

Most recommended from 66 comments

heaterseakel

join:2011-02-20

Las Vegas, NV ARRIS SB8200

36 recommendations heaterseakel Member Telemarketers are destroying our country's telecommunications network Back in March, I sent a complaint to the FCC about this. The following is part of what I sent:



"Telemarketers are destroying our country's telecommunications network with their standard operating procedure of spoofing CallerID. 37% of all calls in my call history (both incoming and outgoing) were either spoofed spam or people thinking they were calling me back because my phone number showed up in their CallerID field. Much worse, is that 61% of all incoming calls were in that category. And, even worse are the abusive calls I get from people who mistakenly think they are getting calls from me without messages. It's now to the point that I don't even answer my phone unless I recognize the number. I let all other calls go to voicemail. If the person leaves a legitimate message, I call them back. Otherwise, I block their numbers on my phone." tmc8080

join:2004-04-24

Brooklyn, NY 18 recommendations tmc8080 Member landlines taken to cell When millions of customers are ditching landlines to CELL ONLY, you will see more robocalls to cellular numbers. The main issue is that there aren't enough blacklisting tools at customers' disposal avoid these callers so they can't even ring your phone. The technology was supposed to get better over the years, not worse. Even MVNOS of the big carriers could do MUCH better to block callers and/or texts you dont' want to see or hear. eco

Premium Member

join:2001-11-28

Wilmington, DE 1 edit 17 recommendations eco Premium Member Verizon vs T-Mobile I have a T-Mobile personal phone and a Verizon phone from work. On my T-Mobile personal phone I have their free scam blocker service turned on and I usually don’t get any scam calls each month. On my Verizon work phone I get at least 2 or 3 calls PER DAY. It’s out of control. Walter Dnes

join:2008-01-27

Thornhill, ON 15 recommendations Walter Dnes Member Replace "Caller ID" with "ANI"



If you have a 1-800 number, or are willing to pay extra, you can get ANI. Because ANI works on a totally different spec than CLID, you cannot block your calling number from ANI detection, even if caller ID blocking is activated. Standard CLID (Caller ID) "works" by having the sending exchange or PBX or software generate the info. If the sender can stick in any number they want, the potential for abuse is obvious. "ANI" (Automatic Number Identification) » en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au ··· fication is a feature of a telecommunications network for automatically determining the origination telephone number on toll calls for billing purposes. For billing, the telcos make damn sure you can't spoof the calling number.If you have a 1-800 number, or are willing to pay extra, you can get ANI. Because ANI works on a totally different spec than CLID, you cannot block your calling number from ANI detection, even if caller ID blocking is activated.

battleop

join:2005-09-28

00000 9 recommendations battleop Member This can be stopped but... There is no real incentive to stop it. You can easily track down where these calls enter the PSTN. The simple solution is to force carriers to do something about it. If that calls enter the PSTN from your network either put a stop to it or lose access to the PSTN.

mt999999

join:2016-06-16

East Liverpool, OH ·AT&T DSL

7 recommendations mt999999 Member Spam calls



My secret? I NEVER give anyone my cell phone unless I know them personally, such as CLOSE friends or family. Selling things on craigslist? You need my phone number? Even on job applications... That's what my home number is for. Anything that requires me to enter or provide my number, ESPECIALLY on-line, I NEVER give the cell. Not for Yahoo, Gmail, or ANYTHING.



It works well. Knock on wood, but I never get spam calls on my cell. Very, very rarely. Maybe one per month, at best. I've had the number for over 10 years.My secret? I NEVER give anyone my cell phone unless I know them personally, such as CLOSE friends or family. Selling things on craigslist? You need my phone number? Even on job applications... That's what my home number is for. Anything that requires me to enter or provide my number, ESPECIALLY on-line, I NEVER give the cell. Not for Yahoo, Gmail, or ANYTHING.It works well.

Anon4b8a5

@rr.com 6 recommendations Anon4b8a5 Anon Robocalls If you use a android phone most of them have a feature you can set to only allow calls from people on your contact list, as I recall the rest go to voicemail. Know that doesn't work for everyone. Could also port your number to google voice and it has extra features for blocking spam calls. Also has a feature where it will announce the caller if its not called you before and you get a option to take it or not with out talking to them. As I recall it asks them to record his/her name and that gets played back to you.



I have started messing around with my own pbx recently and it would be funny to setup a auto forward for numbers you have marked as spam to some other spammer so at least they will tie up that line some.



Reminds me of a youtube video I saw where this guy setup a robo spammer to keep calling this over seas scamming people pretending to be the IRS. CyberGuy

join:2006-08-21

Colbert, WA 6 recommendations CyberGuy Member I turned off the ringer Don't answer calls at all anymore; in fact, the phone is basically just an internet hotspot at this point. LostMile

Premium Member

join:2002-06-07

Coloma, MI 5 recommendations LostMile Premium Member When we catch a telemarketer... put their head in a guillotine. Lather rinse repeat. Problem solved. travelguy

join:1999-09-03

Bismarck, ND Asus RT-AC68

Ubiquiti NSM5

4 recommendations travelguy Member HiYa HiYa is extremely helpful, but the scammers get around it by using a random phone number in the same or nearby area code. They don't spin the number for every call, so HiYa catches some of them but a bunch are still getting through.



My top two are the "There's nothing wrong with your credit card account, but we need to talk to you" and the "There's a lot of changes in heath insurance, and we'd like to talk to you about your coverage."

Selenia

Gentoo Convert

Premium Member

join:2006-09-22

Fort Smith, AR 3 recommendations Selenia Premium Member It's been horrible on T-Mobile So bad that I have been thinking about dropping them after being with them for years. It's just come to a head that they seem to make no effort to deter these calls. They don't even make an effort to filter the obviously spoofed numbers. My understanding is that would be technically trivial to accomplish. The spoofed numbers have gotten so bad that the only way to filter these calls is to whitelist numbers. Blocklists no longer work. nitin00

join:2010-01-17

Stockton, CA 3 recommendations nitin00 Member AT&T call protect I know alot like to get on companies but the AT&T call protect app has worked pretty dang well for me. It blocks almost all spam calls automatically. I can even add numbers in there to block if I don't wanna get repeated calls.

emjayef

join:2007-11-25

Pleasant Hill, CA Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

TP-Link Archer C9

Obihai OBi200

2 recommendations emjayef Member Providers could make a difference if they wanted to I'm pretty sure there are a number of ways providers could reduce or eliminate this. End users can do nothing; blocking a caller ID does not help, because this is made up, sometimes on the fly. The callerID is usually some legitimate number, often chosen to be local for you. I think the main providers know the actual number, so they could have an option to block calls where the caller ID doesn't match the actual number. I can somewhat see why they might not want to automatically always show the true number, which would disallow caller ID blocking, but this could be a decent alternative. People should always have the option to block calls that have no caller ID. Bob61571

join:2008-08-08

Washington, IL 2 recommendations Bob61571 Member New Spoofing pattern for last few months that I have noticed----- Using your Area Code, Local Exchange(the first 3 #'s after your Area Code) + 4 digits...



I think that they spoof this way, so that people are more likely to pick up the call if it APPEARS to be local. Usually some recording of some energetic young woman... "Hello, How are you? This is ....". Usually trying to sell some travel or insurance thing.