I’d argue that leaving a voice message is definitely not ‘waking up to the 21st century’ - it’s a left over nuance from times past.
I’d also suggest you’re wasting your own time by letting a call ring out, waiting for the message notification, calling your message service to determine if it’s worth calling back, then calling back the person. May as well just answer the call, and if it’s not someone you want to talk too hang up.
Either way, each to their own, was just pointing out that by ignoring calls and letting them go to a message you are almost certainly missing legitimate calls, as there are people out there who won’t leave a message.
But I agree sending a text is worthwhile - and I regularly do that, but I would also expect a response by text…
Oh, it also reminds me there has apparently been a rise in phone number spoofing.
I've had three friends ask me about it in past six months but I'm not sure about what methods are being employed.
I suspect it was just spoofing via voip signaling, but I've not really looked into it. Not my circus and not my monkeys anymore.
A more legit form of spam not scam calling is online hard selling from comparison websites and their clients.
iSelect was on such a serious hard sell for a new NBN provider they "decided" to switch me. It was only that I caught the shark with his wording and I let him do all the talking to see how far he would go. I put my virtual boot up his arse and made sure the provider he chose for me was one I never use. But after that I also realise my phone is on the DNC register.
So I've caught several companies now. Normally I would just give them a bodgy number and email. But when I give them my real number, they call it within a few minutes.
The first question is... "Do you check the do not call register?" I need to start a thread of bullshit excuses.
I've noticed this is so common that I now hope they call me so I can fvck with them.
Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
I have seen this too ..... I started only answering local area phone numbers that looked like mine except for the last 4 digits (thinking it was someone in my town)
but I found it was answered by someone saying "thank you for your recent eBay purchase" .... before I hung up ... (I did not buy anything on eBay recently)
Also I have been surprised by the number of scam callers that begin with hello (my real first name) lately ... a lot of people I don't know, know my first name ?
and they have got both my Landline number and Mobile number too ?
I am also on the do not call register
At this stage I have decided to do as suggested earlier .... only answer numbers that come up as names in my private dialer list .... if your not on the list and don't leave a message bad luck
I also know I may miss some legit callers by mistake .... but the unwanted callers have become too frequent
Last edited by OSIRUS; 28-04-21 at 09:43 PM.
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My comment about the 21st century was related to VOIP, war dialers and other tech of the 21st century that allowed the insane increase of the numbers of scammers nowhere near those found in the former century.
As for wasting time, I would never find time to do anything else if I would respond to all this, plus I would suffer from psychological stress and anger from these scammers.
I am not waiting for anything. As I said they rarely ring for more than 30 seconds and my ancient land line answering machine immediately goes to speaker if somebody would actually be leaving a message where I can interact. I will respond to a legit text message as it has a legit number to respond to unlike the number you see from those scammers that are randomly generated but apparently lately the war dialers can now display a number similar to the one they are calling.
My adapted 21st century behaviour leaves me plenty of time to have a life in this century.
Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...
I had a phone call a couple of days back from a middle eastern person who asked if I was available (he asked by my first name which I only use on official documents). My first question was "Who's calling?" to which he was evasive until I confirmed who I was, this went around in circles for a couple of minutes, eventually I confirmed my name, then he claimed to be from Centrelink and wanted me to to confirm my DOB to which I gave him my day and month and then asked him to supply the year to which he refused. My response was "If you are truly from centrelink can I call you back?" He gave me a 13 number that I did look up and it appears that he was actually from Centrelink. Of course this wasted 30 minutes of my time as by this time I had hung up. I ring the number only to get the automated service which, after about 10 minutes finally put me in a queue to talk to a human. 30 minutes later the call "drops out". NOT IMPRESSED. I immediately ring back only to get "We are now closed....." I go to their website to fire off a dirty letter". In the middle of which I get a phone call from a friend. I get back to the letter 10 minutes later and hit "send" only to get "Your session has timed out" and no way of retrieving said message! Very Rude words thought and a complete understanding of those who blow up Centrelink buildings or shoot centrelink staff! Good thing we are in OZ and not USofA. Next morning I do try and ring again and quite quickly get onto a nice friendly human who understood my frustrations.
