Don’t give the marketers ideas or they might start spoof-texting me too.
There’s a robocall that sounds Japanese and comes mostly from the NYC area code that hits us at work 50 or more times in a row. It’s been going on for months and we still have no idea what the point is. The things are destroying the utility of telephones.
A family member in Manhattan constantly gets Chinese-language robocalls. Can this be what you’re getting?
I suspect those are Chinese call, Downpuppy. I get them too, here in Toronto. My wife understands them. They’re the classic “you’re in trouble with the tax authorities, you better call and fix it or you’re going to jail” scam. They’re M.O. is to just blanket call an area where they figure there are a lot of Chinese immigrants. There aren’t enough Japanese immigrants in Canada or the USA to make it worth doing.
It is wonderful to live in a country in which not just robocalls, but any kind of cold-calling is simply illegal. The only such calls I’ve ever received here were from a gas/electric utility, which circumvented the law by running their operation out of Switzerland.
Yeah, here on Long Island we’ve also gotten the Chinese call to random people in my office. (Not our cell phones, either, our land lines.)
So Bill, what you’re saying is, you think scammers will be able to fake voice, and caller ID, but not send a fake text message?
@Kilby: We still get the occasional scam call. Mostly from “Microsfot tech support” speaking English with a strong Indian accent. No idea what sort of return they get on that one. We also get robo-calls that I never listen to long enough to figure out what they want and once in a while consumer pollsters.
@ DemetriosX – hard to believe, but presumably these scams work often enough that is worth the effort. Here in the UK we get calls “from” the BT or Microsoft Technical Department; they used to be mainly real people with Indian accents, but more recently have been recordings/ robocalls with intros by people speaking with a relatively posh middle class English accent. But it works, sometimes, even on people you would think would know better, like this 73-yo retired computer manager who lost £7,800… the victim was told his internet router had been hacked and needed security tests, and then handed over bank details in order to be sent a “£500” reward for the inconvenience, etc.
BT is British Telecom, btw, with whom a lot of people have their phone and internet.
Wearing my cynical hat, the phonecos cannot stop everything, but can reverse lookup for a few dollars more…
Carlfink, of course they can send a fake text message — but sending a fake text message (for example) from my son’s phone number asking whether it’s a good time to call, then robocalling me only after I respond in the affirmative, might be a bit much.
Wasn’t robocalling illegal in the US as well? Laws hardly matter if there’s no enforcement.
We never pick up on our landline until the caller starts to leave a message on the answering machine (all of our friends etc. know to do anyway), so I’m not sure what the breakdown of the half dozen or so hangup calls we get on an average day is. Occasionally a spammer’s robot *will* actually leave a message — usually either the “you will be arrested if you don’t call back to settle this right away” one or the “free medical device, press 1 to accept, press 2 to have yourself removed from our calling list in futre” (oh, SUUUURE) one.
More puzzling is the fact that years — decades? — we’ve been regularly (once or twice a day) getting a “call” from something that apparently thinks we’re a fax machine. Ten-second burst of static/noise with no human voice before or after. Assuming it’s the same “caller,” one wonders if they couldn’t have discovered the futility many years ago.
Unless your number is (mistakenly) part of a list of faxes : one puts their paper in the fax, presses just one button (the list was preset once, long ago, so as to save time), then the paper gets sent to the whole list, including you. Someone might have complained about not receiving their fax, but it’s easier just to add one more number to the preset list, rather than checking the whole to modify the wrong number.
“Wasn’t robocalling illegal in the US as well? Laws hardly matter if there’s no enforcement.”
International calling is cheap. If the criminal is overseas, it’s not worth the cost to go get them.
I’m going to run for President on the sole campaign plank of sending Seal Team Six to go deal with them. Internet and phone spam cost billions of dollars of lost productivity to Americans. Therefore, it’s economic terrorism.
