With quite a bit of travel in recent years, frequently crossing domestic time zones and hotel & airport wifi spots, I've been 'catching' these robocalls on the cell phone like children catch colds in wet winters. Sometimes the "Press two to be removed from our list" thing works, but it's not my favorite method of responding.

Favorite way to respond #1: Wait to get connected to the live sales agent, and punish them with ruthless, detailed, and articulate verbal fury.

These salesmen and -women are certainly not making much money from their toil, but that's irrelevant. They're making it by ANNOYING AND TRYING TO CHEAT *me*, and their poverty and neediness are in no way exculpatory.

And here's the thing! It doesn't matter whether they're living like infectious little mice in Enid, Oklahoma or Bangalor, India… When trying to cheat strangers on the phone for an employer, nobody likes to have their genitals mocked, the decency of their mother denigrated, or the grim prospects for their economic future explicated. In the short term, they're instructed to simply end the call.

But more to the point, these phone calls are of course being recorded and monitored in call centers, hideous sweatshop operations on this continent and others in which a supervisor is monitoring the outcome of each connection at a master console. When one of these corrupt sales pitches has a negative result, when the cost of employee productivity (and emotional stability) exceeds any likely income, they'll push a button on their console and your name will be removed from the list… For the moment.

God knows what they're doing with the rest of your cellphone data, but it's a little late in the century to be worrying about that. (If these difficulties seriously degrade our enthusiasm for our smartphones, Google has a problem. I don't think they'll let it get that far.) We'll be dealing with the big picture in the years ahead no matter what.

Favorite way to respond #2: Immediately get on Twitter and ask the bait corporation —Hyatt, Marriott, Southwest, Carnival Cruises, et cetera— why they're poisoning your smartphone with calls from scam artists.

The @Corporation account will immediately respond. (They pay dropouts and state college graduates with useless degrees to stay up all night watching the social media platforms for mentions and complaints. Those kids spend most of their time fricking off on Facebook, but there's nothing the corporations can do about it, because it's kind of their assignment.) The @Corporation response will affirm that they have no association with these scam artists. As soon as possible, you should quite publicly reply that so long as they're getting bookings from the scamsters, they're plenty well associated. As they are.

The hospitality/travel @Corporation might instead reply that these callers are merely looking for new ways to collect private information about you. This is perhaps literally true, but again, your immediate response should be that it's nonetheless not your problem: It's their name and reputation that are being put before you, and they alone are responsible for defending them.


This mischief is happening at a loathsome intersection of regulatory incompetence, corporate sleaze, and organized crime.

And it's happening in the concentric center of America's 'callout culture'! If you pay enough attention to feel emotions, positive OR negative, about things like #metoo and campus snowflakes, then you ought to find the time that it takes to respond to this silliness.

It is all of a piece, I say.

Phone companies provide all the technology needed by robocallers and others to avoid being blocked . . . for a reasonable price. As long as it is profitable they will not change.

I leave my mobile phone in 'do not disturb mode'. if not on my contacts it doesn't ring, real new callers can leave a message, or call twice which will ring.

I've heard we already passed the point where there are more robo calls than real calls.

Has no one heard of phone-number spoofing?

So...if I tell them to self-copulate whilst pounding sand, that satisfies El Cridmo's first policy?

Some times, I'll get on the line with them, and tell them my lawyer is John Morgan, and he's going to sue their ass unless they put my # on their do not call list.

*click*

Here's a longish youtube piece where a guy roasts one of the "we're from microsoft and you have a virus" scammers. https://youtu.be/5lkmL_zZlO0 It's rather beautiful.

I recall another guy who hoodwinked a similar scammer into opening a virus because he thought it was a image of a credit card.

Has no one heard of phone-number spoofing?

Oh, yes. I find it amusing to see scam calls coming from an exchange that I know was set aside for cell phones.

I don't need government "protecting" me from spam calls. If I get a call from a number that's not in my phone I ignore it. My voice mail requests that they send a text instead of leaving a message. It works pretty well for me. I realize your mileage may vary.

Pretty much the same here, Kent. The people who know me personally also know that if they want me to pick up, they'd better START to leave a message, at least. So, almost all strangers who don't have a legit reason to call (such as to remind me of a medical appointment) do not leave messages, since they can't be sure there's a real person living there.

Call blocking isn't going to solve this. As Radwaste points out, the scammers are spoofing their numbers (i.e. the number you see is fake). It's the same trick used in 'swatting' where someone calls 911 with the victim's number, claiming a violent incident is taking place, hoping the police will kill them accidentally.

This is a basic feature of telecom networks. The call 'id' is simply data accompanying a call session. It's not actually used to establish or maintain the connection between parties. And the telecoms don't want to prevent spoofing, by validating call ID info, because of the changes required and the fact that this capability enables a bunch of legitimate applications.

> first policy?

The most important thing is to hurt their feelings, diminishing their enthusiasm for the work. And the enthusiasm of their nearby associates.

Look, you owe it to them to encourage a move toward honest, more-enjoyable employment, and a productive, lucrative position in the magnificent United States economy.

You're doing them a favor, really.

THIS . . . is one reason why I typically don't answer my cell phone when a simple phone number appears in the Caller ID banner. Another one, of course, is that I simply don't want to put up with people pestering me.

@Crid: I believe that, oftentimes, the callers are people on temporary assignments for temping firms as well. I was actually on one of those assignment in 1999. I think my favorite response was actually one that was initially hostile. I called up and started my company-provided spiel, and immediately, a voice on the other end whispered, "Fuck you . . ." I was mildly shocked, and I must have asked him something conciliatory, such as, "Are you OK?", because he ultimately told me that he thought I was somebody else who was pestering him, IIRC. I got to finish my spiel, and we both had a good laugh about it.

Look, you owe it to them to encourage a move toward honest, more-enjoyable employment, and a productive, lucrative position in the magnificent United States economy.

Also a good reason to oppose draconian-assed min-wage laws, like the 15$ one that just became law in my state.

"Has no one heard of phone-number spoofing?"

yes which is why blocking a number doesn't work. My number was calling my phone for a week.

"Favorite way to respond #1: Wait to get connected to the live sales agent, and punish them with ruthless, detailed, and articulate verbal fury."

I like to go into Chester the Molester mode. Make them feel icky and dirty, and need a shower. Shaming is also fun. It's a challenge to see how long you can get them to stay on the line and take the abuse. It's a bonus when you can get them to fight back and lose their temper, which no doubt is frowned upon by management.

The way I see it, they deserve to be exploited for my amusement.