Phone Scammers

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mimico_polak

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Holy hell...it's insane how bad this has gotten over the last few months! Anyone else?

Literally every few hours 'do you want a job? are you interested in pt work? I'm calling about duct cleaning in your area!'

How do you guys deal with this?? It's ludicrous that the telcos allow for this to be happening on their networks and don't care enough to bring these down.

It's getting to the point where I get a text message / call a few times/day.

Blocking doesn't help, answering doesn't help, ignoring doesn't help....fak.
 
That and e-mail invoices or mock returns of a few thousand dollars. Our accounting dept. has had to screen its emails through the IT people, because they are getting very good at simulating the real thing.
 
The invoicing / payment due emails are also out of control....I don't even know how many bills are waiting for me in Poland and how much money I owe to these magic companies.
 
I get a few texts, just block and delete. Luckily no calls.... For now.
 
mimico_polak said:
Holy hell...it's insane how bad this has gotten over the last few months! Anyone else?

Literally every few hours 'do you want a job? are you interested in pt work? I'm calling about duct cleaning in your area!'

How do you guys deal with this?? It's ludicrous that the telcos allow for this to be happening on their networks and don't care enough to bring these down.

It's getting to the point where I get a text message / call a few times/day.

Blocking doesn't help, answering doesn't help, ignoring doesn't help....fak.
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It's a lot more complicated than that. You should see how affordable a sim farm is these days. They also don't usually hit you with a link in the first message. It's usually something that if just blocked, could impact legitimate conversation. "Hi" or "Hello" or "Can we chat?" or "Got a minute?"

My Google pixel is pretty good at catching the SMS that get past the carrier. I know for a fact that the carrier is blocking multitudes more but for the non-blatant spam adds, there's nothing to go by except volume.

In the last week, my pixel filtered 13 out of 15 spam SMS that made it to my phone. It puts everything it catches in a folder/menu.
 
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I block everything, so my phone seems to default to "suspected spam".

Now I'm getting texts such as, "Do you want a job?". Fortunately, no I don't.

There's some pretty desperate ones such as, "Can we talk?", "I need to speak with you.", "Can we touch base?", "Let's chat!" Again, no.

My circle of friends is small, and my sphere of influence is smaller still, and the best thing about it is I know everybody's phone numbers so this kind of crap just gets blocked.

But yeah, there does seem to be a lot lately.
 
Have you looked into a whitelist app which blocks all incoming calls and text unless they're on an approved list or your contact list?

Other helpful apps are spam filters which update their database constantly to check for known spam numbers as well as spam content like, "Nigeran Prince" in the body of the text.

And then there are other more complicated apps which actually asks the sender or caller to verify their message and/or number in real-time, and that gets rid of the bulk of automated spam. But that can get pretty time-consuming and annoying for legitimate callers.
 
One of the houses on my street was purchased to build a new house on the lot. It was a young guy that lived at home and was building it himself as money came in. It sat for a year, was leveled and the lot sat for 3 years, then it took him 3 years to build the house. During that time I sent numerous duct cleaning companies there if they called me. They all got wise and started using Google maps a few years ago to check if addresses were legit. The satellite map here hadn't been updated for years and there are no street view images from my street, so it all looked koser on the satellite image and they fell for the ruse. :devilish:
 
I don't answer the phone any more, unless it's a number in my contact list.
Any legit numbers I didn't recognize can leave a message (Dr. office etc)

text and other messages just trash them, do not answer them.

Latest iphone iOS has a spam feature you can try.

Reason I don't answer, eventually your number should get marked as non answer or dead end, at least that is the hope. Even blocking and such things might indicate someone is still there, so gives them reason to try another number to call you from. Anyhow I think it's partly working. Though I still get the Chinese lady calls, she was quiet for a while. :rolleyes:
 
My wife only answers numbers she knows. I will answer anything but am quick to hang up on stupidity. Too many important calls have come from numbers I don't recognize.
 
In general I don't answer my phone if I don't recognize the caller. If it's legitimate they'll leave a message.

If I do answer an unknown call I don't speak, I just wait for them to make the first move. Most of these things are auto callers and if they don't hear a response they'll just hang up.
 
It comes and goes. It definitely got bad enough this year that I was considering abandoning the phone number I've had for two decades.

What really pisses me off is the "legitimate" texts/calls that put no effort at all into actually appearing legit. Credit card alerts, unsolicited messages from Doug Ford / PC, calls from my phone provider, barely rise above the noise. I actually thought the credit card one was a scam but I had time on my hands so I called the credit company and it turned out that was an actual alert.

Also I guess so many scammers spoof Telus / Koodo customer service numbers that the real thing showed up as a "suspected scam" call.

At this point it seems clear that telecoms are not going to put in much effort to fight spoofed calls without legislation, but neither the FCC nor the CRTC are currently equipped to be productive.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
At this point it seems clear that telecoms are not going to put in much effort to fight spoofed calls without legislation, but neither the FCC nor the CRTC are currently equipped to be productive.
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There is an easy solution but CRTC is more interested in protecting the oligopoly while pretending to be an impartial arbiter. Charge the provider for every spam call that gets through. Providers would have the issue solved in a week.
 
There are entire floors in office towers in Asia dedicated to phone / computer/ bank scams . This may never go away , it’s robbery that’s very hard to trace , and almost unpunishable in the home country.


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Based on my recent spam calls , I have applied to a bunch of jobs everywhere and they all have received my resume.

I block some numbers if I remember.

Somehow, I don't seem to be bothered by it much.
It's not much effort on me to answer the call and hang it up right away.

There are days that I answer 20 work related calls a day, what's another 2.

I stopped being rude or asking them to stop calling me.
Just hang up.
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