Is it worth registering my number with the federal government (which presumably already has access to my information) to avoid spam calls? Does it work? Is there a downside?
Not really, least in my experience.
I’ve had spammers call me a few times. Now what did work, was when I got personal with them. I haven’t gotten a spam call in a few months now. It’s bliss.
Don’t feel guilty treating these people like shit, they chose to do this. People try framing it all like “they were forced to by crazy psycho bosses! have mercy!” Nah, even if that wasn’t the case…they still willingly chose to do this.
I’ve been using call screening in iOS and it’s stopped pretty much all unwanted calls. Automated systems do not know how to handle it yet and they waste their time because the call is “answered” and sent to whatever agent they use.
So that’s what that is. I haven’t heard of the call screening thing til now but lately half the time I call clients I get this weird answering machine telling me to say my name and what I want and I never know what to say so I just launch into my usual voicemail spiel until it cuts me off and the client answers
Gotta say, I think I prefer just leaving a voicemail for clients
If internet companies would fix VOIP protocol, so that spammers couldn’t spoof any phone numbers they wanted, then 95% of spam calls would disappear.
The Do Not Call registry was the easiest thing in the world for Congress to do, because it didn’t actually do anything and it didn’t cost them anything to do. You can’t catch a spammer unless you can identify them. And you can’t do that with a spoofed phone number
It’s not internet companies.
It’s the backbones.
CID is an arbitrary field sent over the D channel of a ISDN or T1/T3/etc.
Nearly every phone system, be it Lucent, ATT, Cisco, etc can set the outbound caller ID to anything they want.
The carriers accept it and transmit it. They do that so things like Hospitals can all call from the same number, or one office can call from a specific number and the hospital can change it as needed without the phone company.
And that’s where shit falls apart cause it’s built with the assumption of good intent, like the first mainframes didn’t have logons and passwords, they just accepted anything given.
People ruin things.
Internet companies contribute heavily, but they are more like a flat tire on a car with a bad transmission.
Sure, fix the tire and it’ll roll better… The car is still fucked.
It did until the Trump administration. Also most of the violators are from overseas using spoofed numbers.
Same. I’ve had mine registered since its inception in 2003. It worked great for a while. Now I get at least 10 spam calls a day.
The registry only works for legitimate companies that are playing by the rules. That is to say that it does jack shit, at least for me
I get dozens of spam calls and texts a day, mostly political in nature but with some good loan scams mixed in for variety.
I added my number to the list and within a month I started getting A LOT fewer spam calls. I still get a couple here and there, but before it was like 5 a week.
I report spam calls to them everytime I get one and the spam calls stop after about a week or two, I say they work.