Maybe I’m naive, but instead of allowing a VoIP user to enter any phone number they wish, can’t companies like Skype be required to provide a generic number that is associated only with them?
The spoofing of a number is irritating. The land line prefix that covers where I live is small, rural, and almost all residential yet I get continual calls from a company that wants to lower my credit card interest rates that caller ID shows as a number in my area code/prefix. I have been messing with them lately, asking what their number is if we get disconnected and their address is so I have it for my records. I got an 800 number once but they usually hang up if I ask anything up front. Hasn’t started on my cell yet, thankfully.
We should be able to give the bad guys who phish like this fake bait CC numbers and other info that alerts the authorities if they use it for ID theft.
Many of the forums and mailing lists that I read have had some form of a
discussion about robocalls recently. My advice for cell phones and VoIP lines
is to use a robocall blocker until legislation and other technology catch up.
I like nomorobo.com , others like robokiller – there are several others.
$20/year is a great deal for much less annoyance.
Here’s a more authoritative source:
(The clearer version of what that URL says is, “Just $6,790 Of $208 Million In Robocall Fines Have Been Collected By The FCC”.
@narmitaj Oh, sure it works. The question is just how well it works in Germany when you have people only speaking highly accented English. The demographic most likely to fall for it is probably the least likely to have much English.
John Kowalkowski, I was just mentioning this to my wife yesterday as one way law enforcement — with the assistance of credit card companies — could put a stop to this if they only had the will to.
Sometimes the spammers outsmart themselves: Twenty years ago, if a number came on the screen with my area code and exchange, I might be fooled into thinking it’s somebody local and legit: but for whatever reason, I’ve never come across ANYBODY other than my wife, my kids and me who share our area code and exchange, so I don’t even have to think about whether to hit “delete.”
We’ve moved out of our original WI area code, so when I see a call with that area code, and it isn’t Hubby or three or four friends – all of whom are in my address book and their names will come up – I don’t answer. However, I’ve found if you answer and just say nothing, that’s the end of the nuisance. If I DON’T answer, the calls continue, one after another.
I now keep my phone on silent and check it every few hours to see if any legitimate calls were missed that I should return. I much prefer email for communication.
“We should be able to give the bad guys who phish like this fake bait CC numbers and other info that alerts the authorities if they use it for ID theft.”
You can. Just make up a number. If the possibility that someone might actually have that number, use a used-up gift-card number. I keep a used-up VISA gift card around just for those online offers that are free, but require “give us a credit-card number in advance so we can bill you if you don’t cancel before the free trial ends.” It’ll pass the checksum, because it’s a valid number… but if any merchant tries to charge it for something, they’ll find it is out of funds. So sad.
” I’ve never come across ANYBODY other than my wife, my kids and me who share our area code and exchange”
I’m not married, and my kid’s phone has a different exchange. I also live 3000 miles away from where I did when my phone number was issued. So the spammers who go to the trouble of faking a “local” number for me…
If you use the RSS thingie, as Kilby convinced me to do, it’s possible to extract the comic . . . I was thrilled about this ‘side benefit’, so to speak . . . and then just add .gif to the URL . . .
You can also get it from the web page. You just need a bit of finagling. In Firefox, switch view to No Style, find the image and get the base file name. Add .jpg or .gif to the end.
Shrug – we do the same with our house line – answering machine always answers. (As I have posted before our problem goes back long before the current problem – about 30 years as some phones with similar numbers belong to businesses with idiots for customers.) If we give someone the number and want to make sure they don’t hang up when they get the machine – we tell them about it and to talk and if we are home we will pick up. We have one friend who knowing the problems always starts off by ordering a pizza, and then yells at us to pick up the phone.
We also don’t know who or why we have have hangup calls. Some of the idiots start to talk. One place was calling around 5 times a day and leaving a message (not a good scam – call while people are out at work and don’t leave a number for them to call you back) for about 2 years, then it changed to a similar message for a different kind of loan they were offering to lower our rates on. We got to the point where when they start to talk and we are still asleep one or the other picks up the phone next to the bed (one phone each side) and then hangs up to end the call.
