Hello? scam calls

The past few weeks, my wife has been getting spam calls where the callerbot just says 'Hello, DeAnne, are you there?' or something similar.

WTF is the end game with this? Spambots hoping to get her voice or something? She has her VM message set to default, so the spam bots already know her name and how to say it correctly.

I get calls from all over the Midwest - it's from the Philippines selling me Medicaid insurance- I've taken a few thinking it was a customer only to get more calls. 

Ten percent of the time it's my customers I'm ignoring. 

I get about 25 calls a day now. Spam spam spammity spam.

I answer most of them though. 

I have no idea what these people are all about. I've been lying to them about who I am for so long now, though, that they have a complete identity for me: a senile old man in NY. 

In reply to confuZion3 :

Once I told a guy my name was Wink Dinkerson.  He broke form and challenged me back; your name is Wink Dinkerson?

Yup, from KRUT Radio.

Answer with heavy breathing. Then say "guess what's in my hand".

Datsun240ZGuy said:

I get calls from all over the Midwest - it's from the Philippines selling me Medicaid insurance- I've taken a few thinking it was a customer only to get more calls. 

Ten percent of the time it's my customers I'm ignoring. 

A couple months ago I answered the phone 100% expecting it to be some kind of spam/scam call. (Caller ID was suspect with a weird Business name and out of state phone number.) 

So I answered the phone with weird voice prepared to waste a telemarketers time. Nope, was a referral from one of my important clients and they were thoroughly weirded out. 

I still got hired, but it was close. 🤣

If I don't recognize the caller, I don't answer.  I rarely get spam calls. When I do answer one, I interrupt immediately (if it's a human), with, "I don't take calls from call centers. Take me off your list." Then I hang up. It's easy to tell it's a call center from the background noise. 
 

Robo calls, I just hang up and block/report spam the number. 
 

I'm not going to assume cause and effect on my response to the calls and the lower volume of calls. I'm probably just lucky. 

If you answer yes, they can say you agreed to accept the charges, which will be inflated.  That was big about twenty years ago.

My phone flags any calls it thinks are spam, so that always makes it easier.

Also, I'm just not going to answer my phone unless it's someone in my contacts. If it's not someone in my contacts and it's something really important, then I'm certain they'll leave a message.

That said, I always wish I had the gumption to answer and waste as much of the spammer's time as possible.

90% of the calls I receive have no-one on the line.  I guess they just match available spammers to the most recently connected call.  If no spammer is available, well, they'll get it next time.  Maybe the system notes that the call was answered.  I have no idea.

I once was contacted by "Amazon " on my work cell. I was just painting a vacant unit, so I let them go through their whole spiel about an Apple laptop erroneously charged to my account. They were kind enough to transfer me to "Chase Bank" to clear up the charges and refund my money lol. They finally figured out that the fake California address that I gave them was fake and were of course appalled with me for having the audacity to waste a good 15 minutes of their precious scammer time. 

Most of the time, I just answer in a foreign accent and speak in a non-existent foreign language. They normally just hang up on me after a few seconds of my gibberish. 

A few times, I have given my address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC and they don't immediately recognize it as The White House.

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

It's easy to tell it's a call center from the background noise. 

Hilariously, now they have robo callers who make it sound like they're in a busy call center with LOTS of phones calling and being called in the background. I don't know why this makes them seem more appealing or trustworthy. It makes them more annoying, honestly.

ShawnG... I'm doing that today.

For some reason I have been getting scam call that start with pretend to be a wrong number asking for Richard. I'm sure there is a joke in there that practically writes itself...

On a related note, I have a forum attached to my Midlana site, and about 99% of registration requests are nefarious. They want in to spam the site with whatever, or to post nonsensical comments and have a signature full of spam. It gets so bad that I've often had to shut down registration, but that shoots the forum in the foot by not allowing any growth. There's that, and lately, BingBot has become so invasive that the data bandwidth overages are flagged me as a problem to the domain host. Thanks, Bill! I don't envy the admins' job at big websites.

In reply to confuZion3 :

It's funny you mention that because I had one just like that a few minutes ago. There was a full minute of "background phone ringing," and then the automated spiel kicked in.

Be careful messing with spam calls.  I did one of the standard waste as much time as possible on a call I took at work.  

I get spam calls daily now on that line.  Sometimes 3 or 4 a day.  No more me telling them my name is Mike Hunt.  I don't have the time to play with this.

