My condo offers free home phone as part of the amenities. No thanks, having a home phone just so you can be constantly harassed by telemarketers is not something that’s appealing to anyone who isn’t over 60.
I do contemplate the merits of having a home phone with the ringer perpetually on silent, and that being the only number I give out to places like Spirit Halloween whereas family/friends get the cell.
Funny related story: someone in my city signed up for a mortgage but used my phone number on accident. I got 40 spam calls the first day, and still get calls about it years later. I even got a message from one of his friends one time looking to catch up. His name is Brian and he works at a local restaurant as the GM, I learned all this just from info fed to me by third parties.
I have a Steve that did the same thing. A lot of people contacted me over the years about him wanting to see if they could buy his property. I finally said yes, and that was the last I heard from any of them.
The best thing I’ve ever done was get a phone plan with call control. Basically before my phone even rings the person on the end gets prompted with a random number they have to press on their phone to connect. My number of spam calls has gone from several a day to two total calls in the last month.
I have gotten a strange amount of texts and calls from people who are either extremely competent scammers, or more likely just seem to think I am their grandma, or friend, or something.
Not really sure why this is happening. They all have very in depth stories, usually poorly spelled, and after they say enough things I point out I am not who they think theyre contacting and then they stop.
But it keeps happening with completely different people in totally different situations?
Either my number is just some magnet for confused people or some very odd con job is attempting to target me?
Maybe pig butchering scams? John Oliver did a piece on them recently that was pretty enlightening, but this wiki summarizes it okay: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam
Interesting. These days I receive many more text spams (on messages, telegram, whatsup etc.) than call spams. I think my provider and my phone block call spams successfully.
I’ve had the same number for over twenty years. My guess would be all that time yielding no results from those calls. Otherwise I guess I’m just lucky. I almost never have my ringer or vibrate on so I never even see them as they come in.
I got my name and details blacklisted by scam baiting, back before that was even a thing. I was used to just playing along with spam calls on the landline for my parents. Once cell phones and mass spam calls hit I had a lot of fun for a while, but at some point I was full blown blacklisted. In the last ~10 years I’ve only gotten the occasional car warranty call from someone who bought wrong data(cars I don’t own).
My dad was complaining how the younger generation doesn’t answer their phone anymore and I had to explain it’s all scam calls now and it’s his generation that keeps the scammers in business
I’m likely your dad’s age. Strange that he wouldn’t get this concept. Even if you’re in my contacts, I’ll text before I call to ask if it’s ok. Even with my own spawn, I don’t just up and directly call her.
That’s always seemed odd to me. I’m personally not a fan of texting, I always just call people. They answer or they don’t, and they’ll either call back when they’re free or text and we go from there.
For friends my own age, we’re all working sixty plus hours a week because hurray America and we live in different time zones. It’s a mutual courtesy to set a time to talk.
In 20 years cell phones (as phones not portable computers) went from a tool that united people in new and exciting ways to a way for solicitors to spam us. It’s to the point that I don’t know anyone who answers their phone if they don’t have the caller’s number saved.
This is a choice that we have made. We could legislate this behavior and we as a society choose to act as if it is inevitable.
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