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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/
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Sunday September 16 2018, @02:12AM (1 child)
An even better solution is to get rid of your current number & replace it with a premium rate number.
(1.900, 1.976, etc)
Make the calling party pay $20 a minute to talk to you (in full minute incremints) & the scammers will pay out the nose if they agree to talk to you at all.
Anyone you WANT to talk to you can then NOT charge them for the call, thus ensuring $Person doesn't go bankrupt talking to you.
I'd love this for assholes like my cable company - forcing Comcast to PAY me to talk to me just makes me squealy in glee.
And since it IS a pay number, that applies to SMS as well.
$Scammer wants to SMS flood you? Fine, but it'll cost them $20 per message.
Folks you WANT to hear from you don't charge them, but everyone else gets a rather nasty surprise when the phone bill comes in.
"Holy shit! It cost me over $500 to send ShadowSystems text messages! Fuck that, I'm disputing the charges!"
Except *you* called *me* so good luck getting me to refund your money.
The phoco will inform you that you made the calls/sent the messages & therefor are on the hook for the charges.
You can refuse to pay at all, but then the phoco shuts off your service until the issue is resolved.
Don't like it? Don't call me.
If it's an emergency I *might* agree to not charge you, but otherwise?
Thank you for paying my mortgage! Muh Hahahahahahhha...
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday September 17 2018, @05:44AM
This has been done years ago already:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23869462 [bbc.com]