The government and phone companies are working on this. Problem is that as soon as there is a solution, the crooks find a new version. I have seen the companies and agencies testifying before Congressional committees on CSPAN 3.
When we had a landline and a voice-activated answering machine, until I’d retired I’d never realized how many robo-calls we got every day. Soon after, we both got cell phones and canceled the land line. That joy lasted for several years, ’til the robo-calls began on cell phones. I have put mine on silent most of the time, checking every few hours to see if anyone relevant to me called; I don’t have voicemail, so I don’t have to deal with messages, either.
So much for ‘progress in communication’.
Early this morning at 4 am we had just gotten into bed to go sleep and the phone started ringing. Robert was so annoyed at robocall at that time that rather than let it go to the machine, he picked it up and answered very annoyed. He quickly changed his voice and attitude. It was the police officer (mentioned on another post) that was at my mom’s house with her.
I have special ringers for those whose calls for whom I will answer my cell phone – James Bond for Robert (I can always hear it and he is a fan), Colonial Williamsburg harpsichord for members of our reenactment unit, violin music for family, friends, and my my embroidery chapter. If not one of those – not answered unless someone else’s name that I know is showing. Exception being – if we are somewhere and expecting a call I will answer if there is a good chance it the call we are expecting – for example – we go to our RV dealer for work to be done on the RV and leave the dealer,, have lunch, walk around in nearby stores and such. Since the dealer has a number of phone lines the call will probably not come in to me on the number I have to call the dealer, so I will answer any call that comes in with the right area code – as there will not be a lot of them that are wrong.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Don’t give the marketers ideas or they might start spoof-texting me too.
There’s a robocall that sounds Japanese and comes mostly from the NYC area code that hits us at work 50 or more times in a row. It’s been going on for months and we still have no idea what the point is. The things are destroying the utility of telephones.
A family member in Manhattan constantly gets Chinese-language robocalls. Can this be what you’re getting?
I suspect those are Chinese call, Downpuppy. I get them too, here in Toronto. My wife understands them. They’re the classic “you’re in trouble with the tax authorities, you better call and fix it or you’re going to jail” scam. They’re M.O. is to just blanket call an area where they figure there are a lot of Chinese immigrants. There aren’t enough Japanese immigrants in Canada or the USA to make it worth doing.
It is wonderful to live in a country in which not just robocalls, but any kind of cold-calling is simply illegal. The only such calls I’ve ever received here were from a gas/electric utility, which circumvented the law by running their operation out of Switzerland.
Yeah, here on Long Island we’ve also gotten the Chinese call to random people in my office. (Not our cell phones, either, our land lines.)
So Bill, what you’re saying is, you think scammers will be able to fake voice, and caller ID, but not send a fake text message?
@Kilby: We still get the occasional scam call. Mostly from “Microsfot tech support” speaking English with a strong Indian accent. No idea what sort of return they get on that one. We also get robo-calls that I never listen to long enough to figure out what they want and once in a while consumer pollsters.
@ DemetriosX – hard to believe, but presumably these scams work often enough that is worth the effort. Here in the UK we get calls “from” the BT or Microsoft Technical Department; they used to be mainly real people with Indian accents, but more recently have been recordings/ robocalls with intros by people speaking with a relatively posh middle class English accent. But it works, sometimes, even on people you would think would know better, like this 73-yo retired computer manager who lost £7,800… the victim was told his internet router had been hacked and needed security tests, and then handed over bank details in order to be sent a “£500” reward for the inconvenience, etc.
BT is British Telecom, btw, with whom a lot of people have their phone and internet.
