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All of a sudden I'm receiving 10+ telemarketing/spam calls per day!

usagora

usagora

macrumors 601
Original poster
Nov 17, 2017
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I've only had two cell phone numbers in my life. My current number I've had for about 8 years. I've NEVER experienced anything like this before. At most, I might receive 1-2 spam calls per week. All of a sudden starting this past Saturday, I've been bombarded with them. Between Saturday and today (so far) I've received 23 of these calls. For some reason, I received only 1 on Sunday. And they're almost always a number that hasn't called me before, so blocking doesn't help. I finally had to go in to the Phone settings to silence all unknown callers, as this was disrupting my daily life.

I've not signed up for anything recently requiring my phone number. I have no idea why this is happening all of a sudden. Has this happened to any of you before? It will be interesting to keep checking my missed calls to see if this trend continues. I sure hope not.

1656965942325.png
 
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Your number was somehow high jacked/sold, and being passed around to multiple scam centers likely in Jakarta or the Philippines. Spam waves will fluctuate, but they usually die off. The most important thing you don’t do, is answer any of them, because they have an algorithm that actually can determine if you answer these calls, and said calls continue to persist.

If I were you on a cautionary note, I would keep watch on your credit monitoring/credit score and bank account(s). If you have alerts that can be enabled for any activity on your account, I would make sure those are prompted.
 
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Yeah, I got this a few months ago.

Weekend day, was getting repeated spam calls (robo-dialer was dialing my number three times in a row every 15-20 minutes: trying to bypass "Allow Repeated Calls"?). Already had "Silence Unknown Callers" on and cellco provided call blocker, so not REALLY annoying, but annoying enough to whip up a "BlockSpammers" Focus: allow contacts through, allow specific apps minus Phone to send notifications (Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Messages). All the spam went to the Notification Summary Report. Once Summary Report was "clean", turned off the Focus.

Eventually stopped later in the day. Guessing cellco cut-off the incoming feed from the gateway provider (assuming off-shore).

Unfortunately, these gateway providers don't have to be STIR/SHAKEN compliant for another year (Jun 30, 2023).

arstechnica.com

FCC says it closed a loophole that many robocallers used to evade blocking

Starting today, small carriers must use STIR/SHAKEN Caller ID authentication tech.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
 
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Relentless Power said:
Your number was somehow high jacked/sold, and being passed around to multiple scam centers likely in Jakarta or the Philippines. Spam waves will fluctuate, but they usually die off. The most important thing you don’t do, is answer any of them, because they have an algorithm that actually can determine if you answer these calls, and said calls continue to persist.

If I were you on a cautionary note, I would keep watch on your credit monitoring/credit score and bank account(s). If you have alerts that can be enabled for any activity on your account, I would make sure those are prompted.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't answer them . . . except for one because I went to press the stem of my AirPod to pause a music track this morning at the exact same second a call came in and thus I inadvertently answered it 🙄 Of course I hung up immediately once I realized what happened.

I've received yet another 5 calls since posting this thread. Of course I have all unknown callers silenced now. Thank goodness that's an option!

Hopefully this will indeed die off after a while.
 
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max2 said:
Easy to prevent.
Click to expand...
Why you would falsely post this, is beyond me.

There’s nothing ‘easy’ to prevent/stop any entitiy that could abduct somebody’s phone number for malicious purposes. It’s been a rapidly growing issue for years where almost no consumer is safe from the simplicity of your personal phone number being abducted in myriad of ways, and all without your consent.

I mean….I could maybe see your point if someone doesn’t own a cell phone, then it would be ‘easy’. But that likely doesn’t apply to like 99% of people living in a digital world where we stay connected through our mobile devices.
 
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usagora said:
Yeah, I don't answer them . . . except for one because I went to press the stem of my AirPod to pause a music track this morning at the exact same second a call came in and thus I inadvertently answered it 🙄 Of course I hung up immediately once I realized what happened.

I've received yet another 5 calls since posting this thread. Of course I have all unknown callers silenced now. Thank goodness that's an option!

Hopefully this will indeed die off after a while.
Click to expand...
When you say silenced, do you mean blocked?
 
Relentless Power said:
Your number was somehow high jacked/sold, and being passed around to multiple scam centers likely in Jakarta or the Philippines. Spam waves will fluctuate, but they usually die off. The most important thing you don’t do, is answer any of them, because they have an algorithm that actually can determine if you answer these calls, and said calls continue to persist.

