Those &$@# telemarketers


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Old 07-21-17, 07:28 AM
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Those &$@# telemarketers

My cell phone number is ***-482-****

How can these telemarketers disguise their phone numbers to look like another "482" number in hopes that I'll answer? It happens at least twice a day.

More importantly, how can I block them? (I have two family members with a 482 number, so I can't block "all" 482's....)
 
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Old 07-21-17, 07:52 AM
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Do you have an IPhone? There's a few services that have software available for IPhones, but for a fee.

Otherwise, I'd just ignore the calls I don't recognize and let it go to voicemail. That's what I do now.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 07:57 AM
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I refuse to join the lemmings... Samsung !
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:01 AM
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You can go to Arlington Cemetery, find John Glenn's grave site & complain to him. Being a Democratic Senator from your state of Ohio since 1974, he, along with the other Senators & Congressmen have allowed this to happen since the induction of the robo calls.

It doesn't matter that he (John Glenn) cant hear you, he never heard your voices any way. We've been complaining about telemarketers robo calls for 40 + years & no one has done anything. They have continued to allow them to advance their technology to invade our lives. Nothing you or I can do about it.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:05 AM
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Well I have an IPhone (and an IPad) and I take offense to being called a lemming (twice now by you)!
I'm not a follow the leader type of person, I just like IPhones.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:24 AM
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I have the same thing on my landline. It'll be a local number but my cordless phone will also say "out of area".

Tried to get an answer from the phone company, all they will do is chat. It's easier to type back and forth rather than just calling to talk??? Drove me crazy.

Anyway, they were of no help.

Frontier: that is a local number.
Me: why does it say out of area?
Frontier: with your service we can't tell that.
Me: thanks a bunch. Click

It's always a telemarketer from who know where and
they can't or won't figure it out. I've only had this same
number for 45 years so maybe a little more time is needed.

Thanks, you got my blood pumpin' this morning.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:28 AM
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LOL. I have to admit I had to look that up. I never heard that term before.

packs of lemmings would occasionally run head-first off of cliffs, plunging to their self-induced death for no apparent reason. To refer to an individual as a lemming thus became synonymous with calling them a follower of a large group--a community on an unthinking course towards mass destruction.

mentalfloss.com

Remember folks its ones personal choice. I too am an I phone user.

But back to the topic.

Lou, googles your friend. Its called spoofing.. I also dont like that I get 3 calls a week that I can save 5% off my electric bill...

Caller ID Spoofing: All You Need To Know - Trapcall
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:37 AM
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Okay, those $@#& spoofers !

So it looks like I'm S.O.L.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:38 AM
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Baldwin, on my landline I use nomorobo
Works really well.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:42 AM
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I got rid of my land line years ago and we went all cellular. With that move went all my telemarketer calls. I had two land lines one personal and the second for my business. I worried that people would no longer be able to get in touch with me. However, I compiled a complete customer list and at the holidays, every one of them received a holiday card that included an updated magnetic business card with the new number so they could put it on the fridge. Never missed a beat and never looked back at land lines.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:52 AM
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Unless in extreme circumstances involving law enforcement, caller ID spoofing can NOT be traced.

Guess that lets Frontier off the hook, glad now I didn't type anything nasty.

And I'll definitely give nomorobo a try, it's FREE.

Thanks kids.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 08:52 AM
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nomorobo gets high marks for landlines and it's free.
They have an IOS version now and soon an Android version but those will cost $1.99/month.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 09:46 AM
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The best method I know of is to ignore calls from numbers I don't recognize. What has got me multiple times [I'm a slow learner ] are telemarketer calls from me Caller ID posts my number and just glancing at the phone I'd pick up thinking it was mark jr.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 02:31 PM
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If I didn't get spam calls, I'd hardly ever get ANY calls. I just press whatever buttons I need to get a person and then chat as long as I can before either they hang up or I get bored.

Oh, them and the County Probation office...which apparently is a close match to my number.

Unfortunately, as I read it, Nomorobo only works for VloP providers?
 
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Old 07-21-17, 03:41 PM
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I got rid of my land line years ago and we went all cellular. With that move went all my telemarketer calls.
That's the problem. There is no longer a large enough market in landline advertising.... it's now pushing into the PCS channels.