Wearing my cynical hat, the phonecos cannot stop everything, but can reverse lookup for a few dollars more…
Carlfink, of course they can send a fake text message — but sending a fake text message (for example) from my son’s phone number asking whether it’s a good time to call, then robocalling me only after I respond in the affirmative, might be a bit much.
Wasn’t robocalling illegal in the US as well? Laws hardly matter if there’s no enforcement.
We never pick up on our landline until the caller starts to leave a message on the answering machine (all of our friends etc. know to do anyway), so I’m not sure what the breakdown of the half dozen or so hangup calls we get on an average day is. Occasionally a spammer’s robot *will* actually leave a message — usually either the “you will be arrested if you don’t call back to settle this right away” one or the “free medical device, press 1 to accept, press 2 to have yourself removed from our calling list in futre” (oh, SUUUURE) one.
More puzzling is the fact that years — decades? — we’ve been regularly (once or twice a day) getting a “call” from something that apparently thinks we’re a fax machine. Ten-second burst of static/noise with no human voice before or after. Assuming it’s the same “caller,” one wonders if they couldn’t have discovered the futility many years ago.
Unless your number is (mistakenly) part of a list of faxes : one puts their paper in the fax, presses just one button (the list was preset once, long ago, so as to save time), then the paper gets sent to the whole list, including you. Someone might have complained about not receiving their fax, but it’s easier just to add one more number to the preset list, rather than checking the whole to modify the wrong number.
“Wasn’t robocalling illegal in the US as well? Laws hardly matter if there’s no enforcement.”
International calling is cheap. If the criminal is overseas, it’s not worth the cost to go get them.
I’m going to run for President on the sole campaign plank of sending Seal Team Six to go deal with them. Internet and phone spam cost billions of dollars of lost productivity to Americans. Therefore, it’s economic terrorism.
Maybe I’m naive, but instead of allowing a VoIP user to enter any phone number they wish, can’t companies like Skype be required to provide a generic number that is associated only with them?
The spoofing of a number is irritating. The land line prefix that covers where I live is small, rural, and almost all residential yet I get continual calls from a company that wants to lower my credit card interest rates that caller ID shows as a number in my area code/prefix. I have been messing with them lately, asking what their number is if we get disconnected and their address is so I have it for my records. I got an 800 number once but they usually hang up if I ask anything up front. Hasn’t started on my cell yet, thankfully.
We should be able to give the bad guys who phish like this fake bait CC numbers and other info that alerts the authorities if they use it for ID theft.
Many of the forums and mailing lists that I read have had some form of a
discussion about robocalls recently. My advice for cell phones and VoIP lines
is to use a robocall blocker until legislation and other technology catch up.
I like nomorobo.com , others like robokiller – there are several others.
$20/year is a great deal for much less annoyance.
Here’s a more authoritative source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/04/die-robocalls-die-how-to-guide-stop-spammers-exact-revenge
“Laws hardly matter if there’s no enforcement.”
Or insufficient enforcement:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190401/09525141921/just-6790-208-million-robocall-fines-have-been-collected-fcc.shtml
(The clearer version of what that URL says is, “Just $6,790 Of $208 Million In Robocall Fines Have Been Collected By The FCC”.
@narmitaj Oh, sure it works. The question is just how well it works in Germany when you have people only speaking highly accented English. The demographic most likely to fall for it is probably the least likely to have much English.
John Kowalkowski, I was just mentioning this to my wife yesterday as one way law enforcement — with the assistance of credit card companies — could put a stop to this if they only had the will to.
Sometimes the spammers outsmart themselves: Twenty years ago, if a number came on the screen with my area code and exchange, I might be fooled into thinking it’s somebody local and legit: but for whatever reason, I’ve never come across ANYBODY other than my wife, my kids and me who share our area code and exchange, so I don’t even have to think about whether to hit “delete.”
We’ve moved out of our original WI area code, so when I see a call with that area code, and it isn’t Hubby or three or four friends – all of whom are in my address book and their names will come up – I don’t answer. However, I’ve found if you answer and just say nothing, that’s the end of the nuisance. If I DON’T answer, the calls continue, one after another.
