Skype Spam

liamo

Hi,

I installed Skype today and made a couple of calls. I was very impressed with the quality of the sound. As I've got family in the U.S., I reckon I'll be using it quite frequently. If you haven't already tried, give it a go.

Anyway, to the point...... I received my first unsolicited Skype call a few minutes ago from someone called "Stolyenka" or something like that. I dithered about whether to answer or not and by the time I did answer I had missed the call.

I was very surprised to have received the call and Googled to see if it was a common occurence. There were, indeed, plenty of occurences. Of course, it's not as common as email Spam but it's happening.

I can understand the economics of email spam - mail millions of addresses and if you pick up a few suckers then it's been a worthwhile exercise. However, how can a one-to-one call, requiring a human on the other end, make economic sense? Perhaps the spammers (and/or scammers) have already managed to automate calls.

After the call, I immediately set my Skype options to only accept calls from people on my contact list. However, I was disappointed that I missed my first Spam call and reset it to accept calls from anyone. I'll answer the next one to see what happens. Should be interesting.

Anyone else experienced this?

Liam

kin9pin

Maybe it was Eircon making a winback call??

RobertFoster

I was talking to a guy (not on Skype) and he said he got a call fom someone wanting help learning English....

Mutant_Fruit

One good reason not to use Skype. Eircom are bad enough, but at least you'll only get 1 jumk call every month or two. I'd go spare if i was getting several a day! (i'm assuming spam calling will get bigger).

|Anyone else remember that auto-dialer from the simpsons... just imagine that happening..........

Blaster99

I've gotten the odd cold call from what sounded like Eastern Europe, so I'm sure using Skype makes sense as it's free.

BrianD

Was the human voice live or recorded? I believe that in the States many of the tele sales cold calls are now recorded, meaning that when you hang up the line is unavailable until the recording ends.

AdMMM

Yes but those Americans have'nt managed to figure out that you can simply plug out the wire to terminate the call!