Getting spammed constantly :(

[Kursah]

Do what I do. Troll them. It is more fun, and constructive (in a sense) than to get angry and try to block them. I don't ever expect federal or provider services to filter this crap correctly, apps, sign-up services, whatever. I've made it a game to where I look forward to the next call and am sad when I have to go days or weeks in between now.

Note: Trolling is not condoned on TPU forums, this statement does not stand by any official backing from TPU or its owners, this is my individual experience and opinion for spam call handling.

Its more enjoyable if you waste their time too. I usually put them on speakerphone, and pick at random how I'll respond. Car warranty extension? If they can warranty my, say... 07 Camry with 180k miles with the $69 package, I'm game, otherwise I'll have to go to the other guys. I'm not buying into this pay too much for a warranty I've never used crap, I want a cut-rate deal for my primo 13 year old car, and I won't pay a dime over what I'm telling you I'll pay. Sometimes they'll hang up, sometimes they'll argue, oftentimes they'll "forward" me to their "manager". HA.

I had one guy call me last week pretending he was my grandson (I'm not even old enough for grandkids yet lol, though one of my sons is nearing adulthood), he claimed to get in this accident that landed him in jail. He was using this one call to reach out for bail money and that his lawyer would call me back in a few minutes. I played along and said to have his lawyer call me sonny. LOL. The "lawyer" calls from the same number, same dude with a slightly different tone, states that he's calling on behalf of the "other" dude to seek bail assistance. I say okay, he asks if he can speak to my wife. I exclaim that "WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT?! She's been dead for five years now. Do you not have any decency?!", as I'm standing next to my wife in our kitchen trying not to laugh out loud. Silence for a moment, I say "HELLO?!", he says "I'm here", I continue, "Well then, explain yourself. Any half-assed lawyer would have known this information. Do I need to find you a job at your local grocer's?!"... click.

I had another guy call me trying to sell me DirecTV, I strung him along for a solid 25 minutes while I worked away. He had my parent's old address, so I used that, pretended to be easily confused about options and really nervous about being scammed. He reassured me over and over and over that he wasn't a scammer, didn't have time to scam folks, just trying to give good deals. For a spam caller, he was one of the better spoken ones, which made it more fun to string him along. After 25 minutes of this, I ended with "Before I go, I want to ask just one more question to ease my mind.", "Sure, go ahead" he replied. I said "What do you do for real work outside of scamming folks? I mean, you gotta have bills to pay too." Click.

Debt/refinancing...these are fun as well. I target the 6.9% interest rates, when they say "Oh sir, we can do better, we do 0.9%!" I choose to get excited, indifferent or angry and play it randomly from there. Sometimes I'll pretend to be old, or impatient.

Many times the really lazy or inexperienced ones hang up often and early. Though it is fun to ask them what they used to do for a day job. I even had one argue with me, saying the reason he scams folks is because its better money than working. I said yeah, but you'll never get enough to bail yourself outta jail for fraud, at least if you worked a real job you'd have something to say and show for yourself that helped society instead of ripping it off. That for some reason pissed him off something fierce.

I had a text scammer claim to be the VP of Facebook a couple months ago claiming that I'd won a raffle for one million dollars (queue Dr. Evil). I strung him along for about 30 texts over the course of two hours. He used a picture he took a picture of from a Google search with a shitty smartphone camera, still had the watermark on it from the media site it was stolen from. I forget who it was, but they had a completely shaved head. So I focused on that. The picture of this dude was a white guy. So after this dude stopped texting me, I said "What's the deal?", he went on about how I wasn't taking this seriously and he was tired of the games. I said, okay, if you're serious, then call me. HE DID! And it was a black dude down in Boise, I laughed and told him that made my day that he didn't even try to sound white! Is that why he was scamming instead of working an honest job? HAHA! He of course hung up. I called back, left a VM of my wife and I laughing. I troll texted a him few more times because he was lazy and didn't mask his cell number, then I later reported it to Boise authorities (not sure what good that actually did). That dude was super lazy and I mean if you're gonna play the game, at least be smart enough to mask your true number. LOL!

Me trolling scam callers has actually reduced my overall number of calls. I've pissed off as many as I can, and constantly finding different stories to come up with. If they call and ask for someone that's not me, I play along with a "Who's askin? Sure been a long time since I heard that name...". It is ironic how many of these folks have little tolerance for being trolled. They do it for $$$, I do it for laughs.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Following up on my comment in post #23 above, I got notification of this article in my inbox this morning:

FCC tells US telcos to implement caller ID authentication by June 30, 2021

I wish it was this coming June 30th, but better late than never. Of course it won't stop all spam calls. And no doubt there's a clause in there that will allow politicians to still hound us with robocalls. But at least the caller ID should show who's calling.

 

[R2DSF]

I don't have a smartphone. Just an ordinary cell phone. Anyone knows if there is a way to block this permanently?

