Occasionally I get a spam call usually 6.00pm ish, so dinner time, my response is always the same " fυck off you ignorant pratt, its my fυcking dinner time" followed by the receiver slammed in their ear they usually never ring back.
The only people I actually want to talk to all iMessage or text or email me, every single time I pick up my phone its a scammer, a hawker, someone wanting something for nothing or someone I have no interest in whatsoever. I’m guessing if its this bad in Australia it has to be as bad or worse in the US…
It’s sort of mind blowing to me that the tech world has such good methods of addressing these issues via email now and quarantining dodgy spam mail yet with number spoofing I get endless calls from legit sounding sources after years of it being a problem. I literally just have it on Do Not Disturb indefinitely now and its probably the best compromise for now since I can still call people but they can’t ever bother me.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
My kid decided to play it these people recently. We’ve warned him it’s like engaging gypsies on the street. It was. The scam calls and texts mushroomed. Best to set your phone to ring only from contact list, of course you need to turn it off when waiting for a voice mail jail callback, I’ve also found that sending unwanted emails to junk is better than trying to unsubscribe. Just delete the garbage texts.
WARNING ABOUT UNSUBSCRIBE
A few months ago I had some spam emails in my Gmail spam folder that I was about to delete forever. Probably five or six of them accumulated over the past week.
I must have accidentally hit the touchpad and a Gmail option to unsubscribe came up. Without thinking too much I clicked it.
For the next two months I was flooded with spam (90% of it going straight to the spam folder). After a while they petered out and I only get one or two a day at most.
I never unsubscribe to anything now unless it's from a recognised entity, it just gets deleted.
I get about 20 robo calls a day (long story but I can't change the number and I have to answer just in case for work). I tried experimenting with old modem sounds hoping to trick the robot into thinking I'm a fax machine and delete my number automatically. Sadly, they aren't that smart. Then I started having fun with the telemarketers on the other end by getting all the way through the robot's "qualifying" questions to an actual person, then hit them with a funny robot diatribe via google translate from my PC. Sometimes I hear them laughing on the other end. Smart ones just hang up and move on.
The latest bit when the smart robot calls and asks me a question, I say "two plus two" for my answer. Some come back and say "four", after some delay, of course. I then follow it up with "tell me a joke". A few have come back with a real joke. Robots are getting smarter.
If somebody has a way of getting off the robot list, I would love to hear it. Sadly, I think the telemarketing companies buy a list or one is provided and will run with it until their contract runs out.