If I were you on a cautionary note, I would keep watch on your credit monitoring/credit score and bank account(s). If you have alerts that can be enabled for any activity on your account, I would make sure those are prompted.
Click to expand...

This... or you put your phone number somewhere and it was sold off... Once it is out there good luck. I just end up blocking them... and yes I block them all.

Great advise on the credit monitoring...!

I love when I get a call and it says... calling from "Insert city, county, state, country here"... Cracks me. Feel important for a split second... then I block them. :)
 
usagora said:
I've not signed up for anything recently requiring my phone number. I have no idea why this is happening all of a sudden
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, now that SMS and extremely cheap phone calls are pretty much universal, scammers may not have bought or acquired your contact info because war dialing (using a computer or bot to sequentially call every number in an area code or prefix) can get enough marks to respond to make an attack profitable.
 
Settings, Phone, Silence unknown callers.
I’ve had this in for at least a couple years and it’s wonderful. If it’s a legit call, they’ll leave voicemail and you can call back.
Verizon also offers a “spam” feature, not sure about the others.


I’ve also years ago registered with donotcall.gov, don’t know if it still exists but it did help.
Occasionally, when I register for websites and/or use my phone # I see similar behavior, in your case, your number was either sold or you used it on some website.

And I’ve made it a habit to look at all my accounts every morning first thing and I check on my credit report at least twice per week, you just never know
 
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jz0309 said:
Settings, Phone, Silence unknown callers.
I’ve had this in for at least a couple years and it’s wonderful. If it’s a legit call, they’ll leave voicemail and you can call back.
Verizon also offers a “spam” feature, not sure about the others.


I’ve also years ago registered with donotcall.gov, don’t know if it still exists but it did help.
Occasionally, when I register for websites and/or use my phone # I see similar behavior, in your case, your number was either sold or you used it on some website.

And I’ve made it a habit to look at all my accounts every morning first thing and I check on my credit report at least twice per week, you just never know
Click to expand...

I had forgotten about this... thank you! For some reason I feel the donotcall.gov was a scam. Signed up for it and what do you know, it felt like I received more phone calls.

I hate websites that ask for phone numbers. If it is something I must have, my go to phone number is 555-1212. If they don't like that, then I usually don't buy it or register with the site.
 
rhett7660 said:
I hate websites that ask for phone numbers. If it is something I must have, my go to phone number is 555-1212. If they don't like that, then I usually don't buy it or register with the site.
Click to expand...

You could also just use a Google Voice number.
 
jav6454 said:
Yup, same boat a month ago. I just starting adding all those numbers into my blocked list and calls started to die out.
Click to expand...

The problem is they are mostly unique numbers, not calls from the same group of numbers over and over (though a few are).
 
rhett7660 said:
This... or you put your phone number somewhere and it was sold off... Once it is out there good luck. I just end up blocking them... and yes I block them all.

Great advise on the credit monitoring...!

I love when I get a call and it says... calling from "Insert city, county, state, country here"... Cracks me. Feel important for a split second... then I block them. :)
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, spam calls have reached a point of being such a nuisance, Apple and a cellular carriers had to step in with some form of mitigation. The ‘Silence unknown callers’ works excellent. More importantly, not answering these scam calls is key, being these call centers use algorithms that know if you answer, which result in even more calls, which can be shared amongst other centers. The best combat against these fraudulent calls, is to never answer them.
 
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+1 for Google Voice.

Dropped land line 10+ years ago due to tired of paying for a spam vector that I never used. Too many politics calls that election cycle. Has become my "jerk" number: friends and family get cell number, pretty much everyone else gets GV which is on permanent do not disturb mode.

Guessing that that number comes up as a VoIP number in spammer lists (and possibly tied to GV who is good at spam blocking), practically zero spam on it.

Cell gets few spam, due to (guessing) never pickup unknowns (as others mentioned), so not a good target. Text messages are a different story (still not alot, but during elections...) but have "Filter Unknowns" on, so silenced.
 
rhett7660 said:
I hate websites that ask for phone numbers. If it is something I must have, my go to phone number is 555-1212. If they don't like that, then I usually don't buy it or register with the site.
Click to expand...

For sites like this, I provide a number that is an automated information service number. Sorry, won't provide that as don't want them getting overrun with spammers (yeah, I see the hypocrisy, but occasional vs potential tons for them is a less evil option), but has a real number (not 555, 800-ish area code, etc) that seems to sneak past what filters they have.
 
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