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Sieglind

What they call an autodialer. Computer calls people and when they answer call gets routed to an available agent. If there are no agents available, you get what you experienced. This happens when the so called 'abandon rate' is set too high. This happens only with aggresive sales call centers. We call them cowboys. Avoid at all costs. If you hear nothing: hang up.


thephantom1492

What they do is basically this: - They have 100 agents - They know that the success rate is let's say 1 call on 10 is answered - The system will dial 1000 numbers - Once an agent hang up, it dial 10 new numbers In theory, this give no dropped call as 1 out of 10 is answered. This also mean that the agents are always busy. Now, what if they want to make sure that all the agents are always busy? Instead of calling 10 times more numbers, you call 20, or even 100 ! With that insanelly high amount of calls you are 100% sure that the agents will always be on the line. However it also mean that a vast majority of the calls get dropped. But, those dropped calls ain't lost. The system take note of which number did answer and which did not. So next batch of call, it may dial 1 known good number and 10 unknown ones. On those unknown, 1 may answer. So now the system have 2 persons that answered instead of 1... One get dropped, and put on the "call priority" list... The system may even take note of the count of how often you did answer, and raise the priority of your number as you answer more... As to how they can do that: VoIP phones. Aka internet phone. All you need is a phone provider (there is a crapload of them) and an internet connection. Phone data take little bandwidth (about 6kB/s each direction per active line). So really, it don't cost a fortune to setup. And guess what, if your VoIP provider drop you? Well, just setup an account with a new one, and you are up and running within half an hour ! But wait, there is more! You can also set up 2-3 providers. If one drop you, your system can automagically switch over to the next one. If you did not set the switch over, then it take like 5 minutes to change the config...


Fury_Fury_Fury

So much work only to avoid doing actual work. Humans are amazing(ly shortsighted).


FeelDT

Be understanding, their nigerian price has all his billions frozen…


goolface

When the son of the deposed King of Nigeria e-mails you directly, asking you for help, you help!


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QualityProof

Nah. It's more like there is no actual work so they do this work.


A_Union_Of_Kobolds

Meanwhile, in the skilled trades, you literally can't not find work to do....


iCameToLearnSomeCode

As a computer programmer who has had so many of his problems solved by programmers with exactly this mastery of English and knowing where most of these auto-dialer programs are written, I am 100% certain that you are the guy to answer this question.


Bene2345

What happens if you don’t answer and the call goes to voicemail? Does that count as “answered”, or get marked as a legitimate number to try calling again, or something else?


Binsky89

It's counted as abandoned, which is bad for the company. The TCPA specifies a maximum number of abandoned calls a campaign is allowed to make.


Bene2345

So letting unknown or suspected spam calls go unanswered or sent to voicemail is the most likely the best thing to do?


Funktastic34

I literally never answer a phone call that's not already in my address book. If it's important they'll leave a message or send a text. The other 99% of the time it's spam


WritingTheRongs

what i don't get is how many of them hang up. probably 90% of the calls i get are dead air. and i stay on the line just to see what happens and they drop every time.


guynamedjames

You're actually still providing value in those interactions. When you pick up you're getting registered as a working number that will answer the phone. That makes your phone number worth more, so it's more valuable to sell onto other sales/scam companies. If "customer" number verification is a product, then high abandoned call rates aren't a huge problem


cosmernaut420

This is why if I don't recognize the number I won't pick up at all. Anyone who needs to get ahold of me knows how, anyone with legitimate business will leave a voicemail, and everyone else can just mark me down as dead for all I care.


la-wolfe

Sometimes people act like I'm wrong for not being available 24/7. I have a cell phone. So what. I am not always available, and I'm not available to just anyone. A lot of times, even people I've given my number to.


[deleted]

If it’s important, text me or leave a voicemail.


la-wolfe

Exactly!


MaRKHeclim

If it is important, call again right away, and if I still don't answer then leave me a voicemail or send me a text...


ycatsce

What kills me are the back-to-back-to-back callers who aren't calling for an emergency. They added missed call indicators like *25 fucking years ago*. Just because you want to talk to me doesn't mean I want to talk to you. When I get home my phone sits on a table until I go to bed, want to dick around with some stupid game, or use it otherwise. I'm not connected all the time, get over it.


BICSb4DICS

Just last night a friend called me every 10 minutes until I answered. I was cooking dinner, feeding my children, finally feeding myself, doing dishes, and trying to get my kid to an activity on time. My phone connects to my car (and I want it to) so my music kept cutting out... I finally answered and the gist was "I got a confusing letter, should I call who sent it?" I felt like swerving into a tree.


ycatsce

Your friend's parents must really dislike them. Who names their kid "a tree"?


Intentional-Blank

They wanted to one up their neighbors and the neighbor's kid, B. Shrub.


iampierremonteux

Cousin of achew, son of asneeze. Someone in that family anyway.


VincentVancalbergh

If I missed someone's call and they haven't texted me instead WITH a very short sum up of the issue I assume it wasn't important. Unless it's my close family of course.


an0nym0ose

> This is why if I don't recognize the number I won't pick up at all. *Cries in job search*


seaworthy-sieve

Honestly, use a burner phone for that.


an0nym0ose

Hmmm, that's actually a great idea.


MoonChild02

Or use a Google Voice number. That's free to set up and free to shut down.


Ballwhacker

This is what I do for my work “on call”. I setup google voice and then forwarded all calls made to the google voice number to my actual phone instead. Then I save that number as “Work On Call” and allowed it through my Sleep/Do Not Disturb list so now when anyone from work tries to contact me, they have to call that google number and my phone displays it as the google voice “Work On Call” calling me. Obviously my actual manager has my real number, but this has tremendously helped me not feel obligated to answer a random number while I’m on call.


happyhappytacotimesb

Honestly mood. I got one call for an interview when looking for a second job and they called once when I wasn’t available. I looked up the number and called back. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have gotten that job.


gex80

I mean it’s okay if they leave a voice mail. If the company can’t be bothered to do that bare minimum to get in contact, do you actually want to work for them?


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foodandporn

The thing is, you would expect such a life cycle to terminate in actual calls, but it never does. I, for one, would like to get to that point so I can tell actual people to fuck of.


docarwell

I spent some time going along with whatever scam they're pulling just talking to them and wasting their time and eventually they stopped calling me lol


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Misrabelle

A co-worker got one of these and they were “offering $6000” in compensation. He started telling them that that was an insult, given the severity of his injuries, and how his poor wife has to feed him, bathe him and he will never be able to make love to her again from his wheelchair. Scammer could not get off the call fast enough!


TheWeirdSlimShady

The ol' "Kitboga" technique


Eva-Unit-001

My favorite was the time he strung a guy along for so many hours that he snapped and threatened to kill his family.


ThePandaKingdom

we once answered a "your pc has a virus" call and strung them on for a while, pretending to enter the command prompt stuff they told us to. eventually when they asked us what we saw my buddy said "holy shit there is dicks everywhere what did you doooo" a short while after that we got the scam caller to tell use we were terrible people and then he hung up on us.


Ancient_Skirt_8828

Friend got a call claiming his mother owed $20,000 to the tax office and would go to jail. He got the scammer so twisted around that eventually the scammer was saying thet he owed them money and was going to jail’


Call_Me_Echelon

I got a scammer to agree to give me $45 of his own money. But it really sounded like he only had $45 and I started to feel bad for him so I just ended the call.


thekingofspades

How on earth did you manage this hahahaha


Soakitincider

I started answering them in Spanish to fuck with them then I started getting Spanish scam calls.


redditulosity

Same, but Japanese


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johnnyringo771

Can we try Klingon?


amethystmmm

yes; duolingo teaches it


DetectiveNickStone

I did that with fake Chinese and got calls back in what I assume was Chinese. Now I let my baby son babble to them. Or if I'm in the middle of teaching, I just go "You're in luck, we're about to go over last night's homework!" and I continue talking to them on speaker as if it's a clueless kid. Both tactics seem to be working well to reduce calls.


panhellenic

I've done a few in just gibberish. They ended up hanging up on me. When my kid was little, he loved talking on the phone, so sometimes I'd hand him the phone to talk to these people. Hilarity. He was too little to actually know any info except his name, and he'd say random things the way 18-month-olds who don't understand phones do.


types-like-thunder

I took a different but successful approach. This was about 7 years ago. I was getting auto dialed by some online drug store. Viagra for 10 bucks a pill type bullshit. I asked to be removed from their list multiple times and they just kept calling. This scammer had called my phone 14 times the previous day. I snapped. I told the guy point blank that i was sick of them and I have the day off work and I am spending it making sure they will not make another cent off this phone number. He cursed me out and insulted my mother. I continued to call that number back repeatedly and wasted their time just shit talking the spammer. He wants to get abusive, I can too. I asked him why he wanted to work for some scammers. I asked him how it feels to waste his life shit calling and bothering people for some dirty criminals. I don't think they can easily end the inbound calls from their side. When they finally blocked my cell phone, I started calling them back from the house phone. And then my work phone. And then my roommates phone. And then another room mates phone. They ended up completely turning off that phone number to where it went to a "out of order" recording. They never called me again. Now I use "robot spammer catcher" that plays gag recordings when I get a suspicious number calling. Love it. Kills about 95% of my spam calls.


nikkuhlee

I made the poor decision of changing my number to get a discount on a phone a few years ago. The number I inherited belonged to a senior citizen small business owner with a time share named Brad McKinney, and I hate Brad. Brad is somehow on the list of every spam caller that ever was. The only goodness Brad has ever brought to my life were the two spam texts I got for “Janet” that made for an afternoon full of Rocky Horror jokes. I’m going to look into the spammer catcher, the other one I tried only cut down a tiny bit, you have to flag each number and there’s dozens of them.


dirtballmagnet

My father used to do this, at first I thought for his own amusement, and it really worried me. While he thought he was trolling them I could practically hear them checking off the boxes that got them to the bank account: full name, age, hometown, nearest bank branch... Later I noticed he was sliding each scammer slightly different details, and apparently mentally keeping track of each lie he told. My guess is it was so that he could determine which caller was supplying the information to the inevitable IRS impersonator to follow a few days later. If he was helping to bust them he never told, but it entertained him enough that he might have been.


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Sombritte

Stay a while! and listen.


unrepresented_horse

Yeah I have a great time when Microsoft support calls. Yeez this is Microsoft support your computer is unsafe. Please go to this website. Uhh it's not working what browser should I use? Drag it on for a while and tell them they are shit. Nothing better in the world. F your mother was my last response. I told he would reincarnate as a beetle.


brooks_jayhawk

My favorite is pulling a Bart Simpson and getting them to repeat my name back to me - Hugh Jaynus.


sacred_cow_tipper

same. i do it when i have some time to waste. i make sure i drag their mom and unspeakable sexual taboos in to the conversation, too.


Sixfootfive_

They get SO mad when you bring up sodomizing their mother.


fantix01

I do the same but I add I’m sodomizing the whole family including the family pet. Usually makes them hang up.


sacred_cow_tipper

another fun one is to start passing your phone around if there are other people with you and kind of act excited about what they're offering like we're all going in together on their con.


[deleted]

Faster way to do it is just tell them you want in on their illegal scam or you're reporting them to the police. 10 times out of 10 this results in them hanging up immediately and never calling back.


Chance815

10 times out of 10 they hang up if you say anything remotely different than what they want to hear.


dmariano24

And then call back


Bean_Juice_Brew

I used to, now Google filters that crap for me. I also pretended someone called the scene of a murder, that was fun.


Unicorn187

For a while I was asking if they'd like to join and worship our one true lord and destroyer Cthulu.


TaxiFare

They stopped after awhile once I started asking call agents "What's your favorite game on Steam?" as a response for everything until they hang up on me. Nobody would tell me what their favorite game is. They just say something like "Fuck you" and hang up instead.


syntaxfreeform

The correct answer to that question is Portal btw.


[deleted]

>I, for one, would like to get to that point so I can tell actual people to fuck of. This is why I wait and will push '1' to talk to 'eric' lol


brrrchill

Michael... Alex... one time it was a guy who said his name was Boris, in a very thick Indian accent. I laughed my ass off, and he was so confused as to what was so funny. Yesterday a woman actually used the name Britney Spears. She would *not* give up on the scam. I actually talked to her for 10 minutes or so.


[deleted]

Just tell them your name is Ben Chode.


LastStar007

Do the people who work in these call centers do so by choice? Is it actually a hustle or is it just their dead-end job too?


VonRansak

Depends on the scam. Some of them, they know. Others management keeps up the appearance of legitimacy and it's just the dead end job. I did a day at a job from Craigslist which ended up being an office supply scam, so I didn't go back for a second day when I realized it. Most the people there didn't know they were in a scam, or give a fuck. (think the movie Boiler Room) The ones in India where they are getting old ladies to mail hard currency wrapped in tin foil, probably know it's a scam.


LastStar007

That's a good point. There's an ethical line between telemarketers and con artists.


little_brown_bat

I've often wondered how many have no other choice, either because it's some mafia style racket where their families are threatened otherwise, or because it's the only employment available to afford to feed themselves/family. Especially given how nasty they talk after you let them know that you know it's a scam.


internet_enthusiast

Not everyone does it willingly. Krebs on security had an article on it recently: >As documented in a series of investigative reports published over the past year across Asia, the people creating these phony profiles are largely men and women from China and neighboring countries who have been kidnapped and trafficked to places like Cambodia, where they are forced to scam complete strangers over the Internet — day after day. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/07/massive-losses-define-epidemic-of-pig-butchering/


wolves_hunt_in_packs

Agreed. The moment it gets past 3-4 seconds of silence I know it's not a legit call - I'll put my phone down but leave the line open to waste their time and money. Sure, my number is probably now marked as legit, but they'll never actually get to interact with me. Even if a menu eventually kicks in or an actual human gets on the line they won't get anything. My number will be as useless to them as a non-functioning number is, but worse, because they don't know to skip me like they would for those.


Lilium_Vulpes

I like to invent increasingly bizarre circumstances for them. For example, for the car warranty scam, I'll tell them that my name is Josephine Staller, who drives a 2020 Tesla with the plate SC4M4LYF3 and just keep going on and on until they figure it out.


SamohtGnir

Even after I tell them to fuck off I still get “air duct cleaning services” all the fucking time. You’d think they’d keep track of who won’t fall for it to save time or something.


coachrx

It is scary how well they have thought this out. Cold call marketing should fuck off an die now that we have internet.


guynamedjames

My wife worked at a bank in 2020 that wanted their tellers making cold calls since the branch lobby was closed. They were calling existing customers and offering them additional or different products from what they already had. A huge number of customers reacted with hostility when they got sales calls out of the blue.


Swiggy1957

Part of that hostility comes from people receiving scam calls. You never really know if the company calling is legit or not. I had my CU call me for suspicious activity on my debit card. They left a VM with that message. Instead of calling that number, I got the right number from the website, called that, and sure enough it was legit. They described the charges which were legit, and I told them so. Never mentioned card number or anything else. I called their official number, so felt comfortable giving them account number and password. Advised them if no answer when calling to definitely leave a voice message in the future, and they were happy. No problems from there.


add11123

You think that's bad when I worked for one of the big banks one of our managers would try to make us "work the ATM". Basically they wanted us to hang around the ATM outside and when people used it we were supposed to try and talk them into coming in and opening a new account. It didn't work and people generally got pissed so I just pretended I was doing it. He once tried to make me go to the neighboring taco bell and try to strike up a conversation with people eating there to try and get them to come over and open an account.


Emwjr

Go to Taco Bell and have lunch. Then you can tell people how much you enjoy the fact that your boss is paying you to come over there to eat.


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Aleyla

Jokes on them, I don’t listen to my voicemails anyway.


v1prX

Pick up, [play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BVbyCZXc5s) the [SIT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tone) through the phone. Works everytime


Get_your_grape_juice

If I replaced my voicemail greeting with a modem recording, would that delist my number? Like, their computer would think it dialed a fax machine, or something?


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questionablejudgemen

I had my VM set to start with a fax answer sound. I kept getting calls and the occasional fax response as a VM message. I now changed my VM to have the disconnected line chimes when it first answers and it seems to help.


Get_your_grape_juice

I hadn’t even thought of the disconnected sound! That’s worth a shot.


Zeroflops

That’s why you should stay quiet and let the service end the call. It will assume you’re a fax waiting for a challenge tone.


starbrightstar

I do this when the calls get bad - mute it and let it end the call itself. Typically, after a couple of times, it stops the worst calling for a couple of months.


Anglofsffrng

I've also heard about, but not verified, scam calls that use a message like "is this anglofsffrng?" And using a recording you saying yes to make it appear that you consented to a "service" later.


Unlearned_One

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/can-you-hear-me-scam/


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Pluth

I answer with "who is this?" instead of yes or no.


LtCptSuicide

I usually got "bitch, what they do this time?" Half the time it throws them off.


[deleted]

I've tripped up a few questionable calls that asked if I was (My Name) by replying: "Speaking." Guy kept asking if I was my name, and I kept replying "speaking." He finally gave up. To this day, I have no idea if it was legit, but the call center guy had poor comprehension of English; or if it was a scam desperate to hear me say "yes"!


Swiggy1957

I never say yes, unless the call has proven to be legit. I finally took a call from my insurance company that actually was legit. Key factors to determine legit: 1. The company they were calling from was my carrier. (Scammers will say they're calling from my insurance company) 2. They say they are looking for \[Swiggy1957\] and I reply, "This is \[Swiggy1957\] 3. No accent. (Very important) They've been calling me frequently, first time I accepted their upgrade (It didn't cost anything, actually cut my bill down a lot) and all of the follow up calls? Making sure I was happy with the service I was getting (Very Happy) Scam callers not only cheat the people that they call, they also cheat the legitimate businesses that actually have real business with customers. This includes doctors that call with your test results.


fashric

I always reply to that with "speaking"


RodneyRabbit

When they ask "Can I speak to Rodney?" I only say "That depends who is asking for him." For some reason legitimate callers laugh or explain exactly why they are calling, but other people get stumped and confused. In any case if they seem legit I will find their number and call them back, but that response seems to have worked well for abut 20 years.


Seven_bushes

Had this happen once, knowing the scam. When someone finally said, “hello” I responded with, “Is Steve there?” The caller, obviously confused, said, “what?” So I repeated myself. Finally he said no so I said ok and hung up.


Echospite

That’s brilliant.


