enough times and the calls drop off rapidly.

dahart · 7 years ago

There's no way I'd pay money for that. I've tried wasting telemarketer calls for years under the theory that it costs them. It's not working anymore, their strategy has changed. They are being trained to detect and hangup, and call back again and again later.

Even the ones that have options to hit '2' and add yourself to the do not call list are not only not adding you to any do not call list, they are confirming there's a human listening and increasing the call frequency. I just had that call 5 minutes ago, after attempting to opt-in to their do not call list twice this week.

OnMyPhone · 7 years ago

I've noticed this too.

I used to waste their time when I could, but now I just have to let it go to voicemail.

The best call I had was when they called at 9:30pm... saying I won a trip, and I just needed to give them my cc so they can verify I was 18+.

I talked to them like I was interested, and when they asked for my cc I told them i had to go find it quick.

I put the phone down and watched an episode of South Park and forgot they were on the line yet.

I get back and pick up the phone and tell them I just found the card. I start reading the information off of it, but using the wrong name, and numbers, etc.

He was so excited about it that he kept telling me about all the fun I was going to have. Then he got a sad tone and said the card was rejected. I acted surprised and asked him to read back to me what he had since I had no idea what I gave him.

It got rejected another time, so he suggests we call the number on the back to do a three way call with my cc company to figure out what is going on.

I give him an 800 number that my cousin and I found by accident when we were like 12. I read him a phone sex number. He started to dial it and all of a sudden I heard a recording of some lady moaning. He immediately hung up and never called again.

heywire · 7 years ago

Send 'em to Lenny :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/

frikk · 7 years ago

I just signed up. Thank you. I don't even care if it works. I get up to 6/day, and if I can turn even just one of those into a bit of fun, it'll all be worth it.

I've become irrationally irritable because of these calls. I have started subconsciously turning off my ringer, causing me to miss actual important calls. Jolly Roger may be my saving grace.

spartas · 7 years ago

I have varying degrees of success with it. I do have a few recordings of calls (JR will email you an audio recording of the call after you hang up) that are quite hilarious.

ghostbrainalpha · 7 years ago

I don't understand how that could be possible.

I'm assuming the companies running these illegal calling scam operations, don't share a DO NOT CALL list.

I could see this working against each company individually. So if its only one bad actor that has your phone number, that would work.

suninwinter · 7 years ago

If you’re on T-Mobile, dial (not text) #662#. It will turn on scam block [1] which stops all calls that T-Mobile identifies as scams from making it to your phone or voicemail.

[1] https://explore.t-mobile.com/callprotection

timr · 7 years ago

I find that 99% of spam calls (at least for now) can be eliminated by simply not answering any numbers that match the first six digits of my own telephone number.

I don't know why telemarketers decided this would be a good strategy to increase conversions, but it certainly makes things easier for me.

lainga · 7 years ago

Because it's the 1950s, and it must be someone calling from the local exchange, probably the butcher's down the street at KLondike-0130...

beamatronic · 7 years ago

For the same reason spam contains misspelled words and grammatical errors. If this turns you away, you aren’t the target audience.

timr · 7 years ago

I suspect that argument will win the day for about 15 microseconds, before everyone adapts and they're on to the next idiotic tactic.

ja27 · 7 years ago

That's my biggest source of callspam right now. So close to writing an iOS call blocker that just blocks those except a whitelist (though I think they automatically whitelist contacts with that API).

dethswatch · 7 years ago

WinCE (lol) had a feature that would let you change the ringer for unknown numbers.

I could tell instantly, without picking up the phone, if I knew that person.

Wish my current phone had that.

blhack · 7 years ago

At my old office, we bought phone numbers in blocks, so there was a good chance that if the first six digits matched, it was somebody from the office calling.

baochan · 7 years ago

I basically protect my phone number like I would my social security number. I was getting 5+ spam calls a day. Ended up changing provider and phone number to get away from them. I haven't added my new number to the Do Not Call list (none of these calls were legitimate businesses; just scammers with spoofed caller IDs) and have resisted giving my new number to anyone. Pretty much just my bank and a few friends have my real number, everywhere else (where they need a phone number associated to an account or for a retail store bonus card) I just use my old number. I think of the Do Not Call list as a public list of phone numbers guaranteed to be valid - not worth the risk. I think maybe adding it to my resume on job sites got the number out there as well.

bluGill · 7 years ago

Does this actually do anything? A computer that can dial all phone numbers in the US is not hard anymore. (the computer will probably get all numbers in North America, but what do scammers care?)

baochan · 7 years ago

In the last year I've only gotten 2 spam phone calls. So either Google Fi is doing a better job at blocking them than Verizon was, or the scammers that targeted me stick to known numbers. Either way I'm not taking my chances. It was seriously frustrating being on their victim list.

greggarious · 7 years ago

Airplane mode when not expecting a call.

Many of these services will only call "hot" numbers - numbers that pick up/give some interaction. Hitting "decline call" actually gives them an indication the line is hot, since the call went to VM earlier than if it had timed out, and will lead to more calls.

So I let the calls ring until the other side ends the call.

Having the spam call ringing is annoying though, so I've taken to leaving my phone in airplane mode if I'm not expecting a call.

(Most people communicate via email or Signal with me anyways)

In my experience if you leave your phone in airplane mode when not expecting calls for a week or so, it'll drastically cut down on the robocalls.

cimmanom · 7 years ago

On iOS, at least, you can silence a call without sending it to vmail by hitting the power button once. I assume there's something analogous on android.

greggarious · 7 years ago

Thanks for the tip!

sgdread · 7 years ago

Here's what you do to significantly reduce telemarketers calls:

1) Go to https://www.donotcall.gov/ and register in the National Do Not Call Registry

2) Wait 31 day (it takes some time to propagate this information to callers)

3) Start reporting unwanted calls via link above

I have not received a single telemarketer call over a year since I started doing that.

FTC is also very good at dealing with collection agency calls if you are not the person they are trying to reach. I received personal apologies from ERC after filing complaint through FTC website.

cimmanom · 7 years ago

There are some telemarketers who use the DNC registry as a source of lists of numbers to call. In particular, overseas call centers that are not subject to regulation. You're more likely to get scam calls this way.