Which phone? Manufacturer and Model. On some simple phones you can ban numbers by prefix via engineer mode.

 

[Vayra86]

Do what I do. Troll them. It is more fun, and constructive (in a sense) than to get angry and try to block them. I don't ever expect federal or provider services to filter this crap correctly, apps, sign-up services, whatever. I've made it a game to where I look forward to the next call and am sad when I have to go days or weeks in between now.

Note: Trolling is not condoned on TPU forums, this statement does not stand by any official backing from TPU or its owners, this is my individual experience and opinion for spam call handling.

Its more enjoyable if you waste their time too. I usually put them on speakerphone, and pick at random how I'll respond. Car warranty extension? If they can warranty my, say... 07 Camry with 180k miles with the $69 package, I'm game, otherwise I'll have to go to the other guys. I'm not buying into this pay too much for a warranty I've never used crap, I want a cut-rate deal for my primo 13 year old car, and I won't pay a dime over what I'm telling you I'll pay. Sometimes they'll hang up, sometimes they'll argue, oftentimes they'll "forward" me to their "manager". HA.

I had one guy call me last week pretending he was my grandson (I'm not even old enough for grandkids yet lol, though one of my sons is nearing adulthood), he claimed to get in this accident that landed him in jail. He was using this one call to reach out for bail money and that his lawyer would call me back in a few minutes. I played along and said to have his lawyer call me sonny. LOL. The "lawyer" calls from the same number, same dude with a slightly different tone, states that he's calling on behalf of the "other" dude to seek bail assistance. I say okay, he asks if he can speak to my wife. I exclaim that "WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT?! She's been dead for five years now. Do you not have any decency?!", as I'm standing next to my wife in our kitchen trying not to laugh out loud. Silence for a moment, I say "HELLO?!", he says "I'm here", I continue, "Well then, explain yourself. Any half-assed lawyer would have known this information. Do I need to find you a job at your local grocer's?!"... click.

I had another guy call me trying to sell me DirecTV, I strung him along for a solid 25 minutes while I worked away. He had my parent's old address, so I used that, pretended to be easily confused about options and really nervous about being scammed. He reassured me over and over and over that he wasn't a scammer, didn't have time to scam folks, just trying to give good deals. For a spam caller, he was one of the better spoken ones, which made it more fun to string him along. After 25 minutes of this, I ended with "Before I go, I want to ask just one more question to ease my mind.", "Sure, go ahead" he replied. I said "What do you do for real work outside of scamming folks? I mean, you gotta have bills to pay too." Click.

Debt/refinancing...these are fun as well. I target the 6.9% interest rates, when they say "Oh sir, we can do better, we do 0.9%!" I choose to get excited, indifferent or angry and play it randomly from there. Sometimes I'll pretend to be old, or impatient.

Many times the really lazy or inexperienced ones hang up often and early. Though it is fun to ask them what they used to do for a day job. I even had one argue with me, saying the reason he scams folks is because its better money than working. I said yeah, but you'll never get enough to bail yourself outta jail for fraud, at least if you worked a real job you'd have something to say and show for yourself that helped society instead of ripping it off. That for some reason pissed him off something fierce.

I had a text scammer claim to be the VP of Facebook a couple months ago claiming that I'd won a raffle for one million dollars (queue Dr. Evil). I strung him along for about 30 texts over the course of two hours. He used a picture he took a picture of from a Google search with a shitty smartphone camera, still had the watermark on it from the media site it was stolen from. I forget who it was, but they had a completely shaved head. So I focused on that. The picture of this dude was a white guy. So after this dude stopped texting me, I said "What's the deal?", he went on about how I wasn't taking this seriously and he was tired of the games. I said, okay, if you're serious, then call me. HE DID! And it was a black dude down in Boise, I laughed and told him that made my day that he didn't even try to sound white! Is that why he was scamming instead of working an honest job? HAHA! He of course hung up. I called back, left a VM of my wife and I laughing. I troll texted a him few more times because he was lazy and didn't mask his cell number, then I later reported it to Boise authorities (not sure what good that actually did). That dude was super lazy and I mean if you're gonna play the game, at least be smart enough to mask your true number. LOL!

Me trolling scam callers has actually reduced my overall number of calls. I've pissed off as many as I can, and constantly finding different stories to come up with. If they call and ask for someone that's not me, I play along with a "Who's askin? Sure been a long time since I heard that name...". It is ironic how many of these folks have little tolerance for being trolled. They do it for $$$, I do it for laughs.

Sounds awfully familiar, I've had great fun with this stuff some 10 odd years ago... Oh yes so many stories. The spam calling and telemarketing, too, seems to have really gone down a lot ever since. I barely ever get called nowadays. A big part of that is probably that we don't have a land line anymore, just mobile phone and copper for internet alone.