With working from home (retired, but do some part-time), applying for a new mortgage, pursuing a lawsuit and various other things going on, I am getting a lot of calls at home on the landline. We do have caller ID, but it is only on the phone downstairs, not in my home office. Got a call -- "This is Jessica from benefit advisors on a recorded line, how are you today." I answered: "O.K." Then the line went dead. We do have robocall blocking and it has worked amazingly well, but the last couple of weeks some calls are getting in that come across with just the random name of some small town. And, the Caller ID showed just that. A quick check of the web's robo calls showed the number was one that was going around, but according to one site they were saying "This is blah, blah, blah, can you hear me O.K.?" The goal being a "yes" answer so they can use it for fraud purposes. https://www.ag.state.mn.us/consumer/Publications/CanYouHearMe.asp Of course, I did not answer yes, and I would assume yes would be better than O.K. While I always do check phone charges and credit card bills, guess I will have to be on real alert. You've been warned.
Fascinating...and sad. Never occurred to me that answering "Yes" to a question such as "Can You Hear Me?" could be used against me. But these are the times we live in. I don't know if they're are scams directly. But I have got solicitation calls where the person (not a recording) immediately goes into a rehearsed presentation. I have answered "I'm sorry, I'm not interested". I'll say that twice, maybe 3 times, if the person on the other end doesn't stop, pause and just continues on, I just hang up. I guess my new approach is just going to be to hang up..period. Without saying anything.
If you call me you fall into 2 categories: 1. You're in my contacts, and I "might" answer. 2. You're leaving a voice mail.
I had someone SMS text asking me by name if I wanted to sell our house. I put a block against his number and deleted the message. Bob Wilson
No new scam surprises me anymore. Next they will be taking your fingerprint off the last ATM transaction a person does.
What's an ATM? One telephone benefit I arrived at purely by accident is that my personal phone number is far out of LATA or Local Access and Transport Area . With cell phones, this is a diminishing asset but it works like this: My cell phone is a 931-xxx-xxxx number. Since I do not live in Middle Tennessee, and I only know one person in this area then I may presume that a call from a "local" number is a spoof or a cold-call wanting to sell me a subscription to The Tennessean. Likewise, if I receive an anonymous call from my local area code then there's a much greater chance that it's somebody who actually is trying to get a hold of ME instead of just engaging in Caller ID spoofing. I still make them leave a VM.
I block ALL calls without caller ID. And I almost never answer calls from toll free 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, 844 and 833 numbers. But scammer are getting clever nowadays. With the age of porting numbers, they are now using local numbers to call our phone. I block one but next day the same scam call with a different local number. In most cases they are robo-calls. The routine is that it start with robot talking and if I answer the phone, the call is then transferred to a live person. So even if I pick up the phone, as long as I do not respond to their robo-greeting, they will hung up. Now, I have made a habit of not answering a call as soon as I pick it up.
I've long been aware of fraudsters supposedly using audio cut-and-paste to take any sort of affirmative response from anywhere in the conversation, and pasting it to whatever question they legally needed an affirmative response. But I hadn't heard anything recent, or about them skipping all the rest of the sales pitch. This needs to be fixed pronto. Have Caller-ID displayed anywhere you might answer the phone. Someday there may be mass thefts of contact lists from cell phones (or from their cloud backups), so that the fraudsters can spoof IDs personally known to prospective victims. But I haven't heard much about that, so far. No porting needed, they can spoof Caller-ID at will. Spoofing isn't even illegal per se, the only illegal part is using it for fraud. Of course, the oil-tanker-sized loophole is tracking down any particular spoofer. Especially those not operating from within our national legal jurisdictions. Occasionally when not too busy, I'll answer a sampling of unknown calls to keep up on what new scams are circulating. Recently, when getting a live human, I ask them why they are working for a criminal enterprise? Why can't you get a real job, one that doesn't hurt people? Don't hang up on them, always drag it out until they hang up. Too bad I missed the recent utility shutoff threats that left threatening VMs daily for nearly a week. I'm a home PV solar producer with a multi-hundred-dollar credit on my electric bill, easily checked online in just seconds while conversing, so I know with certainty that electric shut-off threats are fraudulent. That was someone I would like to have engaged. I'd like to brainstorm some other responses to either help ensnare these crooks, or increase their call center turnover. P.S. A couple years ago, an illegal cold marketing call came on behalf of a real local business, but lacking the diligence to check the FTC Do Not Call list. A challenge to the marketeer and an immediate comment to Yelp led to an apology from the proprietor and a gift basket from a well known supplier / deliverer of such thank you / apology items. If only we could similarly "reach out and touch" the real fraudsters.
"Jessica" called back this morning. I only let "her" get as far as "Hello, this is Jessica," before I dropped the receiver....same "local" spoofed number....Gotta get a called id upstairs.....
A local health provider's calls for pre-op. questionnaires are from an 888 number with the Caller ID "800 Service..." and giving no clue about who is really calling. What caller info shows up on your phone depends on which of many databases your phone company queries, some of which may be incorrect. E.g., I just did a lookup of the cell-phone number that our son had up until about eight years ago when he moved overseas. I know that the number has been reallocated, because I tried dialing it a year or two back, but that database still shows our son as the "owner" of that number. They gave me the option to enter a new name, but not to delete his name altogether. In that same database my and my wife's numbers show up with the correct names, but most people we call see simply "Wireless Caller."
Yeah, some caller ID info are not very helpful. When in doubt, we don't answer. If it is legit caller, he/she will leave a voice message. Many years ago when we still had a regular copper cable landline phone, we wanted our number unlisted. But unlisting the number cost something like $20/mo fee which was more than the basic service for the line. So, the telephone company rep actually suggested registering the number with a made-up name. That did not cost anything. To this day, we still get a junk mail addressed to us but to Mr. Smith. No, that's not our last name.
we have a comcast 'landline'. got robo caller and that helped, but comcast installed their own blocker this year, and it has been amazing so far.
Thankfully I still have a couple of OLD (2003-2004) landline call blockers that actually worked (unlike the newer ones that rely on lists to block calls -- useless in an age of spoofing). These old ones simply intercept ALL incoming calls before the phone rings and will play your 20-second message asking the caller to push a button for the call to go thru. If a button is pushed your phone will ring. If not, it'll either hang up or go to your answering machine. Works wonderfully. A robocall can't push a button, nor can a telemarketer. Interestingly, while all my landline junk calls are blocked, the only robocalls that ever get thru are ones from my health plan with important reminders (upcoming appointments, etc). Which is perfect. If I'm nearby I can hear it softly click each time a robocall is coming in. Such a nice sound. It's a shame that only the old ones (that block ALL incoming calls before your phone rings, and if a button is pushed your phone will ring) haven't been sold since 2004 and can't be found anywhere anymore. Though most people have moved onto cellphones, I still have my landline, and I would have gotten rid of it ages ago had I not had one of these.
Centurylink has a very similar "No Solicitation" feature implemented in their software, which can be turned On/Off reasonably easily. The caller must press 1 to be connected through immediately, or wait a bit to be connected through after a delay. The medical appointment reminders are long enough to get through and we hear all the detail on the repeat cycle. Nearly all robocalls are blocked, only a very few "dumb" systems with long recordings, mostly in Chinese, get through. It can take a small list of phone numbers exempt from this intercept, but I have exempted only dad's numbers, not even my own cell phone. And it operates only during the hours phone solicitations are legal, and automatically disengages after-hours, such as the evening hours I call my spouse when away. I have had to shut it off, temporarily, only when making some online account changes that require two-factor authentication, and have callback messages too short for the builtin waiting delay.
