People Worldwide Have Received More Than 26 Billion Spam Calls This Year (techcrunch.com) 113
Do you feel you have been receiving more spam calls of late? You are probably not wrong -- or alone. From a report: The volume of spam calls has grown by 18% globally this year, according to Truecaller. In its annual report published Tuesday, the Stockholm-based firm said users worldwide received 26 billion spam calls between January and October this year -- up from 17.7 billion during the same period last year. The United States remains the eighth most spammed country, where the volume of robocalls increased by 35% this year. In a separate report earlier this year, Truecaller estimated that 43 million Americans were scammed last year and lost about $10.5 billion. The growth is despite the efforts local carriers and authorities have made in the country. Brazil again topped the list for the most spammed country. The culprit behind the increasingly growing spam calls in the country are its own telecom operators and internet service providers. Truecaller said that in the last 12 months, calls from the operators have increased from 32% to 48%.
[...] One of the takeaways from the report is just how complex it is to understand the nature of these spam calls. There is no common thread -- or culprit -- behind these calls. In some markets, such as South Africa (ranked sixth in the report), spammers are mostly making fraudulent tech support calls and conducting job offer scams. Peru, ranked second, and Indonesia, ranked third, have seen spam calls explode in the nation. In Peru, users received more than 30 spam calls in the month. Most of these calls were made by financial services that are looking to upsell credit cards and loans.
[...] One of the takeaways from the report is just how complex it is to understand the nature of these spam calls. There is no common thread -- or culprit -- behind these calls. In some markets, such as South Africa (ranked sixth in the report), spammers are mostly making fraudulent tech support calls and conducting job offer scams. Peru, ranked second, and Indonesia, ranked third, have seen spam calls explode in the nation. In Peru, users received more than 30 spam calls in the month. Most of these calls were made by financial services that are looking to upsell credit cards and loans.
If your number isn't my contacts... (Score:1)
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All well and good for me, but unfortunately for my father-in-law who is the sales director at a retirement community blocking unknown callers is simply not an option....
Well, one assumes that's his work phone, and he turns it off after working hours are done. If your job is to answer a phone all day, you don't get the option of not doing that.
The trap I see people fall into all of the time is giving out their number to people who do not need it. I have relatives who do this. Every time a store employee asks for their number, they spit it out. And they marvel at how little spam calls I get. Maybe 1 a day.
If you share your contact info with the world, why are you surprised w
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I have a Google Voice number for sharing with the world.
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When it's a spam caller, I tarpit [wikipedia.org] them offering interest in their pitch and drag the call out with inane questions and confusion about which credit card is 'the blue one.' If more people helped create such a quagmire for these call
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You must have also ignored the voicemail then.
I always ignore unknown callers but, if they leave a voicemail, I will listen to it.
These days, since I have a Google Pixel, I just use Google's call screening service for unknown callers.
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When it's a spam caller, I tarpit [wikipedia.org] them offering interest in their pitch and drag the call out with inane questions and confusion about which credit card is 'the blue one.' If more people helped create such a quagmire for these callers, it would crush their productivity and render the practice economically unfeasible.
What I want is a service I can quickly forward the spam caller to, that does this with realistic-sounding voice responses. Something more interactive than "Lenny", but just as time-wasting.
I would seriously pay for a service like this.
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Good luck getting me to answer.
Exactly! My phone doesn't even ring for those.
Half the people I know never answer calls that are from numbers that aren't in their contacts.
Basically, the spammers have now effectively made one of the functions of the telephone unusable.
But some people actually are not in such completely perfect bubbles that nobody outside their contact list ever needs to call them.
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So, you're saying that although the spammer scammers have blocked one function on your phone, you have a workaround, and although it's cumbersome and time consuming (for other people), you expect anybody who needs to contact you will figure out how to use it.
Good for you, but I'd rather shut down the spammers and put them in jail.
