An Idea on How to Combat Spam Calls

4 points by DiffEq 7y ago ↗ HN

I thought a nationwide movement/campaign might help to end these calls. Here is the idea: When a spammer calls, answer the call and set the phone down, continue on with your business. When the spammer (computer or real person) realizes there is not a real person there they will hang up. This will do two things. First it will slow down the rate a spammer can make calls, even if that spammer is a computer. This will make the spam campaigns less effective and will require more resources. This will help drive some of these people out of the business. The second thing it will do is tie up phone company resources, which would help force the hand of the phone companies to do something about this. Thoughts?

4 comments

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4ensic 7y ago ↗

Silence detection is easy for the phone spammers. There's a site that has bots to engage the spammer and get him/her to repeat themselves or explain further. JollyRogerTelelephone.com isn't free, but they can email you an MP3 if you want evidence of how long a bot kept the spammer on the line.

hindsightbias 7y ago ↗

You assume they have a scaling problem. If they're calling me three times a day and leaving automated voicemails, and everyone else is complaining about the same thing, I don't think they're worried about resources.

https://www.att.com/features/security-apps.html

cimmanom 7y ago ↗

That will cost the recipient minutes, which are capped on most phone plans. Whereas the caller is just paying for the electricity to run the computers hosting their voice bots.

superflit 7y ago ↗

This does not work (answer and silence).

All good robo calls have voice/presence detection.

What I did to solve my problem:

1. Answer the call;

2. Dial 1 to renew my "extended warranty" for the car I don't have.

3. Indian guy answers;

4. I say " Gimme gimme Money, all of it for free. OOOohhhhHH yes baby"

5. They hang up

Once your number is flagged as "crazy/do-not-call" all others robocalls/scam will stop. Mostly all robocalls I was getting were from scams like "window virus removal" or "extended warranty for your car".

Once you get a real person and ask for free unconditional money and that you deserve it because you are a nice person.

They get out of script and remove you.

I went from 2-3 calls a day to none.

Ps. Not proud.

Number is not on do-not-call list.