Oh yes only humans, who do you get then, chatgtp ?
Some of my useless phone calls are from humans, but rarely from the area code that appears on CallerID.
Some of my useless phone calls are from humans...
hows about making the defualt ring tone silent ,not the phone set to silent but a custom audio file of silence, and allocate an actual ring tone to your contacts
It is my observation that computers are actually making the calls and providing the initial message that announces what they are selling.
Only when an answer (human or your answering machine recorded announcement) is detected, does that recorded message stop and, after a delay, does a human comes on the line.
What this means is it is easy for them to call every number in every exchange. No human time is involved in doing that.
I am still trying to figure out what those computers do with each of the ways those calls end. Do they make call later lists? Or don't call again lists? Or LIVE ONE, call, call, CALL until hell freezes over lists? I don't know.
I do know that if I had a penny for every call I have received about Medicare Advantage Plans, I would be a billionaire!
I'm honestly at the stage where I don't care if I'm completely unreachable via phone.
X2. This is where I'm at too. My family and friend's know how to find me. Everyone else can FO. It's not worth being interrupted 10 to 20 times PER DAY to get one legitimate call.
Thanks to the telemarketers, pollsters, political calls, charity hoaxs and other SCAMMERS and the inaction of the phone companies, the days of the "Telephone" as a useful tool are over with IMO. In my younger years I didn't have a phone and I'm ready to go back to not having one.
I'm honestly at the stage where I don't care if I'm completely unreachable via phone.
X2. This is where I'm at too. My family and friend's know how to find me. Everyone else can FO. It's not worth being interrupted 10 to 20 times PER DAY to get one legitimate call.
Thanks to the telemarketers, pollsters, political calls, charity hoaxs and other SCAMMERS and the inaction of the phone companies, the days of the "Telephone" as a useful tool are over with IMO. In my younger years I didn't have a phone and I'm ready to go back to not having one.
I've had my phone diverted to voicemail 99% of the time. I undiverted it for 4 hours today (as I was expecting another call), only to have a recruiter call me out of the blue.
Over the last few months, it's been peaceful. No interruptions. No one has contacted me to say "I can't call you", which means no one important has tried to call me.
I'm keeping it like this. As far as I'm concerned, "analog" calls to my phone number are obsolete. Telcos need to step up and start treating phone numbers like any other method of communication. The owner of the number should be able to blacklist/whitelist numbers as they see fit at the network level (not via some app on their phone).
I think a simple way to stop spam callers would be every VOIP call that lasts under 1 minute costs ~$0.50 to place. This could be enforced by telecoms companies charging VOIP firms this amount. Dunno if I'm a hopeless optimist but I can recognise spam calls very quickly. Would also handle irrelevant telemarketing nicely.
I think a simple way to stop spam callers would be every VOIP call that lasts under 1 minute costs ~$0.50 to place. This could be enforced by telecoms companies charging VOIP firms this amount. Dunno if I'm a hopeless optimist but I can recognise spam calls very quickly. Would also handle irrelevant telemarketing nicely.
It doesn't even require $0.50 per call. $0.001 per call would bankrupt the spammers. The vast majority of calls reach voicemail. Those that reach a person are typically hung up as soon as the person hears the bot. I expect the successful completion of connecting two humans on a spam call is around 1 in 1,000. I have no idea what their success rate is of getting any money from people, but I don't think that's so important.
The problem is, such tariffs are international. I don't know how the agreements are made, but I doubt such fees could be pushed back to the callers. They are working through fly by night companies who connect their VOIP to the phone infrastructure. They just fold up periodically and start anew.
I think a simple way to stop spam callers would be every VOIP call that lasts under 1 minute costs ~$0.50 to place. This could be enforced by telecoms companies charging VOIP firms this amount. Dunno if I'm a hopeless optimist but I can recognise spam calls very quickly. Would also handle irrelevant telemarketing nicely.
It doesn't even require $0.50 per call. $0.001 per call would bankrupt the spammers. The vast majority of calls reach voicemail. Those that reach a person are typically hung up as soon as the person hears the bot. I expect the successful completion of connecting two humans on a spam call is around 1 in 1,000. I have no idea what their success rate is of getting any money from people, but I don't think that's so important.
The problem is, such tariffs are international. I don't know how the agreements are made, but I doubt such fees could be pushed back to the callers. They are working through fly by night companies who connect their VOIP to the phone infrastructure. They just fold up periodically and start anew.
It does need to be non-negligible, because the telemarketers / scammers in India are getting $1 per hour or thereabouts (average wage is $200 per month). So if you make the short calls they have to handle - the ones they get quite often - they are suddenly paying $10-20 an hour for these calls. Makes the whole thing impractical.
As for how the costs get passed on, the telecom company in the US charges the VoIP firm. No payment, no call. The fee will eventually get pushed back down the chain, or the calls get blocked, either way it's a win.
I've had a persistent recorded message spam caller for a while, although the frequency seems to be finally decreasing. I just let it go to voicemail and then block each new number. The irritating thing is that the recorded message is in Chinese. If you must spam me, ffs have the brains to check the country code and do it in a language that I can understand!
I've had a persistent recorded message spam caller for a while, although the frequency seems to be finally decreasing. I just let it go to voicemail and then block each new number. The irritating thing is that the recorded message is in Chinese. If you must spam me, ffs have the brains to check the country code and do it in a language that I can understand!
Blocking numbers is totally pointless. The spammers make up numbers, often to look like it is a local call. I had one very gullible guy call me, where I jerked him around by putting the phone down to "get my credit card". Eventually I hung up. He called back, lather, rinse, repeat. Every call was on a different local number. I should say "local", because my cell phone has a number from a different state!
It's a rare spammer that uses a real phone number he got from the "phone company".
I've had a persistent recorded message spam caller for a while, although the frequency seems to be finally decreasing. I just let it go to voicemail and then block each new number. The irritating thing is that the recorded message is in Chinese. If you must spam me, ffs have the brains to check the country code and do it in a language that I can understand!
Blocking numbers is totally pointless. The spammers make up numbers, often to look like it is a local call. I had one very gullible guy call me, where I jerked him around by putting the phone down to "get my credit card". Eventually I hung up. He called back, lather, rinse, repeat. Every call was on a different local number. I should say "local", because my cell phone has a number from a different state!
It's a rare spammer that uses a real phone number he got from the "phone company".
I don't understand why "spoofing" a phone number is legal in the US.
I found vendors online who will facilitate this spoofing openly, allegedly for the benefit of partners in abusive relationships who don't want to use their real numbers when reporting the abuse to the authorities, but that seems to be a weak argument (although pay phones have vanished from modern society).
E.g., https://www.spoofcard.com/ who claim it is good for the spoofer's privacy.
Typically, sub-continental callers with conventional American given names spoof numbers in my area code and exchange, and when I ask them if they are located next door they hang up.
When I have nothing else to do, I call that number back only to get the non-existent number error message from the phone company; rarely, it turns out to be an innocent bystander whose number was borrowed, but almost never an active number.