At one time... cell phones were "hands off" to advertisers but that day has come and gone. My Verizon cell phone service is horrendous. I'm getting hammered with out of state crap calls. Their answer.... we allow you to block ten numbers. What a load of crap. I can get 4-5 crap calls a day.

Nomorobo is a shining star in the cesspool of phone services. Although even they can't keep up with the tide of spoofing. I have that service on my home phone. I see a crap call come in. It gets dumped. Ten seconds later the ID changes and it gets dumped. Another ten seconds later and it's a local number. Of course it gets thru.

The PBA's and other "public service do gooders" are exempt from being blocked.

It really has reached epidemic proportions. There isn't much that pisses me off but this high up on my list.

Mike left an interesting link back in post 7. Trapcall. They have a service available they claim will supply you with the actual phone number for unavailable and spoofed calls. For $3.99 per month I think I'm going to try it.

I supply 24 hour services so these calls interfere with my sleep.
Sorry for the rant.... out of forum.
 
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Old 07-21-17, 07:51 PM
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I'm averaging about 10 a day due to my two business landlines that forward to my cell during business hours. Best I can do is catalog them in my cellphone "phonebook" as garbage so I never have to answer a repeat call from same number. Probably have 1000 in there by now. Lately I get the robocall where all you hear is a single beep and then dead air. I hang up, catalog it, and then don't answer any calls that come in within 10 minutes unless it's a known caller. After one of the "beep" calls I often get a second telemarketing call within minutes, ergo the habit of not answering anything within 10 minutes.

The National Do Not Call list was a joke from the day it was passed. If the idiots of both parties in Washington had REALLY wanted to do something for the consumer, they would not have exempted political calls, charities, non-profits, and survey companies. Damn it, if I say I don't want to be COLD-CALLED, I don't want to be cold-called by ANYONE!!! Ditto with allowing telemarketers to call businesses with absolutely NO restrictions (Do Not Call list doesn't apply).

Leading telemarketer calls lately are "your google listing...whatever" or "your google maps listing...whatever".
 
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Old 07-22-17, 11:19 AM
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First of all, if you're not on the National Do Not Call Registry, sign up (on the Internet www.donotcall.gov or by phone [1-888-382-1222]. My state also has its own Do Not Call registry and I find them more proactive than the feds. The SPAMmers generally ignore the registry but it gives your complaint more legitimacy if you're listed.

Once you're signed up, report every spam call you get. Unfortunately, you need to answer the call to gather the information you'll need to complain it was a SPAM call. I don't like answering calls I suspect are SPAM because that only lets them know they've got a working number, but that's the way the system works. Not always but often I notice a given number stops calling a week or two after I've reported them. You can file a complaint with the Feds here: ftccomplaintassistant.gov. My state has its own complaint reporting web site and I ALWAYS report EVERY spam call to both (in conjunction with adding it to my cell phone's blacklist).

I have a (paid) call blocking app on my Android smartphone that lets me block an unlimited amount of numbers. There are free apps but they always are less capable than the paid apps. Call blocking is important to me because I'm on a pay-as-you-go cell plan (MVNO carrier), so it costs me money every time I answer a call. Right now my blacklist has 128 entries but some of them block entire area codes, which means that one entry is effectively blocking several thousand telephone numbers. I would estimate I'm blocking at least a quarter of a million telephone numbers altogether. But it doesn't block access to my voice mail, so if someone from a blocked number legitimately needs to get in touch with me, they can leave a voice mail, provided they wait through the time-out. As yet, not a single SPAMer or robocaller has left a voice mail. In this app, blocked call notifications are configurable and I've got mine set so I never know I'm receiving a blocked call unless I go to the trouble of checking the application's logs. And there's never a day I don't receive a call but that gets blocked.

Unfortunately, because of government nonchalance, the only short-term solutions to the SPAM caller problem almost always involves you spending money. Which it shouldn't, but that's the truth of it. For instance, not all land line payment plans include no-charge Caller ID and AFAIK without that you can't effectively block calls. But if you do have Caller ID, then there are blocking devices you can put on your telephone line (Looking at Amazon, they appear to start at around $40). And some telephones have call blocking ability built in. But in most cases you're going to have to "train" the phone as to which are the nuisance calls. There are some smartphone apps that come with a database of known nuisance call numbers, so you're at least that much ahead, but they still allow you to make your own personal additions.