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Not good enough. I suggest the following addition:
"I'd rather shut down the spammers and put them in jail, with a phone that rings every half-hour."
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Texting before/instead of calling isn't cumbersome. It's just good manners because me having to interrupt what I'm doing to take a phone call is insanely cumbersome. If you're calling out of the blue it had better be because somebody is dead. If not, send a text. And don't text to say "call me" - say what you want to talk about, so I can prioritize it.
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Texting before/instead of calling isn't cumbersome. It's just good manners because me having to interrupt what I'm doing to take a phone call is insanely cumbersome. If you're calling out of the blue it had better be because somebody is dead. If not, send a text. And don't text to say "call me" - say what you want to talk about, so I can prioritize it.
How sad your life demands friends and family, if they want to call you, text their intention ahead of time, specify the subject matter of the call, and then wait patiently for you to decide if and when the call is important enough to accept. Understandable if they are calling while you are performing work where safety or lives may be negatively impacted, or the work/project will be ruined if you are interrupted. In every other situation, incredibly bad manners on your part, and, the assumption your time i
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It says some important stuff, very relevant to the conversation, unlike your post.
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In every other situation, incredibly bad manners on your part, and, the assumption your time is worth so much more than theirs will eventually destroy friendships and poison family relationships.
No. People who telephone constantly are the ones who have incredibly bad manners. A phone call is saying, "Drop whatever you are doing and pay attention to me immediately, and I don't care that you may not find it convenient, or that you might have something more important to do with your time."
Re: If your number isn't my contacts... (Score:2)
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Yeah that and leaving a message. Spammers rarely leave a message.
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some spammers nearly ALWAYS leave me a message. It's usually a robot voice with 30 seconds of recorded audio about healthcare. Then my voicemail fills up in the matter of a week, new messages from my kids school are given "the customers voicemail box is full", and then they call my kid's emergency contact #.
great.
Re: If your number isn't my contacts... (Score:2)
But the only reason the spammer can't do that over text is regulation. We really need to apply those regulations to phone calls as well.
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Half the people I know never answer calls that are from numbers that aren't in their contacts.
Basically, the spammers have now effectively made one of the functions of the telephone unusable.
But some people actually are not in such completely perfect bubbles that nobody outside their contact list ever needs to call them.
A human being can leave a message. A call I ignore because I don't know who it is, when my phone beeps to tell me a message has been left, I listen to it immediately. I can call back within a minute if it's someone I need to talk to.
Alas, 80% of the time, the message is in Mandarin with some weird music in the background.
Apparently they came from me (Score:3)
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For some reason the caller ID spoofers are using the same 3 digits of your phone number (Outside of the aria code) to make it seem like someone local is calling you. Which I find silly as most people have cell phones which their number they carry from home to home has long been useless as a means of location. Actually I Ignore calls that come from my first 3 digits of my number. And then I will check my voicemail afterwords. Often just being a spam message or some old guy telling me to stop calling him.
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If you're going to spoof a number, you may as well spoof one that looks local. For most people it IS a good number to spoof. For me, it's great, because I don't live where I got my cell phone. If I get a call from someone I don't know with my area code, I ignore it unless I'm expecting a call.
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Yesterday I had a rash of people returning my calls, which I never made. Spent the day explaining to them that someone must have spoofed my number. They understood, they get as many spam calls as I do.
The feature that allows a number to be spoofed needs to **DIE DIE DIE IN A FIRE WITH A STAKE THROUGH ITS HEART AND BURIED AT A CROSSROADS**.
Seriously. In order to send a number in Caller-ID, you should be required to prove you actually own the number. Period.
I get virtually no real calls. (Score:3)
Out of the last 30 calls to my google voice number, only one has been real. The rest were hangups.
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That's just your wife checking up on you.
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My last couple google voice calls were from the "social security administration" with very foreign accents. They actually leave a US call back number (I assume a burner voip number). I usually autodial it all day when I get one, just to do my part and all.
