Scam phone calls

Iderown

A story on BBC web pages today:


Phone scammers: 'Give me £1,000 to stop calling you'

"The 2020 pandemic closed call centres so there were fewer, but now everything is opening up and robocalls are back," he told the BBC.

So-called robodiallers, often located overseas, make millions of calls per hour."

We are in Northern Ireland and subject to daily land line scam calls. Format of most calls goes: on lifting phone there is a delay (5 to 10 seconds?) followed by fast talking person with poor quality audio and noisy office type background. Money, cash card details or access to our computer is asked for. They irritate my wife more than me. If I get to the phone first I "play with them" keep them talking as long as I can but don't tell them anything useful. I usually end by blasting a referee's whistle down the phone.

I'm guessing that they use a VOIP connection to the phone line along with an auto-dialling program. There are days when the phone rings about 08 in morning - but no connection. I suspect that this is when their system in powered up and goes through their list of land line numbers. We have taken to un-plugging the land line at that time of day in the hope that their system will register a "not connected line" for us.

The number they call from is spoofed - different every time. So, difficult to block.

Do you experts on VOIP have any advice for me to help prevent these calls?

Moderator: move/copy this to a more appropriate forum if there is one.

Ten Pin

We have taken to un-plugging the land line at that time of day in the hope that their system will register a "not connected line" for us.

Unplugging the phone won't make any difference to what the caller "hears", it just rings out in the same way as ignoring a call.

Make a formal complaint to your landline provider and regulator (cite nuisance calls as a reason), it probably won't make much difference as it may not be technically possible to block numbers that are constantly changing as it ends up as a game of whackamole.

The caller source being VOIP is possibly irrelevant as they're just connecting in to the PSTN network in the same way as most other legitimate VOIP calls and modern phone systems are probably VOIP based anyway with just the last mile portion of the signal being analogue for landline phones.

65535

"Do you experts on VOIP have any advice for me to help prevent these calls? "

If you are getting your 'landline' calls via Broadband then you can block the numbers by using a Fritz Box router or similar.