We've got one generation who now are young adults and another generation nipping at their heels, both of whom will have grown up with a cell phone attached to their hip from morning to night, and they obviously will be the most affected by the nuisance call problem (many of the the youngest generation are so dependent on their smartphone they might never see the need for owning a PC). So I have to believe that at some point they collectively will rise up and decide to put the kaibosh on this problem. I just hope neither me nor my smartphone will have been sent to the city landfill before that happens.
 
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Old 07-26-17, 01:13 PM
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As I've continued to look into this, I found a free product specifically for landline users that might be worth looking into for your home phone.

It's called NoMoRobo, and apparently it works because most of the illegal and scam callers are using VOIP (Voice Over IP), a call that originates on the Internet (from someplace like India, where they can't be prosecuted for violating US law), but gets routed to landline.

NoMoRobo advertises that they won the FCC's robocall blocking competition (who knew there was such a thing?), and the few reviews of it I checked out on YouTube made it look legit.

And it's free because they use the data they gather from their no-charge landline customers to populate the blacklist they use with the robocall blocking app they sell to smartphone users and commercial customers.
 
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Old 07-26-17, 01:29 PM
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Fred I think you read it wrong. It only supports VoIP lines, not conventional landlines. And NoMoRobo was mentioned back in post 9.
 
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Old 07-26-17, 04:30 PM
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Nomorobo is perfectly legit. You need to be on VoIP service because after you register your number with them. You need to set your phone service up for simultaneous ring. All calls go to them and you. You allow the phone to ring one time. If it rings a second time... it's legit. If only rang the one time its Nomorobo dead ending the call.
 
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Old 07-26-17, 05:54 PM
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Right Pete I saw in their questions that some services resist setting up for simultaneous ring if they don't have it already I guess. And some areas/providers just aren't supported at all (that would be me).

It still boils down to you have to have VoIP service.
 
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Old 07-27-17, 04:09 AM
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Got a call last night forgot what they were doing( maybe fix credit or student loans. Something) Was planning on wasting there time like they do me everyday but at end of call there was a option to push 9 and call will stop. We will see I hope so at least for that one.
 
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Old 07-27-17, 04:18 AM
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One theory on pushing any buttons is that it confirms to the computer on the other end that a live person answered the phone. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
 
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Old 07-27-17, 04:19 AM
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The most re occurring call I get is from Michelle [or whatever the name of the month is] about lowering my [non existent] credit card interest. A couple months ago I stayed on the line long enough expecting to give them a piece of my mind [not that I have any to spare] and heard the press 9 deal. I did and the calls stopped for 2-3 weeks but then started again
 
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Old 08-01-17, 07:43 AM
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Robo Calls

I too get the "lower my interest rate" robo calls. I block each call on my IPhone. A few days later I get the same call from a different number, I block each one. As you can see, I do not have very much to do.
 
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Old 08-01-17, 08:16 AM
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Once you become geriatric, you start getting all of those "free" MedicAlert calls for when you've fallen and can't get up . . . . or maybe even croaked ?

I always ask the kind person who's willing to get me my free unit if their Parents have one . . . . and if not, could they please take mine and give it to their Parents ?

I know it's a small thing; but I like to think that I've shown some level of appreciation for their thinking of me, and it'll be an opportunity to give a highly valuable gift to their loved ones.

No takers so far . . . . they're so shocked at my generosity that they just hang up.
 
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Old 08-01-17, 09:04 AM
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no takers so far . . . . They're so shocked at my generosity that they just hang up.
lol!
 
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Old 08-01-17, 02:03 PM
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Gunguy45:
Fred I think you read it wrong.
ME? Read it wrong? Don't be preposterous, m'boy.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]83723[/ATTACH]

Why, I've got the eyes of a teen-ager (maybe a teen-aged Ray Charles, but a teen-ager nonetheless).

Sorry for the mix-up.


I finally grew (a half a) brain and changed the configuration on my Android call blocker. I got tired of adding a new number to my Blacklist every couple of days so now I'm blocking any call not showing the Caller ID from someone in my address book. But it's not a fatal condition because it still lets them go to voice mail, so you can still reach me but you have to leave a message.
 
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