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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the with-a-90dB-horn? dept.

I have been getting calls that immediately start with, "Thank you for choosing Marriot Hotels!" for a couple years now. The message goes on to say how I am getting this great offer because I am a valued customer. On a couple occasions, I stayed on the line to get a human, they ask yes/no questions (are you over 28? do you have a valid credit card?). I just replied with questions of my own, and they immediately hung up. I can continue to ignore the calls, but they are always from a random local number and I get nearly twice as many of these calls than I get legitimate calls.

I did a search and found this has been around for a while and Marriot is aware:
http://news.marriott.com/2015/05/marriott-international-responds-to-continued-phone-scam-updated-oct-20-2015/

I have deliberated about posting, but I don't see the FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] as being able to act unless I can provide them something more than the spoofed phone number. Providing the number(s) probably won't help as they are spoofing the caller ID. I know that this is a long shot, but is there anything anyone can suggest beyond creating a spreadsheet of phone numbers, dates, and times to log these calls? Would that even be useful?

It seems that something is fundamentally broken with the current phone system, if this spoofing is even possible. But that is a side topic here, the real question is, what can I do, if anything, to get the data the FCC would need to shut this down?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:20PM (9 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:20PM (#479352)

    If this is a smart phone, you can use an app like "Should I Answer?" that keeps a user database of legitimate vs telemarketer numbers - granted if the spoofers are truly random all this will tell you is "unknown" vs a whitelist, but it seems to work really well against the telemarketers that call me.

    If you want to play, make up a fake identity and engage with them as if you are interested in their product, get enough identity out of them to potentially make a payment to them, then use that to file a complaint.

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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:46PM (4 children)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:46PM (#479363) Homepage Journal

    Not going to get much identity out of them if they just ask for a charge card number. It won't even show up on your bill if you give the a fake one. And who's to say they aren't giving you fake identity information too?

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:51PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:51PM (#479367) Homepage Journal

      The ones providing real identity information probably aren't fraudulent.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:37PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:37PM (#479384)

      If they expect you to give a charge card number without identifying themselves, then they really are fishing for suckers.

      As someone else said, you could work with an enforcement agency, give them a honey-pot card (attached to a free to open Capital One bank account with $2 in it), and play other games.

      Far easier to just answer calls from your whitelist and let others go to voice mail.

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      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:25PM (#479415)

        Why go to the trouble to set up a Capital One account when you can just use one of the many ones that Wells Fargo already opened up on your behalf?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:30PM (#479419)

        Had a debt collector on me for a few years. They would call, refuse to identify themselves, but demand my social security number. I only know it was them and not some scam (well, not that they aren't part of the scam we call free market medicine anyway) because they didn't spoof their caller ID.

        I truly don't get the mindset of people who hire call centers to behave this way. Amazingly stuff like that isn't always a scam. Just some cocaine snorting master of the universe who thinks that the same high-pressure tactics will work over the phone and demands that the call center providing the staffing go against every best practice.

        Then they always complain about the bill being too high and the low closing rate, which always leads to the psychological abuse bullying game about how stupid and incompetent and uneducated the operators are and how inept management is for giving them jobs. Dipshits.

        Working in a call center was probably the only thing that could have turned me from a hard-core free market into a leftist socialist. Just seeing the abuse and mind games from the masters of the universe made me physically ill some days.

  • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:38PM (3 children)

    by dyingtolive (952) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:38PM (#479385)

    Who actually gets junk calls on their cell phone anyway? I don't think I get any other than from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Charter, both begging for more money. I have them set to block on my phone. Only calls I've had for years are from the doctor's office and people who I actually want to talk to.

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    • (Score: 1) by WillR on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:57PM

      by WillR (2012) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:57PM (#479429)
      I've been getting "Rachel from cardholder services" scam calls from random spoofed numbers. (I though "Rachel" got shut down in 2012 or so... apparently she's out of jail now.) And once a month or so, I get a fake tech support call from "Microsoft" about my poor virus-riddled PC.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:59PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:59PM (#479459)

      It used to be quieter, there are some nifty penalties you can collect if you bother with small claims court - and debt collectors are required to post a bond to operate in most states - so your $500 per instance judgements can be collected from that, but there are probably much easier ways to make money. Once long ago I had a debt collector call on my cell phone (we had recently given up on landlines) - the minute I mentioned that they were calling on a cell line and I hadn't given them permission to do so, they went away and never came back (the disputed debt was 6 years and 10 months old at the time, so not too shocking that they finally gave up.)

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    • (Score: 1) by Weasley on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:38PM

      by Weasley (6421) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:38PM (#479545)

      I was getting two different scammers calling me once every week or two. I had to change my number to get rid of them.