
Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore - zdw
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/ring-ring-ring-ring/561545/?single_page=true
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loser777
"Spam phone calls/telemarketers" are probably on the nicer side of typical
voice traffic floating around (at least in the US) these days.

The article doesn't really mention the vast number of spoofed police/(three
letter government agency) calls that attempt to get people to pay up for a
made-up crime. Sometimes these are even highly targeted (e.g., scary threats
aimed towards international students).

It's gotten to the point where not only do I never answer the phone from a
number I don't know, I regret ever having listed my number on a CV/resume that
has certainly been scraped at this point.

~~~
jolmg
Then there are places where you get calls from people pretending to be your
just recently kidnapped daughter or other family member crying for you and
then switching to someone supposedly the kidnapper trying to get you to pay a
ransom right quick before they do something you might regret. They yell and
demand to get you scared so you're not thinking straight. I know a few people
this has happened to. One uncle got a call from his "daughter" crying for his
help when she was really only a few months old. That was a little funny. As
soon as he expressed surprise at how quickly his daughter learned to talk,
they hung up.

Best thing to do in these scenarios is to hang up quick without saying
anything, and contacting your family member directly to check if they're ok.

There are also those that talk vaguely and familiar to get you to think it's
someone you should know but just can't remember, and they'll tell you they've
got trouble and ask if you can help them out with some money. I've gotten one
of those.

Oftentimes, how this works is that they'll call you sometime before to
carefully obtain information from you and then call you again when you might
have forgotten the call to use this info against you.

These things used to be more common a few years ago, but I'm still careful
never to give any personal info to random callers. Back then, I once got a
call like this:

    
    
        *ring*
        me: "Hello?"
        caller: "Who am I speaking to?"
        me: "No. Who are you and what do you want?"
        *caller hangs up*
    

Something that's really annoying recently are telemarketing calls from the
competitor of my cellphone provider. Every. time. of the 3 to 7 times a day
they call, they ask for my name. I mean, what? Given how common these types of
scams were nationwide just a few years ago, you'd think they'd understand how
unacceptable it is for a caller to ask the name of the person they're calling.

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AnimalMuppet
TL;DR: Spam phone calls/telemarketers.

We need to make it impossible to forge caller ID. Block, OK, but not forge.
That means that the CO/telephone company has to do caller ID, the calling
phone can't.

If you're the police or a reporter or something, you want to take calls with
the caller ID blocked. If not... probably not.

~~~
DrScump
Can any VOIP experts suggest a mechanism for enforcing this with VOIP calls?

~~~
downrightmike
The ANI comes over with the call setup, should be used to know who the
exchange will charge for the call. This can be blocked against, but since the
late 90s almost no one wants to send this info because it can be blocked. And
it isn't required, with it often being blank. Caller ID comes on the second
ring, but this can be set to be whatever you want and it gets just passed
along. I've rarely seen ANIs blocked on the telco side unless they were
sending a ANI, really spamming and someone reported them.

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anotheryou
No spam calls here in germany, I still don't pick up my phone. It's the age of
instant async communication and I love it. And mom, please don't just write
"are you there?", just tell me what it's about...

~~~
bausshf
My mom does this too!

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dredmorbius
I would really like to see discussion of phone alternatives.

VOIP options for landline / hardwired locations, including filtering. Other
messaging for wifi / mobile.

