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Spam calls and texts are driving me fing crazy anyone have suggestions? (programming.dev)

submitted 11 months ago by catch22@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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After repeated data breaches that no company really seems to give a s--- about my phone is blowing up with literally hundreds of spam calls and texts month. I get and make MAAAAYBE 2 or 3 important calls per month, 180-200 of the rest are literally all spam. Anyone have any suggestions, apps ect that they have found refuge with? I really don't use SMS that much either, mostly it's via signal, discord whats app, ect...

Just to put it out there I run CalyxOS on a Pixel 5a.

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[–] variants_of_concern@lemmy.one 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They usually hang up as soon as you pick up most of the time, just bots checking if it's a real number for some reason

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Probably more likely they dial more calls than they can scam on the basis that a silent hang up call costs them only the cost of connecting the call, but their scammer's wages cost them more if not enough people answer and there is no one for the scammer to speak to.

It's essentially putting the cost of uncertain numbers of people answering onto the victims rather than the scammer - selfish, but so is scamming people!

Telemarketers do the same thing, although at least they often have to fear their local regulators in many countries if they do it too much, while scammers are criminals who are going to break the law anyway, so I suspect most silent calls are probably scammers.

[–] rdyoung@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nope. What they said is accurate. Some of them are bots calling and then flagging that as a good number when a person answers.

[–] Rivalarrival 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The autodialer "knows" that the overwhelming majority of people will not answer. It is trying to keep all the human attendants as busy as possible. If it sees that two attendants are available to answer calls, it doesn't place two calls; it places 20, or maybe 200 calls simultaneously, and transfers the first two answered calls to the humans. After that, it doesn't have another human available to receive a call, so it just hangs up on any of the other 18 or 198 people who also answered.

It is better for the scammers to hang up on a dozen people than to have one of their workers unengaged.