And some people wonder why we are sceptical of calls from "private" numbers who won't identify themselves?
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...
eaglem (02-05-21),OSIRUS (05-05-21),Uncle Fester (02-05-21),william10 (30-04-21)
Slightly off topic but today within the space of 10 minutes I had 2 calls in reference to bills I needed to okay payment to Amazon. The first was for an Apple iphone 11 which I did not order and the second was my annual fee of $200 for my membership to Amazon which I've never joined. These were calls to my mobile. Obviously I hung up immediately on working out what they were about. Bloody Scammers seem to be working overtime at the moment
The Eagle Flies High!
OSIRUS (05-05-21)
I followed the advice given earlier ..... don't answer any calls you don't know .... & in your mobile go in and block the ones you know are scammers ... put everyone you want to answer in your phone book as a name ...
look up the phone numbers you don't know in case it reveals someone legit and important at Reverse Phone Lookup Australia
my phones have both gone quiet .... (doesn't matter wasn't going to answer any more any way)
I thought I could answer any call and just hang up on the scammers .... but the unwanted callers got to frequent (6 in one day in the end)
& the scams are getting better all the time .... & if they just half suck you in .... they may get something from you ...
I personally think someone who knew my name etc ... had put me on a "black list" somewhere when they got pissed off with me hanging up on them .... how else would they have got my first name ... the landline is not in my name ...
anyway yeh the advice in this thread works .... use it if you have to
Thanks Guys
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And guess what is just around the corner....... Tax time.
Not only bogus telstra and amazon calls, but we will soon be annoyed from being pestered with scams and bogus emails/calls from the so-called Australian Taxation Office.
Last edited by Xplorer; 05-05-21 at 09:55 PM.
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I'd love to get one from the "Taxation" Department. I haven't paid tax in nearly 20 years!
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...
I notice the wording of sms texts from the PA hosp. take the time to spell out that you receive a call between 8 and 12am that will display private/unknown number.
If you sit long enough thinking about that, one is either vulnerable to the possibility of answer a coldcall from an unknown number during that time, or....coldcallers/scammers -cannot- use the private CID flag?
It just occurred to me that's always been the case - you can see the caller number.
Anyone know if this is just the scammers thinking that people seeing their number gives better odds of being answered, or if it's a case that they can't hide CID?
Try not to train the scammers into doing better next time.
Uncle Fester says he doesn't waste time on them. It's a fair enough action.
But they will get better at it if you ignore them.
They don't need to succeed every time. IF they hit one in 10000 people it's still a win for them.
So I do appreciate the scam baiters who waste their time, help them become worse at being convincing, give them false information or information that is likely to lead to them getting caught or at least hurt in some way. If they are wasting their time on baiters then they have less time to hurt real people.
If I have time to waste, then I will waste it to fuel my sick and perverse sense of humour.
I had the amazon I phone robotic calls a couple of times over the past week. So disappointing that it's a robot. yeah, I just hang up and block the number. There's no fun there. Send them to voice mail, maybe analyse them, at least share the audio with some old folks so they know they are a scam.
I played one for my mum. Good education.
She had an Australian post delivery scam SMS. She knew she had no packages so didn't fall for it. But I showed her what to look for.
If in doubt, ask me before responding to anything.
Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
ACMA have just released a media release
Australia-US to collaborate in fight against phone scams.
The disruption of phone scams is a 2021-22 compliance priority for the ACMA. In March the ACMA revealed that 55 million scam calls to Australian phone numbers had been blocked since new rules requiring telcos to detect, trace and block scam calls were introduced in December 2020.
It's getting worse, at least this is a start.
Details here:
MOU between Australia and US here:
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eaglem (05-06-21),Tiny (05-06-21),Uncle Fester (04-06-21)
Remember to answer your phone to mystery numbers. "Hello Australian Oxygen exports"
And " Yes, we can ship 10,000 cubic litres of oxygen to you with just a 10% deposit.
Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Do you remember the glitter bomber to catch people stealing packages, now it is being applied to phone scammers.
Ya got to listen to this one .... can you get money out of the scammers?
Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
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