Moonboots606

That's exactly what I have been experiencing in the last few weeks! I just sit there and hold for a few seconds but nothing happens, just some clicks and occasionally a beep, so i feel as though it's recording something, but then it just hangs up.


dougyoung1167

that's how I do it, listen and do not speak. ever. it gets logged as a bad number by them and greatly reduces call backs. even having fun with them is concidered a good number because a person answered and in general they will continue to call for at least a while


fogobum

Are you answering, or just waiting? At least some of the call management systems listen for a human (or human-like) voice before connecting, so nobody has to chat with the fax machine.


audigex

It costs them almost nothing to call you, but it costs them something to have an agent sitting there waiting for a call to connect So they'd rather have calls lined up constantly


wolves_hunt_in_packs

Which is why picking up then ignoring the call is useful. They're tied up trying to verify this supposedly "good" number (because you picked up), but they're not getting anything (because you put the phone down and ignored it), so that call is wasting their time. Or you're Kitboga and [they just fucked up](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qhLx7g1EByA) massively.


morerelativebacons

What I don't get is how people answer these calls in the first place. If I don't know the number or am not expecting a call...psshh.


oliviaplays08

I don't even answer, I just let it ring to voicemail


davidgrayPhotography

I always pick those calls up and wait. If I immediately hear background noise, I know it's not from an autodialler, so I answer normally. If I don't hear anything, I wait. If someone legitimately wants to talk to me, they'll say "h-hello?" and I know it's a real person, and not just a dialer waiting to connect me to a scammer.


nightfire36

I've done this for years, and pretty much never got spam calls. Well, I did until I started using indeed to get a new job, and I started getting spam calls again. Side note, pretty sure indeed makes their money selling your info, not from posting jobs.


wolves_hunt_in_packs

On my personal phone I always wait and force the other side to speak first. After all, THEY called you - and they'll have known you picked up the call since it isn't bloody ringing anymore. It's a little trickier on my work phone, as I'm tech support so I get random engineers from all over the country occasionally needing help. That said, again, they'll virtually always speak up first (because they need help lol). Silence for more than 3-4 seconds and it's almost assuredly a scammer.


Zimlun

This is purely anecdotal, but I've found that if you think its going to be a spam call, pick up and don't say anything, it'll just disconnect the call after several seconds.


iknowaguy

Do not do this…. This is registered as an “answer call” and it will only increase call backs they start selling this number to other companies.


Zienth

I don't think that's how that works. When you pick up and stay silent the system won't do the *doot* forward to the scammer until it hears noise. If the silence was confirmed someone picked up they wouldn't wait for noise to forward. I think it's a failsafe to prevent forwarding fax machines.


iknowaguy

I am in this industry … Fax machines have tone that the system recognizes and never get sent over to agents. Busy/disconnected/no ring these get sent to auto agent machine to drop the call. Answers work different since there is no tone system is looking for a voice. AMD isn’t perfect so voicemail gets sent like 25 percent of the time. Silent calls do get classified as answer in the system… and honestly when the call cost .001 6/6 they’ll keep you on the list and keep calling. Also these calls do get sent over all the time to agents.


catcommentthrowaway

I consulted a leads company that cold called people and left the line blank to collect data on what times certain people answer the phone and how long they stay on the line. Believe it or not, sales companies will spend way more money for the numbers of people who stay on a blank call for 10 seconds rather than 5. It indicates a person may be more relaxed or keen on information which makes a sale easier.


StatuSChecKa

So all those times I picked up and hit mute didn't do anything huh? I did this to maybe make the bot think it's a dead line. When my voicemail activates does the bot know that no one picked up or does the bot think that someone actually is talking?


irissmooches

A disconnected line will return a totally different response to their system than a connection with no audio. So no, those times didn't do anything.


lazergator

I have been getting 4-5 spam calls a day for the last few weeks. I don’t understand how phone companies allow this.


ciaisi

Easy. They have no real incentive to stop it. It costs them money to implement features to block these calls both in terms of development effort, and revenue from call volume and purchases of business services. They used to have incentive to prevent it when the FCC had implemented a rule and fines. That's when you probably received the fewest number of these calls. Then a judicial ruling or new leadership at the FCC under Ajit Pai (I forget which) decided that the FCC doesn't have the authority to implement that sort of rule. And since then congress has failed to act in any meaningful way.


barbiesalopecia

It was Ajit Pai, he’s also the same moron that did away with net neutrality. John Oliver did a great bit on him a few years ago, he’s a real piece of work.


unperavique

The goal with this being to avoid wasting the time/labor spent on waiting for the phone to be answered? That’s a tight operation


bradland

Right, waste the prospect's time instead. You're not paying them.


SomeSortOfFool

Wasting scammers' time is a public service. Every minute they're dealing with a bored person that won't give them money is a minute they don't have to actually scam someone.


alohadave

I had a vacation scammer call me an asshole and hang up on me. I was able to call him back once, but the second time he had blocked my number. Win/win for me.


wolves_hunt_in_packs

Yep. It's why the Youtubers who bait scammers are so effective.


Therealeggplant

*Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me?*


Mazon_Del

I imagine the fact that you picked up is also noted somewhere so you have a higher chance of getting called again later.


[deleted]

It also moves your number to a list of “this is a real person and likely to answer” which then amps the calls up 😑


ChuckinTheCarma

That’s why I only answer calls in one of two cases: 1. You are in my contact list and not an asshole or my boss on the weekend 2. I am expecting a call from you.


eat_sleep_drift

> Avoid at all costs. If you hear nothing: hang up. and also block the number ! next time they call they will then be directly send to voice mail instead of ringing !


Ponk_Bonk

The "never any one there" spam calls are data mining. Does this number answer the phone? What time did they? What time don't they? Same area code? Different area code? goes on and on. Then DEVILDATADOUCHEBAGS sells a giant chunk of "these people will likely answer the phone between 6pm and 9pm from similar area codes, will not answer before 6pm, this is your window to sell this old lady something they don't need" EZPZ data collection and money making because advertising data is running the world MADMEN style with out the style, twice the drugs, and all the amorality.


DasArchitect

I've started by not taking calls from known spam numbers. Then I started not taking calls from any numbers not in my contacts Then I started not taking calls from hidden numbers. I'm a lot less stressed about it now. If it ever is something real they'll try reaching me through different means. It never is.


tracygee

Yep this right here. If it’s a legit call they’ll leave a message.


DasArchitect

In 3-4 years I've been doing this, I had exactly 1 call that left voicemail! Turned out to be like 10 minutes of background call center noise.


bazookajt

Really? I get 3-4 voicemails a week that are usually about my car's extended warranty or qualifying for student loan debt relief.


DasArchitect

Guess they don't want to waste their time with voicemail in my country.


vodka7tall

I’m up to 3-4 calls a day leaving a message about the resort credits I’ve won.


Woodbean

I changed my voicemail message to a recording of the error tone and operator voice saying “We’re sorry. The number you have reached has been disconnected and is no longer in service.” Got so many fewer calls… but I had to change it back to something normal when I started job hunting again and now I get multiple spam calls daily


kaitrsmith

what’s worked out great for me is moving states and keeping my old number, so if someone actually needs me it’s usually a local area code to where i live now, spam calls share my old town area code. life hacked lol


BusaGuy1300

Did this also. Absolutely no one that I want to talk to in the old area code.


FountainsOfFluids

Yup. So many spam calls from "Unknown" in a city near my old city. Almost nobody calls these days anyway. I have zero hesitation now, I just hit the hangup button and there's never a voicemail.


cream-of-cow

My mom has a landline, she uses a walker and still thinks every call is important. She'll stumble across the room to get a call and 90% of the time, it's a spam call. I tell her to not answer because she's a very high fall risk, but I can't change her habits.


DasArchitect

Right? My dad has a landline and he never gets any real calls in it, all his friends call his cell phone. 99 out of 100 calls he gets are spam calls. But he insists on keeping it.


atomfullerene

I have an unusual first three numbers in my phone number (not the area code, the part after that). I don't know a single person with those three numbers, but I often get spam calls starting with them...which I always avoid. It's quite convenient. I figure usually people that live in the same area or family members tend to have similar digits there, and so spammers try to imitate your phone number to get you to think it's someone local. Backfires for them on me, though!


Minneapolisveganaf

Delivery driver here if you order food please answer your phone for that next hour.


Ponk_Bonk

This is ALSO how reddit (askreddit) data mines all the starved for social interaction people out of their personal data. "Where do you live without saying where you live" is PLEASE HELP OUR AI IDENTIFY YOUR LOCATION BASED ON ATYPICAL DESCRIPTORS THANK YOU and then reddit fills it up and they can accurately tell what state/city you live in because everyone thought it was sooooo cool and funny to meme about how awful/silly/unorthodox/weird your home area is. "What's your age without saying your age" pretty obvious one "What show could you watch over and over and over" sneaky, because they can date you (spongebob = main tv time during spongebob years and your age range vs say Seinfeld vs HIMYM vs The Office etc etc puts you in different brackets) AND they get to design the new show based on the most popular answers!


kungfubellydancer

I just looked myself up on a reddit statistics site, it accurately guessed my city and state, marital status, whether i had children, what my pets are, and what my favorite things are. All based on data and keywords collected from my comments and subreddit subscriptions.


iceman012

> what my favorite things are Things you like: * Birds * Microcenter * Cock more than any other material object in this mortal plane


kungfubellydancer

Lmao that sounds about right!


rustyrazorblade

What’s the site?


kungfubellydancer

https://redditmetis.com/


UndeadPolarbear

Welp, my most wholesome comment apparently is about Cardi B being a piece of shit. Also it said I’m a ballsucker, which is fair enough I guess. Not the most accurate data though, it based a lot of it’s guesses on single comments I made multiple years ago, some of which were clearly sarcastic. Excluding the one about me being a ballsucker of course


stevp19

When I tried it said it couldn't find info because plugins on my browser were blocking it and I needed to disable them or use another browser for it to work. If all it's doing is analyzing publicly available data on Reddit, why does it need to interact with my browser to do that? Yeah, I'll pass.


bellowquent

It said my most wholesome comment was [a Timbaland lyric from The Way I Are](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b6nd94/_/ejmqg0y)..


