Dealing with Spammers & Scammers

[anon(181017)]

Hi Jerry,

Any advice on dealing with spam robocalls and text messages? I get several each day, and it's driving me crazy... The calls come from spoofed numbers so individual blocking is ineffective. I've tried Truecaller and Mr. Number, but they still let some calls and texts through, and let the robocallers leave voicemail...

I'm almost to the point of getting a new number when I switch to Google Fi in a month or so. If I do this, what steps do you recommend to keep my new number off these spammers' lists? Any app permissions to be watching out for, that gives a rogue app the ability to take my number and send it back to the home planet? I can think of several friends who would have me in their contact lists and be careless enough with the apps that they download, there may not be much I can do to keep my number safe anyways.

Just wondering if you have any tips, I know you're someone who values privacy & security. Thanks for all your great contributions to AC!

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

First off, a new number might mean even MORE calls. With so many phones out in the wild there's a good chance a new number will be recycled and the person who had it before you could have left a mess attached to it.

In theory an app could certainly pull phone numbers out of someone's address book and harvest them. It;s one of the things I worry about, too. But I've never heard of it actually happening. Chances are some company you dealt with just sold you as a potential customer for XXX product to another company who just makes lists of people. Once you get on those lists you never get off of them.

You've tried the right apps. Trucaller and MrNumber have the best spam detection in my opinion. I guess the next step would be to block every unknown number if you can get away with it.

I just delete the voice mails when one gets through and count to ten silently. If Google wants to get more active as a carrier, this is a project they can work on fixing.

 

[Gweeper64]

Sometime last year, Flo recommended an app called "Should I Answer?" as an app in the AAA app arena (I think it won that week). I've been using it since then. It is a crowd sourced filtering/blocking app with some flexibility on choosing what to block. Check it out.

 

[anon(181017)]

Thanks for the great response Jerry! Excellent point about the baggage that could come with changing to another number, I definitely will not risk that. And you're probably right about how my number got on "the list", I'm usually careful not to give my number to companies unless I absolutely have to, but all it takes is one.

Gweeper64 - thanks for the suggestion, I do think I remember seeing that on AAA. As Jerry said, the spam detection on the apps I currently use is pretty good, the problem is the phone still sometimes rings and the robots can leave a voicemail. I think for the time being I will set my "do not disturb" to stay silent for all non-contact callers, and then just go through once a day and delete all their vmails. And silently count to 10, as Jerry suggested.

Hopefully Google and/or other carriers step up their game in the future!

 

[robk84]

I find these really irritating but I decided when its convenient to fight back. So I answer and waste their time.

Alarm systems/solar installation: I give them the address of an abandoned house I know of. Occasionally I get follow up calls asking if I gave the wrong address cause a tech said it was abandoned, I then pull the gotcha and reveal my master plan of wasting their time and money.

Scammers pc/irs/etc: I string them along and along and along as long as I can. I feign ignorance. For the pc people I keep giving them my ip address incorrectly or tell them I think my modem is plugged in and ask them to hold for a few minutes. For IRS calls, they usually want you to drive to target and buy giftcards. I just pretend im driving to target. Then I pull out an old used giftcard and read off the numbers when they say its wrong I make up a number. I keep doing this till I have a gotcha moment or they hang up.