I get so many junk calls on our land line that I just look at the
caller ID and if I don't know who it is or what it's about I just
let the answering machine handle it.

But about a week ago I got a call from one of the big local
hospitals. At least that is what the caller ID said. So of course
I answered. It was a recording telling me about my car warranty
expiring and how to renew it. ( I don't have a car warranty)

A few days later I got a call from the City of Boise, so again, I
answered. It was the same recording about the expiring car
warranty.

Today I got the same call from the hospital. This time I just
made a note of the calling number. Then I called the Idaho
Attorney General's office. They have a consumer fraud division.
I gave them the information. Don't know if it will do any good,
but it can't do any harm.

Is this a new tactic, or just new to me?

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In Omnia Paratus

That's why I canceled my land line!
Everyone has mobile phones. And the house got real quiet after that. Just the way I like it.


Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

My landline is hooked up to my pacemaker telemetry device with no handset. It's a scam moat.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Hint....do not engage with crazies....

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There's nowt so queer as folk

Just new to you. The scammers spoof any number their computer comes up with. You can even get a call from yourself.
I've had a hospital one and a sheriff or jail number

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Super Snooper

99% of the calls I get on my landline are BS calls. I set my ringer/answering machine on two rings so I don't get annoyed. If it's that important they will leave a message which 99% of the time they don't!

Scammers today can make it appear as if the call is originating from a local number or some legit business in order to get you to answer the phone. My theory is again, if it's that important, they will leave a message!

I am the Captain of the ship and I hate the landline. I want it gone.
The Admiral, however, loves it and has overruled me.

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Foster Positivity.

Back before we dropped the land line, the phones display would sometimes show this message when junk calls came in.

I have my iPhone 8 set so that anyone not in my contact list goes straight to voice mail. At least I don't have to stop what I'm doing to look at the phone and hear it ring.

At 4:58 this afternoon I had six calls in one minute, all from numbers similar to mine. Car warranty, lower credit card rates, insurance etc. mostly likely all a scam. I think the telemarketers are picking up on the new iPhone features and starting to leave messages now.

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Isaiah 41:10

I have gotten some local ‘town’ names and some peoples’ names,
But so far no actual local company names.
The possibilities for these scammers seem to be unlimited!
The value of a landline decreases daily!

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

"My landline is hooked up to my pacemaker telemetry device with no handset."

We are in a similar situation as my wife's pacemaker monitoring can be done only on a land line. Else we would be on VOIP and save a lot of money. For the past month or so we have been getting robocalls from someone who claims to be a process server, and that I need to call him back or he will serve court papers on us. Strange - I didn't know process servers could decide to serve or not serve court papers. Anyway, I haven't called him and I haven't been served anything.

"Just new to you. The scammers spoof any number their computer comes up with. You can even get a call from yourself.
I've had a hospital one and a sheriff or jail number"

A couple of years ago I was getting a few calls a week from the County Jail. I didn't answer them and they stopped. I thought they must have been some scam. Another trick which is very common is that a scammer will spoof some number from your area code even though the scammer may be in some other. At least on my cell phone, I answer no calls from a phone number which is not on my contact list. On my land line, everything is screened through my answering machine. Probably 75% leave no message. I can hardly wait until about two weeks before the election when all of the political robocalls begin. I am already getting some.

I have a Pacemaker and a phone monitoring system We also have VOIP. There is a device to transmit over VIOP. Mine does it all the time. We still get junk calls over VOIP. Some start with a V in front of the number

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

The wife were sitting watching the boob tube when both our landline and her cell went off at the same time. Seems they used her cell number to call our landline. If I don't recognize the number it doesn't get answered period.
Frank

Yeah, my land line phone actually displays "Possible SPAM" and I simply pick it up, hit the disconnect button and put it back down.

Most of the BS calls are automated. I always wait when answering a number I don't know for a few seconds before saying anything. If their setup doesn't get any noise it hangs up. But, sometimes when I am bored I answer and entertain myself at some companies expense. Playing incredibly stupid is always fun, trying to reverse the call and sell them something is also a hoot. Replying with stuff that simply does not make any sense at all is also fun. Sometime if the accent is right I start asking about life and weather in Bombay. Better than TV and interactive.

Or you can wait for them to go all the way through their
diatribe presentation and when they finally pause, say HUH?

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In Omnia Paratus

You can FORGET the Phone Company's ever trying to really stop all these annoying robocalls because that is pretty much their bread & butter now days! Without all these BS calls, they would not have much business! Between Cell phones, email and texting, land line phones are almost obsolete. Sort of like the Post Office for conventional mail!

My feelings exactly.

I got a call a while ago . I picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID , and up came our name and our phone number . Now they are getting smart . I live in a small town and the older numbers start with 365 or 366 . Now they are spoofing numbers that start with one of those , so you think it's someone in town . Someone really needs to crack down on these guys .

What gets me is why people answer the phone in the first place. If you know that 99.9% of the calls are BS, why are you picking up the phone?

This is pretty much how I've become with my landline, realizing that the only reason I even have one is because of a medical monitor that's hooked up to my phone! As I noted earlier, I set my ringer for two rings so I'm not annoyed by the ringing and after that, it go's to my voice messaging.