When they pick up the first couple of times I keep them on as long as possible if I'm washing dishes or doing something boring by lecturing them about how they should find honest work. After a while they avoid my calls or just swear at me and hang up.
Re:I get virtually no real calls. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I try to keep the "Windows support" people on the phone as long as I can, assuming I can do something else while they're wasting their time ("ok, hold on, I'm booting it up now. Still booting. Yeah, it's been really slow lately, I don't know why. Still booting. Wait, it's frozen, I think I need to turn it off and on again, that usually works, hold on...")
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Virtual +1 funny/informative.
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20 minutes later oh wait you said windows support? I was trying to boot up my Mac book hold on the windows pc is even slower.
Re: I get virtually no real calls. (Score:3)
Thank you for your service.
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I can confirm that this epithet is far worse to them than the more commonly used MF'er they use. I called one "chutya" and the caller proceeded to scream something in Hindi and after I hung up, call my phone over 30 times for the next 2 hours.
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Moral of the story: after you've had your fun the first couple times, just hang up when they call. They are criminals.
war dialer (Score:2)
I kind of want to set up an autodial hell that's an automated voip app for these kinds of calls.
For your entertainment, Revenge on a IRS Phone Scamming Company [youtu.be]
TELECOM FIX CALLER ID (Score:5, Insightful)
The Telecom Systems needs to fix the Caller ID system. 99.99999% of all the spam calls have a spoofed caller ID, because they don't want retribution from the callers. Telecom Companies need to fix this outdated system. Where if your number needs to be legit changed (you work for a large organization and you want any return call go to the operator/call center not the individuals callers phone or the legit robocalls such as reminding you for an appointment) then they will need to work with the phone company, probably have to pay a fee with Auditing of the return number to make sure it connects to a real number the organization responds to.
As it is cheaper and cheaper to make phone calls, these Spam Callers just blanket as many numbers as possible, with nearly no expense. So catching the 1 in 1000 individual who would buy the scam product profitable or think the IRS Is calling them (with a really crappy text to speech translator) will make it worth it.
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Given that spam callers have made it so people don't answer their phones, the "legit robocalls" scenario is already broken, so we don't have to worry about breaking it when looking for a solution.
Re:TELECOM FIX CALLER ID (Score:5, Informative)
They are working on a fix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Basically a way to ensure. They're saying 2020, but we wait and see if/when it gets deployed and how it is implemented.
There's still the issue of actually developing a process of dealing with bad actors though. Suppose I am VOIP provider and someone uses my services for spam. Due to STIR/SHAKEN, it can be traced to me as the VOIP provider. There will still be some process in place to track down the bad actor or discredit me as a VOIP provider.
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If you are a VOIP provider and someone uses your service to Spam, you should be legally responsible. Then if you can find the user who uses your service you can then sue them for more, as you are suffering additional damages. If you cannot track down the responsible party, then you need to deal with the legal repercussion of running a business without proper checks.
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The major telecomm carriers could fix it, but they make too much money to care.
All calls are supposed to carry ANI which identifies the caller. Telephone number portability means there's also a database which identifies which numbers belong to which carriers so calls can get routed to the correct carrier.
The carriers could decide to reject calls entering their network with ANI that has a source that doesn't map back to the carrier to which the number belongs to, something along the lines of matching forwar
Why cannot our intelligence services ... (Score:3)
who we are told are ever so clever, do something about this ? They do not need to catch all of the criminals, just enough to act as a deterrence. Grabbing people from other countries does not seem to be a real problem: look how they went after the likes of Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou & are after Assange.
One has to assume that they are either incompetent or not interested. If not interested then what the hell are they doing ?
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Because "Legitimate Business Men" are strong political donators. They will often pay off both parties, who tend to look away and if they get caught they cry out. "Look I am just a small business who is competing against these big companies. See how much of a victim I am."
As much as I want to see an Apache Helicopter shoot down every spammer out there. We need to find ways to make such operations more expensive for them to operate, and easily tracked back to them to make sure they are delivering the produc
FBI, get on it! [Re:Why cannot our int...] (Score:2)
Well, not intelligence services (they are legally not allowed to investigate domestic crimes), but the FBI and police services.
I'd say about a hundred million people would be willing to have their phone lines tracked to try to take down spammer scammers. They have to get their money some way, follow the money and put them in jail.
--alternately, the problem is that outgoing costs of robocalls is zero. So, a cost of one penny per outgoing call would solve the problem.
follow the money (Score:1)
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Because, for the most part, it's illegal for them to do so. Out intelligence services have legal mandates starting at our borders and working outwards. Purely internal affairs (phone calls, for example) are irrelevant to them....
The answer is simple, maybe. (Score:2)
Chances are, if it's as "easy" as you make it sound, the problem would be resolved.
There always reaches a point where you have to weigh benefits vs costs and complexity.
Either that, or the ones tasked to look into this stand to profit from the problem, somehow.
While not impossible, this is very tinfoil hat-y, and you should only go down this route with cold hard evidence.
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My phone never rings (Score:2)
I use the phone app to get appointments at doctor's who still use that old-school method.
That's about it.
If grand-aunt Steffi dies, I can live with getting the news in the morning.
Only 26 billion? (Score:2)
I get several per day. Though I suppose not everyone has a phone.
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It is unclear if this is a problem in itself, although criminal behavior should be prosecuted. My concern is that we still get phishing adverts through apparently legitimate ad services intended to promote crimi
I found a fabulous solution (Score:5, Interesting)
When I moved from NC to OH, I kept my phone number as it was an Ooma VOIP system. It doesn't care where you're located. I signed up for the call filtering services through Ooma, but they did practically nothing. I'd get around 10 spams for every real call I got, and I was ready to throw my phone in the trash. Then I realized that most of the calls I got all came from a 919 area code, but I hadn't gotten a real call from that area code since I moved from NC. So I blocked all 919 numbers. Suddenly I was getting around 60% real calls and 40% spam calls, and most of those spam calls showed up as "800 Service" in caller ID. So I blocked all 800 numbers, and now I get about 1 spam call for every 10 real calls. It totally saved my sanity!
So, my recommendation is to use a VOIP service to get a phone number outside of your area code, and then block all numbers from that area code and all 800 numbers. You're welcome.
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Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
"Truecaller estimated that 43 million Americans were scammed last year and lost about $10.5 billion"
That's one in six adult Americans. That number cannot possibly be accurate.
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I was about to post that exact math, but I don't share the opinion that it cannot be possible.
I mean... look who's president.
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If I get one more call (Score:2)
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Telcos are to blame (Score:1)
why should they go after some of their most prolific customers?
big business = bad business
Easy solution (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Genuine spam calls are rare in some places, eg Denmark, because unsolicited commercial calls and SMSs are illegal (with the exception of newspapers and insurance companies). The fines can be considerable, examples of up to $1500 per call are seen.
Allegedly, there also spam calls from abroad for viagra/hotels/nutritional supplements/... but I have never received such a call .
The scam "microsoft support" does occur in the EU, but it is likely to vary from country to country:
- the scammers typically only speak
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I live in Belgium and in 20 years or so, I have not received one spam call..
its common in UK. This might be a language thing in common with US. Or maybe they are just doing the countries in reverse alphabetical order. Looks like you are safe for a bit,.
Australia (Score:2)
Same experience in Australia. I can’t ever remember receiving a spam call in the last year. We do not have number spoofing and we also have a do not call register.
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I live in Belgium and in 20 years or so, I have not received one spam call. .... I have also not seen a big outcry in social or main media about this being an issue in Europe.
