If you answer your phone and it says "can you hear me"....HANG UP !! do not say yes....if you say yes they are recording your answer and using that yes response to sign you up and bill you for services you do not want.........
New/old phone scam on the uprise.
- Thread starter dben002
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Why would anyone answer a call they don't recognize?
OP
Rusty, I have no idea but apparently there is a large population that do....
Well, I doubt it would b a good idea to stop answering the phone at work. Sometimes I'm tempted, Every day a foreign sounding person supposedly from Google, never the same person or number, call telling me "Your website isn't showing up correctly on Google " or something similar. You'd think after the stuff I yell at them that the word would get around to not call. If I'm bored sometimes I mess with them.
The othe pita is credit card processing companies, also every day wanting me to change, they get the same treatment.
Back to the don't answer Yes, most of these calls start with, "Are you the business owner? I don't say yes, I say I am the owner.
The othe pita is credit card processing companies, also every day wanting me to change, they get the same treatment.
Back to the don't answer Yes, most of these calls start with, "Are you the business owner? I don't say yes, I say I am the owner.
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Caller ID is your friend.
OP
you are correct and if the caller ID is nothing more than a city name or city name and state code don't bother answering......
I never do, but sometimes they can spoof legitimate numbers. The last spam call I answered was several years ago. I answered because the number on the caller ID was my dentist's! When the caller tried to sell me a new roof, my steel trap mind immediately determined that the caller wasn't really my dentist. I responded by giving him my reflections on his parentage, and hung up. Getting a spam call from a legitimate number hasn't happened since, so I guess it was an act of chance.
I have my phone set up to where any call not on my contacts list goes to voicemail.
When my caller-ID shows a number I don't recognize I answer and just listen - I don't say anything.
After about 10 seconds of silence, if it is a robo-dialed call, the computer dialer will almost always disconnect.
Computer dialing systems wait until they "hear" you say something, and when they do they switch the call to a live SCAMMER.
If the computer doesn't hear you say anything for around 10 seconds it hangs up on you, and *theoretically" your number gets "flagged" as out of service.
I've been doing this for a while now and the number of spam calls has definitely gone down. We used to get 2, 3, or 4 per day. Lately we get 1 or 2 per week.
If I answered the phone and a voice I don't recognize asks "can you hear me" I'd hold my tongue and wait to see if the "caller" says something else. If they don't then I'm not saying anything.
If it's a legitimate call, the caller will speak first. If not, they won't.
After about 10 seconds of silence, if it is a robo-dialed call, the computer dialer will almost always disconnect.
Computer dialing systems wait until they "hear" you say something, and when they do they switch the call to a live SCAMMER.
If the computer doesn't hear you say anything for around 10 seconds it hangs up on you, and *theoretically" your number gets "flagged" as out of service.
I've been doing this for a while now and the number of spam calls has definitely gone down. We used to get 2, 3, or 4 per day. Lately we get 1 or 2 per week.
If I answered the phone and a voice I don't recognize asks "can you hear me" I'd hold my tongue and wait to see if the "caller" says something else. If they don't then I'm not saying anything.
If it's a legitimate call, the caller will speak first. If not, they won't.
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Same here...
They sure can. Twice the phone rang and the Caller ID said it was me calling from my home phone number. I've been talking to myself for years and never needed a phone to do it.
I have to answer calls w/numbers I don't recognize as it's part of my job.
The OP's inference was towards home/personal phones not work phones.
Well, FWIW, before I retired, my home number and my personal cell phone number were (in effect) also my work phone numbers.
I spent almost my entire career being on-call 24/7/365.
So, my home and cell phone numbers were listed right next to my office number in the company directory, and they were all widely distributed to a long list of people within my company.
For some people, in some situations, the distinction between work and personal phone numbers doesn't really exist - and that's just "part of the job".
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It was? Everybody gets scam calls. Everybody.
My work, side job and personal are all the same. I answer all the calls.
That's why I don't see a distinction between work and personal.
Just the reverse, when I receive a call from my cardiologist clinic my phone says "Possible Spam", I recognize the number and answer, but if I would just glance at the warning and delete I would miss a call from my Cardiologist.
This has happened from a couple of other businesses locally, that have very active phone activity, and get erroneously listed as spam.
This has happened from a couple of other businesses locally, that have very active phone activity, and get erroneously listed as spam.
I said this before I'll say it again the quickest way to get a predictive dialer to quit calling your number is not to answer your phone. Yes I'm aware some people can't do that but if you can do that don't answer calls from unknown numbers and they will drop off grammatically.
If it's a legitimate call, they will leave a voicemail. The world is not going to end if they have to wait a minute for you to call them back
If it's a legitimate call, they will leave a voicemail. The world is not going to end if they have to wait a minute for you to call them back
Agree 100%
If the caller sounds female then I immediately ask what she's wearing. Tell her she sounds hot, etc.
If a male then I usually pick a foreign accent and act like we long lost brothers, start asking about family and friends
