It's not your imagination - the robo calls are getting worse

[Ohiogal]

I saw this today and thought, how true. We still have a land line and get at least 8-10 robocalls a day. I never answer a call from a number or name I do not recognize, but it's getting very annoying hearing that phone go off all day long. I've been getting a few lately on my cell, as well. Seems like Congress has no interest in stopping this practice, in fact, if some businesses are making money, they probably are just going to look the other way, after all, profits come before customer satisfaction all the time, right? You would think it would be quick and easy to enact legislation ending this practice altogether.

From the NYT:

"Though automated calls have long plagued consumers, the volume has skyrocketed in recent years, reaching an estimated 3.4 billion in April, according to YouMail, which collects and analyzes calls through its robocall blocking service. That’s an increase of almost 900 million a month compared with a year ago."

"Despite these efforts, robocalls are a thorny problem to solve. Calls can travel through various carriers and a maze of networks, making it hard to pinpoint their origins, enabling the callers to evade rules. Regulators are working with the telecommunications industry to find ways to authenticate calls, which would help unmask the callers."

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/your-money/robocalls-rise-illegal.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=74838209ries&ref=headline

[dalton99a]

1. Pretty soon nobody will answer anyone not already in their contact list

because you can't trust the phone numbers anymore

[Sherman A1]

14. Precisely

I’m already there.

[Nay]

17. We do that already. It's a shame to have to do this -- it's as if none of us

is allowed to control the phones we own and pay for. Some of our robocalls actually have 4 or 5 of the last numbers of actual numbers in our call list!!! How the hell do they even get those numbers??

[CatMor]

2. I finally cancelled my land line last week because of....

the robo calls and scam calls. It was a hard decision to make after having it for so many years but I couldn't deal with it anymore.

[Ohiogal]

9. An after-article commenter made a good point

That perhaps the telecommunications companies (and our congress critters who accept donations from them) allow this harrassment of land line users because they're trying to force you off of land line service altogether and switch to cell phone only, since they make a lot more profit on what they charge you for cell phone service. Kinda makes sense, sneaky bastards.

[genxlib]

10. I have wondered about this for years

But I can't make sense of it.

It is not as if I didn't have both a cell phone and a land line. in fact, my cell phone carrier wasn't even the same company as my land line so they lost business entirely when I left.

Aside from the robo calls, my biggest complaint about the landlines is that they have not invested in the technology in decades. Many things my cell phone will do just seems like rocket science to the land line companies.

For instance, I live and work near a County line but my "local" phone zone straddles half a County in each direction . Some calls require 7 digits, some require 10 and some require a 1 at the beginning. It is an absolute crapshoot as to which numbers require which. It burns my biscuit when a 10digit dial is rejected with the a recording saying that I do not need the area code. If you can tell me that, why can't you just connect me!? Good riddance.

[CatMor]

12. Interesting thought....

I mainly use my cell phone and kept the land line to call England, where my daughter lives, because there were no long distance extra charges.

[Leith]

11. That Won't Help You

Cell phones are getting them, too.

I got a scam call that had entries in phone number checkers dating back to 2008. I've had scam calls that I've blocked try 8 times in 2 minutes. If the local Big Brothers tries to call me again, I will go to their office and suggest that they google their number for a rude awakening.

Scammers are completely out of control. If they can put e-mail scammers in jail, they can crack down on phone scams.

[Frustratedlady]

3. What's really disgusting is when they use a local number.

Almost all of mine are local numbers. After they hang up, I call back that number to make sure it wasn't important and it is no longer in use. I don't know how they manage to get those numbers that are not assigned, but it's 100% of the time that they are not assigned to anyone. I even got one call that I had blocked when I first got this phone...12-15 years ago. I was blocking calls at the time and then forgot how to do it, so I quit, of course. A couple months ago, I started getting calls from one of those blocked callers.

Add to that all the political calls and you can be quite busy.

[Freedomofspeech]

4. Our cable company offers a service for $2.50 a month...they added a voice message to our land line...

It says if you are not a telemarketer press #8. We have not had one robo call in two months. It has been great!!

[Ilsa]

5. I get lots of sales calls, 5 or more per day.

But no political calls, at least not yet. I hate my phone right now.

[hlthe2b]

6. On the cellular do not call list, but getting 10x as many including from Russia and Argentina last

week (confirmed country codes).

At the same time, I got a post card informing me of my eligibility for a class action settlement against Pivotal Payments, Inc. for their robocall practices. After verifying its validity, I confirmed my eligibility. No doubt I'll get nothing more than a few cents from the $9 million settlement, but hell, it sends a message.

Now, when I get a call, I immediately google or don't answer. If they leave a voice message, I google again. If any reports of the number as a solicitor or probably scam, I block. Probably only about a trillion more numbers to block, but...

[Mz Pip]

7. I'm getting them in Chinese now.

I don’t answer if I don’t recognize the number but if they leave a message I’ll listen. Lots of Chinese messages these days.

[Tracer]

8. I get at least a dozen calls a day.

The worst offender lately is "Informed Electorate" who calls at least twice a day. It's a scam to part you from your money.

And I see that they have exhumed "Rachel" from "Card Serivces" from her crypt.

My caller ID now suggests that an incoming call is spam.

[elocs]

13. "We still have a land line"

"Land lines"...outhouses and 8 tracks, relics of a different age. Quaint.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

20. Quaint until your house is on fire and you can't find your cell.

My downstairs neighbor’s contractor set the tarp over her stove on fire.

I was working from home and smelled smoke. I walked in to my kitchen filled with smoke and thought “Elizabeth this is the big one”

I went to call 911 and couldn’t find my cell. After frantically searching for a minute, I ran out the back to go to my downstairs neighbor’s. She was running up the stairs to tell mer HER house was on fire. The drywall was open at the ceiling so all the smoke went right up in to my kitchen.

By the time I grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran downstairs the poor guy had the tarp out on the back deck stomping the fire out.

[elocs]

21. How about when the room with the phone is in flames? That's not so quaint either.

In the not too distance future cell phones will be easy to find because they will be implants since young people cannot seem to be without their phones or function without them.

[Ernesto]

15. We ditched our land line a month ago.....

The world DID NOT end!

[phylny]

22. I live in a rural place.

Our cell service is not consistent or good. There are times one of our children call my cell and they have to call back on my land line because they can't hear me clearly.

So...while the world wouldn't end if we gave up our land line, communication with it might.

[MineralMan]

16. On landlines, they're targeting older people,

I've noticed. I guess they realizes that only us elders bother with POTS phones. I just look at the caller ID when it rings. If it's not a number I recognize, I push the green button, wait a second, and then push the red button. That way, I don't have to listed to 4 rings before my answering system picks up.

I keep the phone, because it's the number registered in most things I've signed up for, and it's too much trouble to call them all and change to my cell phone number. Most of the time, it's a telemarketer when the phone rings, but not always. So, I still get some calls I want on it.

If I think back to the 1990s, I remember a time when I had about eight landline numbers, between my home and office. How strange that seems today.

[Liberal In Texas]

18. It should be illegal and even technologically impossible to send spoof numbers on caller ID

Most of the time there is "Out of Area" and no number or "Invalid Number". More frequently now, we're getting a number with the prefix to one of my land lines and then for almost random numbers to make it look like a local call.

And don't get me started on the annoying "Apple Store" calls that seem to have abated recently.

[TheBlackAdder]

19. Many robocallers spoof local phone numbers, which your telco provider could validate beforehand.