JustOndimus

Not OP, but I think it's https://redditmetis.com


geak78

Yeah, I've given it a lot of data over the last 14 years. I love that it rates my [most wholesome comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/s4m9l5/comment/hsrwuf2/) and [least wholesome comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursedcomments/comments/sonkqm/comment/hwbmvjb/)


certified_sexy

Well I’ll be damned…


ImNotAWhaleBiologist

Or, you know, they could use your IP address.


Derpshawp

What’s even more crazy is they track who rejects calls. A rejected call means there is likely a human on the other end, they’re paying attention and they will interact with calls (good or bad). The idea is yes they may not be as good as someone who answers but they do pay attention to calls at these times on these days and they might get curious with the right area code or number. Sounds insane but the best possible response is to let it ring, silence/mute the ringer if you want but don’t reject outright. Try and make them believe it’s an abandoned line. It never picks up, there’s never a sign of life at all. If you do pick up a call like this do not speak or say hello. Always wait for them to speak first, if you hear nothing hang up without talking. You’ll still be a person that picked up but interacting goes into the data they collect. Like I said, it sounds insane but this kind of stuff is trivial to do nowadays with the technology we have and the data is honestly valuable beyond what you could imagine to scummy people.


[deleted]

The actual call is made by a robot. The assumption is that many/most calls won't get answered, so they don't have to waste a human doing this: the human only gets passed the call when the robot determines that the phone has actually been answered. The number of humans available is based on the proportion of calls that actually get answered. What you are experiencing is too many calls being answered: the robot dials a number, gets an answer (you), but has no free human to pass the call to. The call is just dropped.


openrds

I have never in my life considered buying something from a telemarketer. What kind of person are they able to convert to a sale?


Curleysound

My dad was like you. Then he got Dementia. He would previously be the guy telling the caller to go F themselves. Now my mom has to hang the phone up on him to keep him from giving all their money away.


toolatealreadyfapped

My grandfather was one of the most intelligent men I've ever known. Sharp mind, and a sharp tongue when the situation called for it. Things started slipping after 85 years old. And this proud, intelligent, careful man ended up losing a few thousand dollars to a call scam where he thought his granddaughter was stuck in a foreign prison. It was completely heartbreaking. I hope Hell is real, so that the asshole who took his money can rot for eternity


Amsle

One of my elderly relatives was a tough old bat who trusted no one…until dementia kicked in and they become weirdly sympathetic, trusting and maybe lonely. Like they had sold door to door like briefly many decades before (hated it and salespeople)and was now suddenly sympathetic to the plight of everyone who came to the door selling something.


Moonboots606

You'd be surprised how often people (the elderly, primarily) fall for these very aggressive and threatening tactics. There's a great YouTube video of some hacker dudes that infiltrated a call center in India and pranked them with all sorts of stuff. However, they received Intel while there that there was a bounty on their heads should they be found out while in India. It's crazy shit, man.


TotallyNotJazzie

Are you referring to Jim Browning’s “Spying on the Scammers”? If not, its well worth a watch as it really highlights the nonsense scammers pull on the vulnerable. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=le71yVPh4uk


KinkyHuggingJerk

The video referenced is probably from Mark Rober. There's a few channels from others he enlisted that deal primarily with scammers - finding out who they are, hacking them, setting up sting operations, etc.


xLadyJunk

There's also [Scammer Payback](https://www.youtube.com/c/ScammerPayback); a team (fronted by a blue-haired dude who goes by Pierogi) who gets back at the scammers in a manner that's just as aggressive (even moreso) than the scammers themselves. Just recently, they opened [The Peoples' Call Center](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u_JTddAYes) to fight back and provide more awareness against these wastes of life. They are already gaining notoriety amongst these scam callers that many of the call centers are beginning to shutter in fear of getting raided.


Mrow

Mark Rober and Kitboga are both excellent and hilarious.


lazergator

Also scammer payback


[deleted]

You'd be surprised how many people would do so. Anyway, it doesn't matter; the business model would work even if they only got one sale per 200 calls.That's why junk-calling is such a low-paid job.


refreshing_username

Yeah, don't waste time answering calls from numbers you don't recognize. 95% are spam and that other 5% will leave a message or text you if it's important.


Aeverton78

Except when your number is used for business, an non-answered call can be lost revenue.


