I’ve been wondering about something that probably resonates with many of us who still use our phones for calls and not just texting or apps. What percentage of phone calls are actually legitimate?
Even with my carrier’s “junk call” blocking, I find myself receiving 4 to 5 calls daily with no caller ID. It’s become second nature now to reject these unknown callers. But if I do answer, it often turns into a choice between being pitched a Medicare scam, a car insurance scam, a social security scam, or even a utility scam.
It makes me curious – how much of our call traffic is just a relentless barrage of marketing ploys and fraudulent schemes? The few times I still get a phone call, they either have caller ID and it’s someone I know, or it’s just a phone number and there’s a 99% chance it’s junk.
I’ve had the same phone number since 1992. It’s public, on my website. It’s in everyone’s database. Yesterday I spoke with an organisation that I hadn’t dealt with since 1998, they had it and knew my name (and when I got licensed, the reason for my call).
My phone is on silent 100% of the time.
All blocked caller ID goes direct to voicemail. The only time I actually get a voicemail from these calls is when it’s a stupid robot or a human who actually needs to speak with me, the rest of the time I get nothing.
I can see a future where we get to the point where we’re uncontactable because there’s so much spam and fraud.
I think that the onus is on telcos to stamp this out, but it’s all income generating, so they don’t have any financial incentives to fix this.
I have silence unknown callers on my phone so if you’re not in my contacts, straight to voicemail.