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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) by Grishnakh on Monday September 17 2018, @12:48AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday September 17 2018, @12:48AM (#735795)

    Can't remember the last time I actually used my phone as a phone. Everything is via text nowdays.

    Do you not have any family or friends or girlfriend? I talk to my family on the phone all the time. Of course, it's pretty easy to recognize them as legitimate callers for obvious reasons. I will say, however, my last girlfriend only liked to text, which I thought was weird for a while, but when she finally dumped me by text, I realized there was something seriously wrong with her (and all the other women I talked to afterwards and told them about this said, "what a bitch!!", so I don't think I'm alone in thinking that dumping-by-text is not OK). I won't be dating anyone else who can't be bothered to talk on the phone.

    Now, if you exclude family and friends, I'll agree: I don't like to talk on the phone at all, and almost all calls are either some kind of BS, or something annoying, like some behind-the-times doctor's office that insists on robocall reminders instead of a text reminder.

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