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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?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snospar on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:01PM (3 children)
A couple of years ago I bought one of these [truecall.co.uk] and it has reduced my nuisance calls to almost zero while always letting legitimate callers through. If the incoming number is on the whitelist the phone rings as normal (it will take a message if we don't pick up); for other numbers it will either drop the call (if on the blacklist or sending no number) or it will tell the caller we are "call screening" and ask them to state their name if the call is valid - this fools most machines as they don't interact. If the call is valid and they tell the machine their name then my phone rings with a message that someone is calling, I can then choose to answer/ignore/whitelist/blacklist as appropriate.
It's not a cheap bit of kit, and UK only I think, but it is very easy to use and as I work from home and was getting 5-6 junk calls per day I think it has covered its costs.
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(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:01PM (1 child)
I use one of the BT phones with that built-in.
It's pretty good overall.
It's not 100%. For example, I often get calls from a family member whose workplace sends no ID. So I can't just block calls with no ID. Similarly, I occasionally get calls from my employer's office in another country, so I shouldn't block international calls.
Still, just being able to block individual numbers has cut my unwanted calls to almost nothing. (Registering with the Telephone Preference Service [tpsonline.org.uk] also helped.)
[sig redacted]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:22PM
I use a Panasonic wireless phone with good success. It blocks up to 250 numbers and can block area codes. It takes some work to build the block list but now very few get through. I add the unwanted callers to a call group called scammers and cid a scam. That way I know they've called before. You can block the first ring. I have used Digitone with success til it broke.
(Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:51PM
Interesting, but they are calling my cell-phone.
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"