Strange Phone Calls

More hacking and planning for Nov 8 interruptions?

With the advent of spoofing, the DNC list is a joke. If you have FiOS or any other digital voice service use nomorobo.com. It's an absolute killer and saved our sanity.

Long story short- you use digital call forwarding so that your calls simultaneously ring at nomorobo. If it's a number on their black list, they pick up and hang up, generally before your phone has a chance to ring.

It's free for home users. They use your incoming call history, aggregated with other customers, to figure out what numbers are scam numbers. They then sell the service to business users.

Edit to add: you hear nothing when you pick up because the auto dialers are simultaneously calling hundred or thousands of numbers from a call center populated by only a few dozen meth addicts and felons. So when they get some poor slob to pick up they transfer the call to the toothless huckster. That takes a little time. It could take forever if they're all out in the parking lot out back cranking up.

robocalls shouldn't be coming after 9pm. If they are coming over night, someone is targeting you. people can spoof a number to show up on caller ID. It could be someone harassing you on purpose for some stupid reason like you mow your lawn on Saturday and they don't like it

I block the numbers, especially if they persist. Sometimes I block patterns, such as the first 8 digits of a 10-digit number. You might even consider blocking entire area codes, based on where you expect calls to come from.

While landlines and VOIP lines to homes are becoming rarer and less used, I still find them useful, so I put a bit of work into keeping them that way. Cell phone conversations are better than before, but their distortion makes them uncomfortable for me, which is why I like my VOIP line better.

I get countless "unknown" calls on my cell and there is no way to block them.

I block a number when I get one of these calls, but it's hydra-headed. For every one I block, calls come in from 4 or 5 other numbers in different area codes for the same purposes. Free cruises (ha!), Lisa about my credit card (don't worry, not a problem), oodles of people trying to sell me solar panels, alternate energy suppliers, etc, etc, etc. And I am on the DNC list - I think I'll try the robo one mentioned above; that sounds promising.

I get these calls frequently too (always on my landline).

However, my family and friends are all living in England and mainland Europe (plus my spouse is often overseas on business trips). They all call my landline on Skype (as a phone call) if they can't get through via my iPhone or iPad; the caller ID always has an obscure US area phone number.

Out of curiosity I've looked up the area code numbers of these Skype calls which originated overseas and they are from random places such as in California, Washington, Illinois etc presumably how/where the call is patched through when it is transmitted to the US. They are never the same numbers each time so I feel unable to block them.

eliz said:

I get countless "unknown" calls on my cell and there is no way to block them.

There are ways to block them.

Article in the Star Ledger on this today. Between what you are all saying and this article, I see I am not alone and it is getting worse.

Yes, it is hydra-headed. And I don't want to block a whole range of area codes as I have kids who are sometimes on the road and Lord knows where they may call from, or which friend's cell phone they might be borrowing since theirs is broken/unpaid/etc.

Are the calls coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE?

ridski said:

Are the calls coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE?

I hear dead people.

Yeah. I should never have rented that spare room to those guys from India who said they worked for the IRS.

ridski said:

Are the calls coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE?