Received a call from unknown number
- Thread starter podgerodge
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they use autodiallers & just ring number after number. if they get a hit (answer); it'll be marked as a valid number & if this one doesn't succeed, they'll try some other scam next time.
Dr Strangelove
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I know a medical consultant who frequently calls patients to disclose good or bad news.
He doesn’t want them calling him back so withholds caller ID.
funny you say that - this is a classic text scam in itself.
"Hi mum, I lost my phone, using a friends phone and I need money" -
If you get repeats it certainly makes sense as there's a very low risk that you'll end up blocking a legitimate call. But reviewing all the spam calls and texts I've received over the past while, not once has a number repeated even where the message content is identical. So blocking those numbers does nothing to prevent me getting more.
Any consultant I have attended asks the medical secretary to make contact.
I can't imagine why a medical professional would prevent a patient from contacting their office.
I have never known a medical professional to give 'bad' news over the phone; you might be asked to come in to discuss results.
Blocking the calls makes no difference when they rotate every single time, the chances of you getting another call from another, or even the same group of spammers is along the same lines as winning the lottery.
Answering a call and playing them along does not make you any more likely to receive further calls. It's not like the ones that called you are going to want to waste their time again, and it's not like they share data with the many, many other groups who are doing this. Some of the US telcos offer paid services to block likely scam and spoofed numbers, none of the Irish ones do.
Dr Strangelove
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I know for a fact there “suckers lists” of people vulnerable to financial crime assembled by organised criminal groups.
Someone responsive to one scam is likely to be responsive to another and keeping track of this is not the height of technological sophistication.
It’s an extreme claim by you to say that not answering or not engaging has zero impact on the likelihood of being contacted in future.
That's purely based on the number of groups operating these scams. A massive Interpol operation a few years back raided more than 10,000 groups. How many more were there then? How many more have come online since?
Dr Strangelove
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There is some sharing of data, you can buy enriched data from aggregation services on the dark web, but it's limited and it's not free, so most phone scammers don't bother with it. Phone scamming is volume game that relies on auto-dialers just sequencing through numbers. If a call is answered they try to get one of their people on the line to engage, but you will occasionally just get silence before the call is cut off after a few seconds when everyone they have is already on a call.
Why wait, can you not assess your call log and blocked numbers?
My one and only scam call of 2023 was back in May. I answered but I don't think anyone connected at the other end.
ConReg recently closed out a long-running consultation with operators here to come up with a unified model to tackle all forms of nuisance comms. They are in discussions now on some legislative changes required to support the proposals. I note some of the operators were pushing back on making CLI Roaming checks that would help in the identification of spoofed numbers available to other providers.