Plenty in the UK and there are TV programs about the problem (one program was last week). Bear in mind that most of the scam calls to the UK are from India, and all educated Indians can speak English (as indeed can many educated people in other parts of the world). However there are not many Indians who can speak Belgian, Dutch, or even French or German. So the Indian scam centres are going to target the English speaking nations, including the UK.
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Cause of Global Warning Explained (Score:1)
I have to answer these calls (Score:2)
I answer these calls and then proceed to waste their time, insult them, and frustrate them. Every minute they have to spend being abused and belittled by me is a minute they won't have to con someone who might actually fall for their scam.
Lately I tell them, "Hang on, let me get him..." and then I cue up a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode on Youtube for them to listen to. It's amazing how many of them will listen to the entire thing, ~20 minutes or so.
Or I "come back" to the phone and ask who's calling. When th
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I used to have fun with spammers, but then most of them became robocalls so all the fun went out of it.
None of those in Germany. (Score:2)
It's illegal for a business to call you if you don't have a business relationship (like a contract) with you.
Literally illegal.
And companies have been sued and have lost.
Hell, even if they say you clicked "buy" online, they have to prove you didn't get tricked and actually knowingly agreed to a contract and know the terms too. (Unless you actually did ... good luck there. Businesses have sued, and have lost and paid damages too.)
Yes, politicians and the like count as businesses in that regard.
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These calls are "literally illegal" in most places, but they've gotten quite good at spoofing numbers and hiding their identity. Most of them are trying to scam you in some ways anyways. They're pretty much never from a legitimate business.
Nomorobo (Score:2)
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I'm not getting any... maybe this is why... (Score:2)
Either the spammers adapted, or the phone companies adapted, and I get none of these calls. Honestly, I thought this was fixed.
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You're just lucky.
I too placed my numbers on the FCC's "do not call" list. And I complained. Neither worked.
I don't even bother answering my phone anymore. (Score:1)
That's capitalism (Score:1)
And if you don't like it then you hate America.
Stopping spam calls means regulation. And regulation means the use of force by government against people. So stopping spam calls is a pro-violence position.
(obviously we all agree that spammers should be beaten with a rubber hose)
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26 billion isn't so bad (Score:1)
It's less than 4 calls per person...
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If no one is going to ... (Score:2)
... finally redo email, I will.
Given, my lower lever protocol Dev skills aren't all that good, but email needs a redo. Now. Bidirectional signing and encryption and blocking.
It can't be that hard to bolt something of that kind on top of regular email and build a ready made client and a keyserver for that.
No crowd-sourced reverse 411 yet? (Score:2)
That said a week where I'm really popular might result in 2 spam / robo calls to my cell phone. This is down significantly from a year
Sounds low (Score:2)
Honestly that number sounds low. I could have sworn that I got at least 1/10th of those before lunch this morning.
each (Score:1)
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Sentry 2 (Score:1)
This device eliminates all robocalls and most telemarketers from landlines/VOIP. Well worth the $50 I paid. Calls down from maybe 10 a day to 0.
ironically, I just got off a spammer call (Score:2)
I generally answer, just to waste their time. More time with me means less with some half senile grandmother.
The call went like this:
Spammer: Blah blah blah credit cards, low rate, your good credit score.
Me: Whats my name?
Spammer: What cards do you have ?
Me: What's my name?
Spammer: I don't know, but if you tell me...blah blah low rate
Me: Sorry, not interested
Spammer: Fuck you, you son of slut bitch.
They seem real big on the insults. I"m not sure if I actually piss them off, or they use it to vent for having
Not for me, actually (Score:1)
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Google gives the number out to spammers, probably with your name and other info, depending on how much they pay.
Verizon does it too. 15 years ago I moved to a new house and set up a landline to operate a Tivo on DishNetwork (before they had internet connectivity for guide data), I didn't realize the house had an actual phone connected somewhere until I heard a random ringing. Picking it up, and automated voice says "hello nitehawk, let me offer you blah blah blah blah...". Fuck you Verizon, fuck you.