Sanity check from you cord cutters

[Howling]

Robocalls have been going crazy on my business lines. "This is an important call. Don't hang..", click. Yesterday and today same caller ID every 15-20 minutes for most of the day in to the evening.

Need to setup the public education system for these scammer, telemarketer, robocall folk. Truck, rope, 5 miles dirt road. Educate a few and hopefully others when learn from example.

 

[ultrarunner]

Robocalls have been going crazy on my business lines. "This is an important call. Don't hang..", click. Yesterday and today same caller ID every 15-20 minutes for most of the day in to the evening.

Need to setup the public education system for these scammer, telemarketer, robocall folk. Truck, rope, 5 miles dirt road. Educate a few and hopefully others when learn from example.

I think sting operations are in order... I mean they are clearly breaking the law in most all cases but without fear of penalty...

 

[goeduck]

I got a robocall in Japanese on my work cell phone today. WTF? I pick up most every call on the work phone, but I am starting to let the out of area calls go to VM.

 

[ultrarunner]

I'm getting a regular thinking it is Chinese. It was a surprise the first time

 

[IXLR8]

Robocalls have been going crazy on my business lines. "This is an important call. Don't hang..", click. Yesterday and today same caller ID every 15-20 minutes for most of the day in to the evening.

Need to setup the public education system for these scammer, telemarketer, robocall folk. Truck, rope, 5 miles dirt road. Educate a few and hopefully others when learn from example.

Most of the Robocalls are set up to have a 4 ring limit. If you don't answer by the 4th ring, they hang up and move on to the next one. If they get no answer after X number of tries, they eliminate your number from their list as being a non-valid number. If you, or an answering machine, pick up now they log your number as a valid number and the calls just keep on coming. My advice, don't you or your answering machine(VoiceMail) pick up on the call until after at least 5 rings have occurred.

 

[Oaktree]

Two of the messages were "Official" sounding stating her Medicare has been suspended due to fraudulent activity and she must call immediately to provide security information to be reinstated...

The other message is from Microsoft stating her computer has been determined to have a virus and she must call for instructions on how to remove the block... she doesn't have a computer and has never touched one in her life but they had her name, etc...

Some of these scams (like "Microsoft" calling to tell you there's a virus in your computer) have been so well-publicized I can't imagine how anyone would fall for them today, but others are sneaky. I've had a few lately that sound like an actual person (as opposed to a recording), almost had me fooled a couple times. You gotta watch out for the question "can you hear me all right?"...I've heard that some really unscrupulous companies will edit calls to include your affirmative reply to make it sound like you agreed to something you didn't.

Most of the Robocalls are set up to have a 4 ring limit. If you don't answer by the 4th ring, they hang up and move on to the next one. If they get no answer after X number of tries, they eliminate your number from their list as being a non-valid number. If you, or an answering machine, pick up now they log your number as a valid number and the calls just keep on coming. My advice, don't you or your answering machine(VoiceMail) pick up on the call until after at least 5 rings have occurred.

I wasn't aware you could set the number of rings before pickup...AFAIK on mine it gives me a choice of 2 or 4, and that's it.

Dunno about others, but these robo-calls seem to come in waves. We'll sometimes go for weeks with very few, then go thru a spell with 8 or 10 in one day. I never answer the phone unless it's a number I know, but if the machine picks up I guess I'm still on their list. ullinghair:

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

So, I live about 50 miles from my OTA channels, and some of them are transition to the new broadcast bands. CBS is using a temporary lower powered transmitter, and I haven't been able to get it for 2 weeks or so.

They say they will be up to full strength by June 21st if everything goes to plan. I hope they all come back full strength as they were before.

 

[goeduck]

So, I live about 50 miles from my OTA channels, and some of them are transition to the new broadcast bands. CBS is using a temporary lower powered transmitter, and I haven't been able to get it for 2 weeks or so.

They say they will be up to full strength by June 21st if everything goes to plan. I hope they all come back full strength as they were before.

I would hope they would not go lower in power. That would not make sense.