Yes, It's Bad. Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging. [telecom]

Yes, It's Bad. Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging.

The volume of automated phone calls has skyrocketed this year over last, according to a service that tracks them, and complaints have also risen sharply.

Those pesky robocalls - at best annoying disturbances and at worst costly financial scams - are getting worse.

In an age when cellphones have become extensions of our bodies, robocallers now follow people wherever they go, disrupting business meetings, church services and bedtime stories with their children.

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Reply to
Monty Solomon
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Per Monty Solomon:

Does anybody know if some of the perpetrators are spoofing CallerID on a call-by-call basis?

Last several months I have been getting more and more calls where the CallerID is on the same exchange as my cell phone.

If so, it seems like a workable way to defeat NoMoRobo and other crowd-sourced solutions.

Reply to
Pete Cresswell

In article you write:

Yes definitely.

Like that. These days if a call on my mobile isn't from someone in my phone book, I don't bother to answer because it's all junx.

***** Moderator's Note *****

No! NO!! PLEASE DON'T DO THAT!!!

Sigh. (Takes deep breath, considers changing above to lower case, decides against.)

When you get a marketing call, *please* do what I do: Take One For The Team! *You* have already been bothered. *You* have already had your quiet enjoyment of your day stolen. Fight Back!

There are now two layers of screening between you and the actual salesmen whose time is valuable:

  1. An auto-attendant that tries to get you to punch a digit to be "removed," although all the advice I've read says that it's just a ploy to get you to confirm that your number is valid.

  1. A voice-from-India that asks you screening questions designed to separate the smart from the gullible. If you miss a question, they hang up.

IMNSHO, you should do anything it takes to get to the closer and waste as much of his/her time as possible. Their minions have lied to you already, and treated you like a fool - it's only fair to return the favor. Trust me on this: they LOVE folks who don't answer, because that means that they are statistically that much closer to finding a mark.

There are websites which will generate a "valid" credit card number that will pass the checksum test. When they say they want to "qualify" you, give them one of those numbers. When they say the charge didn't go through, ask them what the hell they're doing trying to charge the card when they say they were going to "validate" you. Just remember NEVER to say "Yes," since I've read reports of some con artists excerpting that one word and pasting it into a "conversation" where you "gave consent" to be charged. Instead of "yes," reply "tell me more, " or "how much does it cost, again?" Etc., Etc.

The object is simple: waste as much of the saledroid's time as possible. If even a small percentage of victims fight back, the whole industry will be bankrupt inside a year. You can smile and know that

*you* helped to make it happen!

Or, if that seems too far out there for your taste (it's OK: going 15 rounds with an experienced boiler-room operator isn't for everyone), you can pick up a pen and paper (it has GOT to be a handwritten note! Trust me on this!), and write your Congressman and demand that (s)he get of his/her butt and pass legislation against caller-id spoofing that has real teeth in it.

Either way, you'll make a difference. Take One For The Team!

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
John Levine

Almost certainly, yes. I've noticed this pattern for roughly a year. In particular, there's a "This is the Marriott Hotel, you've been selected for a special deal" scammer who uses this a lot.

Certainly seems intended to help get by any "accept local calls but reject calls from out-of-state" phonespam blockers.

Reply to
Dave Platt

I've noticed the same thing. These days I mostly get robocalls on my cellphone. Most are in the same exchange, and many of the others are in the same area code.

Reply to
Barry Margolin

Would anyone know accurately what the current laws are regarding all unsolicited phone calls?

It was my understanding that unsolicited calls of _any_ type were prohibited to cell phones and nursing homes because of the cost and disruption they cause. There may have been other protected recipients as well. I know a number of people who have pay-as-you-go cell phones and such calls cost them money*.

It was also my understanding that commercial sellers were prohibited from using the do-not-call list for cold calls. However, it seems that law now seems to be disregarded.

Sadly, the do-not-call law exempted political calls, survey calls, and non-profit calls. Personally, I get tons of those on my landline. Indeed, now that it is election season, I get several polling and candidate calls every day. A nuisance.

Personally, I usually have my cellphone off, but when it is on, I am getting unsolicited calls. One had an obviously spoofed area code "023".

  • Some people suggest merely not answering an incoming call if the number is not known. But that is a bad solution because:
1) As we know, caller-ID is widely spoofed. 2) An incoming come from an unknown number may be legitimate, indeed, even an urgent call. For example, it could be from an health care provider or a business about a matter that has come up. Or, it could be a friend or family member in a difficult situation where they had to borrow someone else's phone. A lot of people find themselves with a dead cell phone battery or lost handset when they need the phone the most. 3) A person sleeping or otherwise indisposed is still disturbed by an incoming call. They have to check the caller ID (assuming the telephone set has caller-ID and a lot of older sets still in use do not have it). If a person has an elder parent, they must answer all incoming calls just in case there is an emergency--for instance, suppose a parent's neighbor is calling to report a problem.
Reply to
HAncock4

Per Dave Platt:

I figured it was intended to defeat crowd-sourced solutions like NoMoRobo: spoof a different number on each call stay ahead of the reports to the NoMoRobo DB.

Reply to
Pete Cresswell

That's what I have. So I rarely answer these calls.

My understanding is similar to yours, but I also realize that the perpetrators are most likely offshore, so prosecuting them is close to impossible. There presumably has to be a domestic company that takes the money, but tracing things back to them is too much work for most victims of robocalls.

Reply to
Barry Margolin

If you were in a call center in Jamaca, Bangladesh, etc., how worried would you be about USA phone laws?

Times have changed.

Reply to
Brian Gordon

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