Comment on Anon explains scam callers

SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Rekorse@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Before cell phones, phones were opportunities. Calls could be anything. Maybe you won something or a politician is cold calling constituents or something. Maybe someone got your number from a friend and is calling for the first time.

  Its just very old habits that are hard to kill. Younger folks see random calls as almost certain scams. Text messages or emails with links get deleted immediately. Theres essentially a 0% chance a random call or text is actually beneficial to me.

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• Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I always answer unknown numbers.

  I don’t get scam calls or marketing calls. I’ve had a marketing ban on this number and it has never been listed and it’s about 25 years old or so. Like maybe once or twice I put it somewhere and got calls offering gym memberships for a while but that was a single place and I told them I have a marketing ban on my number so they stopped. It genuinely works to a very reasonable degree here in Finland. It’s not perfect but nothing is.

  So when an unknown caller calls me it’s usually a doctor or some such thing I actually do need to reply to.

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  • YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    What kind of square downvoted this

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• Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I have way too many things I need to answer that I don’t know the number of, and/or get mislabeled by the phone company, to do that, or trust “scam likely”.

  My primary care physician’s office is scam likely My neurosurgeon’s office is scam likely My neurologist’s office is scam likely

  I have a feeling the phone company, or whoever they get those labels from, might just be putting any number for a business name, linked to an Indian name, as “scam likely”. They don’t get my Orthopedic surgeon’s office wrong, or my nephrologist’s, or my endocrinologist’s, or my podiatrist’s and those are ones with European names. Everyone else, scam likely, even ones I didn’t list here, everyone else are doctors from India/Indian decent.

  I also get a lot of calls from government phones, and other private businesses, that just show “unknown”, or a number I don’t recognize, but are important for me to answer. I don’t know these numbers ahead of time, because they don’t know who is going to call me back when these contacts are arraigned.

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  • Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Such crude racism.

    And it explain why Indian customer service agents always use European names. I don’t want to come off as racist but sometimes I have been amused by a heavy Indian accent introducing themselves with a very traditional European name.

    It shouldn’t be funny, because it’s all because of racism and imperialism and colonialism.

    But I can’t help being amused sometimes when I’m drunk. I shouldn’t. But I have been.

    Fuck racism.

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    • Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Like, I am pretty sure this is what is happening. I don’t have good proof, and my sample size is small, but the coincidence is stretched enough to be suspect. They claim that places like hospital, and other professional networks, get these because when they buy groups of phone numbers for their PBX systems, sometimes they were owned, or used by, scammers.

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  • tacobellhop@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There are programs now that if they have like 12 seconds of audio of your doctor talking they can recreate it in ai and call you and ask you for anything they want. From pretty much any number they want.

    I basically do mail only unless I initiate the call myself.

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    • Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      all of my calls that have HIPAA protected information require I type in a pin number before the call can continue, and in a couple places that send my phone on file a text with a password/number. So I am not that worried about that one. Still crazy though, and makes sense why they implemented this.

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• Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I answer most calls but rarely get them. When it’s a scam, it’s usually the “play a recording and only use a real person if they push 1 at the end of it to talk to a real person” type. I’ll either hang up quickly or if I’m feeling bored and trollish I’ll hit 1 and pick apart their plot holes (like if they say there’s a warrant or my package is being held, why the fuck do they need to ask for my name?). Then they get frustrated that I pushed the button when I clearly know it’s a scam and hang up. I think the reason it’s rare that I get those calls is because they also put me on a “waste of time, don’t call” list or something like that.

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• ryedaft@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Aren’t the shown phone numbers spoofed?

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• piccolo@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I setup an IVR on my parents landline and a whitelist. Doesnt stop manual callers, but it stops all the automated calls.

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