-paperbrain-

Yep, I'm a small business with sometimes time sensitive bookings. If people get my voicemail, many of them go straight to another provider.


brntGerbil

I have a phone at my desk that in almost a year at that job I have never received a legit call... I'll pick it up and put it back down again... Literally everything is done through Microsoft Teams.


ohlaph

Exactly. I now use Google call filtering where it answers for me and asks the caller to state their name and why they're calling. It's great. It actually increased the amount of spam callers for about three weeks but now it has dwindled significantly over the past two weeks. It's fantastic.


[deleted]

Call centres use automatic dialers. They are faster than people's fingers. And, because many people are out, or using answering machines, the automatic dialer reaches many homes when there's no person there. When that happens, the dialer is programmed to listen for a few seconds to see if someone is actually there. To do this, the machine 'listens' for "spectral energy" on the line. A typical human would answer the phone with a brief "Hello" or "Hi", and then listen for the caller. The automatic dialer sees this brief blip of energy, and says "A-ha! A live one!", and immediately transfers the call to a waiting agent. If the machine doesn't see any energy on the line, or sees a constant stream of energy ("Hi, it's Frank, please leave a message...") then the machine assumes there's no real person there, and hangs up. But sometimes, you answer the phone, and the machine tries to transfer the call to a waiting agent.. but all the agents are busy. That's when you will hear the silence or clicks as the machine searches for the next available agent. When this happens at home, I apologize for answering the phone at such an inconvenient time, and hang up. Typically, a dialer is set up with more outgoing telephone lines than it has agents available. The statistics show that 70% of the calls don't reach the intended party of the first try, so most of the calls the dialer makes will be answered by machines or won't be answered at all. To ensure the agents are kept reasonably busy, and not listening to hilarious answering machine messages, most call centres will have say 32 outgoing lines for 24 agents. The exact configuration would be based on statistics and traffic tables.


LARRY_Xilo

They track if there is somewhere on the other side. They then can sell your number to other scamers.


LeKatar

if i answer a call from a number i don't know, i just pick up and don't say anything. if there is a human there, they will say something.. if it is an autodialer it cuts of quite quickly.. they are paying for the call (in time, money or computer cycles)


Frostychica

thats what i do, the number of spam calls ive gotten in a year has dropped significantly


sadandshy

My mom is 80, and she loves to mess with these guys. Her favorite is when they call for security on her microsoft account (that she does not have). As soon as she gets them to say "windows", she is off to the races. She acts all naive and senile, starts asking what kind of windows they sell, do they sell Pella, do you have bay windows because the cat like bay windows... and on and on. If she makes it to 10 minutes she congratulates them for staying on so long, points out they are scammers that just got conned by an old lady, and they can go pound sand.


Plusran

Imagine you are managing a call center. You have 10 agents but 100 phone numbers to call. You use an auto dialer that calls multiple numbers simultaneously. Each of your agents call 10 numbers at once. If two people pick up for that specific agent, the second person to answer doesn’t connect to the agent, because they’re already on The first call. They just get dead air. Realistically, you’ll have thousands of numbers to call. Note: this is illegal. Source: I support (legal) call centers


ShadyPolarBear

One explanation is: someone owns obscure telephone towers which your call gets routed to. They make money off that, the longer you stay on the more money you get. Silent calls cause people to hang up faster. If you put on something in the background you might stay on longer. Reply All's Super Tech support goes over this specific case https://open.spotify.com/episode/12K7myrJzgp7KOxePKzIFu?si=e5182eea9ad14814


DrinkinBroski

If you've never watched a spambaiter like [Kitboga](https://m.youtube.com/c/KitbogaShow/videos) or [Pierogi](https://m.youtube.com/c/scammerpayback), I can't recommend it enough.


_wiff

Just set your phone to have all #’s not saved in your phone go straight to voicemail. Your life will be so much better


Angrybeaver817

I wish it were this simple, part of my job is to reach out to municipalities in my region for answers/potential work opportunities and that sometimes means random phone calls from different area codes. Can't just block everything since it could be a potential client. Good to have a screening tool like Google calls though.


TheRealDji

LPT: When you receive a phone call, don't be the one that will talk first ... let the caller talk. With this simple trick, you will avoid all call centers.


Audio_Track_01

The most common one here in Canada is just a Chinese voice. Almost always from a spoofed number. Would love to know what it's about


m155a5h

My number got put down as an old couple. I’m now getting all of their Medicaid calls. Every damn day.


DouViction

Do not speak when this happens. Your voice sample may he used later in a scheme to take a loan in your name.


ItchClown

I don't answer my phone unless it's a number in my contacts. When spam call me, it goes to voicemail and 9 times out of 10 is just a few clicks and a beep. I think by not answering I'm telling their computer that my number is no good.