[Shop-talk] annoying calls

[Paul Parkanzky]

The short of it is that there is nothing you can do that will be
effective. Don't answer. If you do answer (I have a number for my
business that I have to answer because I get legitimate calls from
people I don't know) then don't speak or press any buttons. Your
interaction makes your number more valuable and it will be sold/traded
to other shady marketers and scammers. There's almost no point in
blocking numbers because the 'good' scammers will never call you from
that number again.

The way to fix this is to stop number spoofing so that there will be
traceability/accountability for callers. This is technically very easy
but the telecom companies have no financial incentive to flip that
switch and this is a place where I feel like congress is failing us.

99.99% of these calls are either predatory or outright scams and they
cost everybody something (if not just annoyance and inconvenience) and
vulnerable people huge amounts of money. They could be all-but
eliminated with some good legislation requiring the telecoms to
prevent number spoofing and restricting anonymous calling.

/rant.

-Paul

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 1:09 PM john niolon via Shop-talk
<shop-talk at autox.team.net> wrote:
>
> for some time I’ve been getting calls on cells phones and home phone offering me “lower credit card rates” and have a limited time to reply... when I press “1” to speak to an associate, I get a foreign being speaking almost english and when I tell him to stop calling they hang up..these calls are two to three times a week and sometimes twice a day.  Today I called their 800 number and got bank of america.  After three failed attempts and a call back I finally spoke to a person and she told me it was a scam and they mask their number and it shows BoAs 800 number.  She said there was nothing they could do... but put me on BoAs do not call list but offered no incouragement that that would stop the calls
>
> Is there anywhere I can take this to get it resolved...  I can’t seem to block the number on my home phone since it[s a 800 number and haven’t found a way on the cells yet...   come on phone/tech/gurus... little help here
>
> thanks
> John
>
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