I now keep my phone on silent and check it every few hours to see if any legitimate calls were missed that I should return. I much prefer email for communication.
“We should be able to give the bad guys who phish like this fake bait CC numbers and other info that alerts the authorities if they use it for ID theft.”
You can. Just make up a number. If the possibility that someone might actually have that number, use a used-up gift-card number. I keep a used-up VISA gift card around just for those online offers that are free, but require “give us a credit-card number in advance so we can bill you if you don’t cancel before the free trial ends.” It’ll pass the checksum, because it’s a valid number… but if any merchant tries to charge it for something, they’ll find it is out of funds. So sad.
” I’ve never come across ANYBODY other than my wife, my kids and me who share our area code and exchange”
I’m not married, and my kid’s phone has a different exchange. I also live 3000 miles away from where I did when my phone number was issued. So the spammers who go to the trouble of faking a “local” number for me…
GoComics makes it impossible to extract just the comic, but today’s Baldo seems to fit with this discussion.
https://www.gocomics.com/baldo/2019/04/10
If you use the RSS thingie, as Kilby convinced me to do, it’s possible to extract the comic . . . I was thrilled about this ‘side benefit’, so to speak . . . and then just add .gif to the URL . . .
You can also get it from the web page. You just need a bit of finagling. In Firefox, switch view to No Style, find the image and get the base file name. Add .jpg or .gif to the end.
Shrug – we do the same with our house line – answering machine always answers. (As I have posted before our problem goes back long before the current problem – about 30 years as some phones with similar numbers belong to businesses with idiots for customers.) If we give someone the number and want to make sure they don’t hang up when they get the machine – we tell them about it and to talk and if we are home we will pick up. We have one friend who knowing the problems always starts off by ordering a pizza, and then yells at us to pick up the phone.
We also don’t know who or why we have have hangup calls. Some of the idiots start to talk. One place was calling around 5 times a day and leaving a message (not a good scam – call while people are out at work and don’t leave a number for them to call you back) for about 2 years, then it changed to a similar message for a different kind of loan they were offering to lower our rates on. We got to the point where when they start to talk and we are still asleep one or the other picks up the phone next to the bed (one phone each side) and then hangs up to end the call.
The government and phone companies are working on this. Problem is that as soon as there is a solution, the crooks find a new version. I have seen the companies and agencies testifying before Congressional committees on CSPAN 3.
When we had a landline and a voice-activated answering machine, until I’d retired I’d never realized how many robo-calls we got every day. Soon after, we both got cell phones and canceled the land line. That joy lasted for several years, ’til the robo-calls began on cell phones. I have put mine on silent most of the time, checking every few hours to see if anyone relevant to me called; I don’t have voicemail, so I don’t have to deal with messages, either.
So much for ‘progress in communication’.
Early this morning at 4 am we had just gotten into bed to go sleep and the phone started ringing. Robert was so annoyed at robocall at that time that rather than let it go to the machine, he picked it up and answered very annoyed. He quickly changed his voice and attitude. It was the police officer (mentioned on another post) that was at my mom’s house with her.
I have special ringers for those whose calls for whom I will answer my cell phone – James Bond for Robert (I can always hear it and he is a fan), Colonial Williamsburg harpsichord for members of our reenactment unit, violin music for family, friends, and my my embroidery chapter. If not one of those – not answered unless someone else’s name that I know is showing. Exception being – if we are somewhere and expecting a call I will answer if there is a good chance it the call we are expecting – for example – we go to our RV dealer for work to be done on the RV and leave the dealer,, have lunch, walk around in nearby stores and such. Since the dealer has a number of phone lines the call will probably not come in to me on the number I have to call the dealer, so I will answer any call that comes in with the right area code – as there will not be a lot of them that are wrong.