Robo Calls

[dreamingat30fps]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Most spoof the caller ID, and some also spoof a number in the target's home exchange so they pick up thinking that it is a neighbor or local business.

This is what actually saves me on my google voice number I use for my business. Since most of my clients are not in my area code I never answer calls from my area code because 99% chance it's a scam. Occasionally I'll get one from a different area code and every time I've answered it's someone in mumbai. Sorry but the second I hear that accent I hang up.

[nyalpine90]

Originally Posted by Patton250

I get 15-30 every day. It’s catastrophic now

me too

[Alfisti]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Yes, and they are sequentially/randomly dialing every single number in an exchange, with a recorded pitch and a "press 1 to speak with a representative" at what is usually an off-shore call center. (I manage a PBX with two exchange-sized DID blocks, and watch the incoming logs as these campaigns are happening.) Most spoof the caller ID, and some also spoof a number in the target's home exchange so they pick up thinking that it is a neighbor or local business..

Even using a SIP infrastructure, the volume of calls is going to get expensive quickly, really expensive. All this spoofing is driving me insane, i'm doing legit research and our contact rates are catastrophic. We are doing a job for AARP, asking customers about their satisfaction with the service, where they can improve etc, short survey, 8 mins, but no one is picking up.

[King Rudi]

Originally Posted by evil-G-nius

It is insane how many of these calls come in and back to back at that! I get so many that I dame near never answer my phone anymore. The other day we had a malfunction with the alarm and no one in the family answered the damn phone when the alarm company called because we all thought it was spam...but it was not.

This is the problem that I have. I use my cell for business. Contractors, sales people, logistics companies, our other facilities (18 locations total in the U.S.) etc. randomly call me. The shitty thing is that they call after I've had several robo calls so there are times I just ignore them; when it is indeed something import, time sensitive or has a financial impact of some degree. To go a step further, typically most people don't leave voicemail anymore. I get that I can see that I have a missed call, but if I don't know who you are and you don't leave a voicemail, I assume it's a telemarketer call and don't call back.

From someone who used to be sales manager, it does make me wonder what kind of close rate they have and how profitable the calls are. Based off the US population, even if they close 10% of the hundreds of calls made, that upwards of 32MM.

[MPOWER5266]

I get them all the time. If I get one while I am in the car I will usually answer and say the most repugnant shit I can think of to the person on the other line. Its like therapy.

[dscabra]

What irritates me more than anything is that the phone companies/providers know where the bulk callers are and could shut them down if they wanted to.

[Alfisti]

10pc? no way, 10th of 1pc. To give you some idea, on non customer sample we speak to a live human being about 6% of the time, of those 6% about 1 in 8 will participate in a survey where we start the call saying "Here is our web site, here is the survey registration number, no selling, no retention of your number etc" so if I am seeing that kind of low participation, these guys with foreign accents and selling stuff must surely be way way worse no?

[Alfisti]

Originally Posted by dscabra

What irritates me more than anything is that the phone companies/providers know where the bulk callers are and could shut them down if they wanted to.

I can assure you they are really trying, it's not easy to keep up with the moving parts, they have entire departments working on this 24/7.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by King Rudi

From someone who used to be sales manager, it does make me wonder what kind of close rate they have and how profitable the calls are. Based off the US population, even if they close 10% of the hundreds of calls made, that upwards of 32MM.

From many moons ago when I sat on an FTC panel about email spam, the response rate was estimated to be 0.01% for bulk emails IIRC. That might sound trivial, but the cost of sending a gazillion spams is also trivial enough to make that low response rate make financial sense.....

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by dreamingat30fps

This is what actually saves me on my google voice number I use for my business.

My personal "throwaway" Google Voice number that I had for years has been noticeably telemarketer-free. I changed numbers in May to a South Carolina number in the town where we bought our retirement property, and the only call that number received was on day #2 from a local hospital about COVID shots being available. (I called it last week just to make sure that it was still working!)

Whatever Google is doing (STIR/SHAKEN?) to fight robodialers seems to be working.....

[dscabra]

A screen snap of my T-Mobile Scam Blocker app today:

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

Even using a SIP infrastructure, the volume of calls is going to get expensive quickly, really expensive.

I am assuming that they are abusing unlimited calling client SIP plans, and probably even bouncing calls off of mis-configured SIP gateways on the public Internet for free. (Sorta like the early days of email spam, where the RFC standards required every single SMTP email server to act as an anonymous email relay for anyone to use and abuse.)

There's a Canadian-based SIP provider who has been under an ongoing Internet denial-of-service attack for weeks, and has had to re-engineer their entire SIP infrastructure and CAPTCHA the crap out of their customer support web pages. Makes me wonder who they pissed off enough to launch a DoS that big, and whether it is because someone thinks that they are hosting telemarketers or if it is some angry telemarketer that they booted from their service?????