Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/11/its-not-just-you-social.html
…
5 Likes
These robo callers should be burn at the stake, twice.
11 Likes
I think we should shove them all in the locked safe hidden at the back of a closet in Rob’s house.
14 Likes
With the dank carpet.
11 Likes
The hard truth is that with all the leaks and breaches of billions upon billions of individual accounts, all our information is out there for scamming purposes, and more is being leaked daily. Until something is changed systemically, all we can do is be vigilant and patronize institutions that are more security aware (like my local credit union!) and avoid those that treat us like disposable parts (any of the huge multinational banking conglomerates.)
10 Likes
Already warned my mother about this one. She’s probably on a bunch of sucker lists at this point, but she’s slowly learning to hang up on these scumbags (which basically means she’s hanging up on 90% of the incoming calls on her landline – working on getting rid of that next).
10 Likes
I still have a land line for emergencies. I never use it otherwise and never give it out, to anyone. The number is unlisted and has never been associated with me on any form.
Nevertheless, that phone still gets robocalls.
And don’t even get me started about the hundred or so blocked numbers I have on my cell, from random scammers.
10 Likes
Actually I receive robocalls and spammer on my cellphone much more than my land line. What happened is that a lot of people with cheaper cellphone data plans and voice calls ditched the landline, people also started to have their smartphone always on because they don’t have a landline.
So marketeers started to call more on cellphones and abandon landlines.
I have a VoIP number and I received very few calls from marketers.
8 Likes
It was a little easier to train my mother on that one. She knows to ignore any call from a number not associated with an entry in her contracts. But yeah, these bottom-feeders are everywhere – landlines, mobile, e-mail, social media, etc.
5 Likes
My landline and cell get robocalled in equal measure. I’m sure the caller just cycles through the numbers and doesn’t “know” the carrier. Who cares? A VOIP dialer must be dirt cheap by now.
My own VOIP number has no calls that get through, since it pre-screens with a recording. Robots blocking robots.
8 Likes
The GO₽ has a plan to fix this: End Social Security.
4 Likes
On a more positive note, I have found that there has also been a marked increase in the number of helpful strangers who call to alert me of problems with my social security number. God bless them, every one.
I made the mistake of using mine to contact a realtor…and now I need a new VOIP number. Having decades of relative anonymity blown so quickly was jarring. At one point, that line was ringing over 40 times a day, and a few family members were getting calls from agents searching for me, too. 
5 Likes
I have one for a security system, otherwise unused and unlisted like yours. It rings so much now, I’ve been tempted to use a recording of a fax machine as the voice mail message - just to see if it would make any difference.
5 Likes
I got one recently which was clearly a text-to-speech bot, warning me about “suspicious acti-vites” associated with my SSN. I guess the scammer made a typo when writing the script for their bot to read. The laziness is astounding.
2 Likes
Some of the scammers have a hack to tie-up land-line phones and make the victim think that they’ve hung up and called [their bank, credit card company, government, police], but instead are talking to another scammer.
The caller asks the victim to contact 911, or, in some cases, their financial institution, to alert them to the attempted fraud.
Now comes the crux of the scam. The victim believes the caller has hung up. In reality, however, the caller has remained on the line. The victim dials and believes they’ve reached 911 or their bank, when, in fact, they’re still on the line with another scammer posing as a police or bank investigator.
Victims are then urged to transfer money into a specific, separate bank account to protect it during the “investigation.”
8 Likes
I know someone whose father started falling for one of these (and was luckily stopped, because his family and bank were on high alert after he almost fell for a different scam).
Afterwards, his daughter was admonishing him slightly:
“Dad, we went over this, I thought you understood…”
“I knew the IRS wouldn’t call me, but I didn’t know Social Security wouldn’t call me!”
Yeah, 99% of my incoming (cell) phone calls are various scams, and none of them have any idea who owns the phone. It’s just random dialing. Most of the time when, curious as to which scammer is calling me, I answer the phone, no one is there - presumably because they’re simultaneously calling multiple people and only playing the message for the first one who picks up.
I stopped blocking numbers when I realized they were just spoofing real numbers and never called from the same number twice.
6 Likes
And for me, the spoofing was the final straw to convince my to port out my decades-old landline to VoIP. The service costs less per month that what AT&T charged just for its dreadfully inaccurate Caller ID alone, never mind the actual phone line.
2 Likes
For every 1 social security scam phone call I’ve had this year, I’ve had about 50 Chinese visa scam calls.
3 Likes
You KNOW that the robocall problem is out of control when it’s one of the few things that both parties in Congress can agree to take action on.
7 Likes
