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posted by chromas on Saturday September 15 2018, @05:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the http://www.archersecuritygroup.com/dont-fall-double-digit-phone-scam/ dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

By next year, nearly half of the mobile phone calls we get will be scams, according to a new report from First Orion, a company that provides calls management and protection for T-Mobile, MetroPCs, Virgin Mobile and others.

The percentage of scam calls in US mobile traffic increased from 3.7 percent last year to 29.2 percent this year, and it's predicted to rise to 44.6 percent in 2019, First Orion said in a press release Wednesday.

The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix so people presume the calls are safe to pick up, First Onion said. Third-party call blocking apps may help protect consumers from known scam numbers, but they can't tell if a scammer hijacks someone's number and uses it for scam calls.

"Year after year, the scam call epidemic bombards consumers at record-breaking levels, surpassing the previous year and scammers increasingly invade our privacy at new extremes," First Orion CEO Charles Morgan said in the press release.

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/almost-half-of-us-cell-phone-calls-will-be-scams-by-next-year-says-report/


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:08PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:08PM (#735425)

    "If the scam calls really become the majority of calls and people just stop answering calls from outside their address book..."

    Actually, I already do this. If I don't recognize the number then I ignore the call. In that case you better leave a voicemail or I'll just assume it's a telemarketer, ya asswipes!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @10:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @10:13PM (#735442)

    Actually, I already do this. If I don't recognize the number then I ignore the call. In that case you better leave a voicemail or I'll just assume it's a telemarketer, ya asswipes!

    On an iPhone you can set "do not disturb" on, then mark individual contact list entries as able to override that. The only time the phone even rings is when it's from someone you want to hear from.