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Is a solution to spam phone calls to answer it?

2 points by prirun ↗ HN
I've been doing this recently, then setting the phone down and continuing to work. If everyone did this, it would tie up the spammer's resources. I tied up my first spam call today for 30 seconds. The last call I got was in a loop, with a guy saying my pre-authorized PS5 was being shipped, to cancel press 1. I just let it loop for 2 minutes, then it hung up.

It somehow feels better to me than not answering it, listening to it ring, and then getting a missed call notification.

4 comments

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talldayo
No, there is an automated system that flags you for extra spam if your number picks up or responds to the call in any way.
pavel_lishin
What about if it goes to voicemail after some rings? Does that get flagged as "human, keep dialing"?
pavel_lishin
What about if it goes to voicemail after some rings? Does that get flagged as "human, keep dialing"?

(It is very tempting to set my outgoing voicemail message to be a fax modem's tones, but I don't want to be mean to people who actually need to leave me a voicemail.)

pavel_lishin
Maybe, but there's no human behind that initial phone call. If it can redial once a second, I guess you're slowing them down by 30x by staying on the line for 30 seconds - but I'd wager that they're making enough money that even by having to spin up 30x more resources to auto-dial, it's still a profitable business.

fwiw, I have my phone set to ignore "likely spam" calls, and to not notify me about new voicemails with a vibration. There's a non-zero chance I'll miss an important call about my child, but 99% of these calls originate from an area code we no longer live in, so the trade-off seems acceptable to me - and I check whether I have _legitimate_ voicemail every few hours or so in a tab on my laptop.