99.9% of the time there's no message. If it's that important they will leave a message!

I had my phone co. (embarq) add call blocking. When I tried to use it a recording came on saying that # can not be blocked. WTsadd is that all about. Cancelled immediately. I'm also now getting phony txts. Got one for three days from Verizon about a tech appointment yesterday. I have cell svc from them, why would I need a tech.

Wait....what?

Did they actually call your home phone from the cell phone or just make it look that way?

If it's the latter it doesn't surprise me. If the former you have big problems!

Scammers are one thing, but identity fraud is a miserable and stressful experience. They do this by combing certain information about you, such as your phone numbers, email address, physical address, and full name.

My wife got a call on her cell phone from Verizon that someone had called them attempting to add forwarding to my cell phone number. I checked and it was Verizon that called her, and that was what we had set up in our account. They told her that they had denied the caller and my phone was not being forwarded.

But it had been. Someone had called Verizon claiming to be me, saying I had lost my phone and was waiting on a critical call, thus it needed to be forwarded to a new number. That's called "Social Engineering" and was made famous by the Jim Rockford character. Our Verizon account was supposed to be locked down, and they were not supposed to provide any assistance to anyone calling from a phone number that wasn't one of the two of our account, and we even had a password set in addition.

My phone rang once.

Then things began to happen very quickly. The hacker put in a password reset request to gmail, which dutifully sent the new password to my phone, which was forwarded to their phone. Then they had my gmail account, and using that were able to steal a twitter account. You see, twitter account names that are actual names or even common words are long gone, so if you didn't get something desirable back when twitter started you're out of luck. Unless you're a hacker. We had been getting threats from hackers to give up my (unique and desirable) account name.

Twitter does NOT have a customer service line you can call- it's all run by an internet help-bot. So if someone steals your account you cannot just call twitter and get it back. If you use the help-bot it will not help because the email account you're claiming is not the email account (now) associated with the account. It's a circle of stupidity.

I found a telephone number to twitter that when called tells you to dial the extension of the party you're trying to reach at any time, and for customer service dial 1. If you dial 1 you get told to use the help-bot.

But, that number got me in the door so to speak. So then I called over and over until I figured out the extension scheme they use (three digits - four digits - five digits?) and then what the range is (say 1266 to 1421). Then I started calling extensions within that range until I got someone to answer. He heard why I was calling, seemed very nervous and hung up without saying anything (jerk). Finally I got lucky and hit number to a guy that was very helpful, gave me his email address there, and worked with the customer support staff to get my account back.

Now I do everything I can to keep my new cell phone number separate from my address, separate from my full name, separate from my email address, and so on. All that info is out there, but when it can be put together it can be used to hack you.

Sorry, long story!

I haven't had a land line in 10 years. My wife and I have cell phone and we still get a dozen or more robo calls a day. If your not on my contact list I don't answer, I just push the ignore button and it goes to voice mail. I actually get very few messages. It doesn't do much good to block calls they just use another number.

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Support your Police, & NRA

Cell service out here in the hills is awful or the land line would be gone. I never answer the phone unless I recognize the number, my wife however cannot grasp that concept. She keeps the spam calls trying.
If my wife goes before me the phone and TV are history first day after the service.

We're getting the calls now that appear from our local area code. The SPAM calls that I block, just start coming from a different number. Several months ago, one of my wife's friends started appearing as "J. P. Morgan Chase" on our caller ID. Still does, but at least we now know who it is. We dropped our unlisted land line a few months ago. Our unwanted calls have increased from perhaps one a day to, for instance, a half dozen today.

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NRA Life, COTEP 640

We get several of those a week now. The giveaway is that neither of us have an area code that's "local" to where we live now. Hers is from an entirely different state about 2800 miles away.

There's dozens of these apparently legal "companies" out there.

Bluff My Call - Change Your Caller ID and Voice From Any Phone

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SOS USA

So many missed opportunities here for extended warranty and other junk calls: "I'm Amish - will you cover my horse and carriage?", "Oh great, yeah my car 624,000 miles on it and I think the engine is about to die. How soon can I get it covered?", Does the warranty cover headlight fluid, muffler bearings and the turbo encapsulator?, "Someone stole my car last week and the police think they found all the parts - does the warranty cover that?", "I race my car every weekend at the dragstrip and the engine has blown a couple of times. Would that be covered?" "I think oil changes are a rip off and never change mine. Is that OK?"

Even better, getting them to hold on: "Can you hold on for a minute - I think the police are here to arrest me.", "Can you hold on a minute - the fire department is here to put out the fire.", "Can you hold on a minute - I have diarrhea and need to use the bathroom.", "Can you hold on a minute - my wife just went into labor.".

Or perhaps a more helpful approach: "Instead of scamming people, wouldn't you sleep better at night if you had an honest job working at McDonalds?", "Does your family know you're a telemarketer and refuse to answer your phone calls?", "Have you considered a more respectable career like politics or selling drugs?"

Sometimes, an imagination is a dangerous but fun thing to have.

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So many S&W's, so few funds!!