A lot of the human callers are basically slaves to gangs and I'd feel bad messing with them. For the vast majority, they hate their situation, so no need to pile on.

Ditto on the don't engage with them. I used to do that at my previous office. I would give them false credit cards, addresses, silly back stories and waste as much of their time as possible. At first it was a game between me and another associate to see who could keep them on the line the longest. In the end though the volume of the calls just got worse. So bad in fact we had to have an automated answering service for customers to dial a number to get to a human. 

My cell started to get bad recently to the point I no longer answer numbers I don't recognize. Within a few months of ignoring them it seems to have lessened what was once 3-5 calls a day to maybe 1 a week.

Colin Wood said:

Also, I'm just not going to answer my phone unless it's someone in my contacts. If it's not someone in my contacts and it's something really important, then I'm certain they'll leave a message.

This.

When I do bother to google a number because I've gotten several from the same area code within a few days, they always come back as a residential or personal cell number, so I assume the scammers are spoofing legit numbers. I did once get a call that showed up in caller ID as me from the number that I was being called on. I know that guy, so I did not answer...

XLR99 (Forum Supporter) said:

The past few weeks, my wife has been getting spam calls where the callerbot just says 'Hello, DeAnne, are you there?' or something similar.

WTF is the end game with this? Spambots hoping to get her voice or something? She has her VM message set to default, so the spam bots already know her name and how to say it correctly.

So in answer to your question, it's an opener to what's known as a pig butchering scam.

It's mainstream enough now that Last Week Tonight did a segment on it.

In reply to The0retical :

"The FDIC Office of Inspector General has issued new scam alerts to inform banks and consumers about a common type of scam known as ‘pig butchering.’ This scam is named in reference to the practice of fattening a pig before slaughter. It is a type of confidence and investment fraud in which the victim is gradually lured into making increasing monetary contributions, generally in the form of cryptocurrency, to a seemingly sound investment before the scammer disappears with the contributed monies."

I heard a discussion on the radio the other day where they interviewed a few people who were scammed this way.  It's hard to imagine anyone falling for it, but they described how the scammers have gotten more and more sophisticated and persuasive.  The people who were interviewed all seemed like intelligent people but for one reason or another were convinced the calls were legitimate.  The discussion also suggested more people have been taken by it than has been reported, they're so ashamed and embarrassed they don't want to admit it happened to them.

Interesting, thanks for the info. The part that creeped me out abit was that all the spammers knew how to pronounce her name correctly, but at least 50% IRL mispronounced it.

It's all part of one of many possible reasons.

In my case, I struck up a conversation with someone who called for "Steve."  They intentionally get the name wrong so you correct them, they apologize for wasting your time, yadda yadda.  I kept the conversation going, thinking that the time they waste on me is time they won't be suckering someone else.  Sometimes it's a bitcoin or other investment scam where your money disappears.  Other times it's simply research.

So, let's say you have a list of every possible phone number starting with 000-000-0000 all the way through 999-999-9999.  A computer calls them 50 at a time.  There is great value in knowing how you treat the phone call.  Do you decline and it goes straight to voicemail?  Do you let it ring and go to voicemail?  Do you mark it as spam?  Do you answer and say "Hello?".  That information is then sold to a telemarketer (scammer) who uses the data to target the ones who actually answered the phone.

Ever notice when you say hello a few times and then "Jake" [with an accent that clearly indicates his name isn't Jake] responds 4 seconds later?  It's because "Jake" was monitoring those 50 calls and he scrambles to click on whoever answered first so he can give his pitch about your vehicle warranty expiring.

You get calls in batches for this reason.  A computer bot is targeting your area code and prefix this week.  You'll get several calls from the same area code (usually a spoofed number in your area code so you think it's someone you know) because there is more information to be had.  If you answered the first call, that particular bot might not call you again, but the next week telemarketers will, because you scored high on the sucker-meter.  If you declined the call, then they call three more times, and you finally answer the third time, that's more behavior information they can associate with your number.  Each phone number is given a score depending on if you marked it spam, declined, didn't answer, answered the first time, second time, or third time, or even if you answered and yelled at the scammer.  It's all part of information and data mining.

So, my phone automatically declines the call, but I still see a  message left - although there's no message. So I block the number and send it to the spam center........but it sounds like doing that puts me on some sort of list for more call backs?

All I know is that I've been getting a LOT of these lately. Fortunately my phone handles it for me - I get one ring and it goes straight to voice mail and the phone notes it as spam.

MiniDave said:

So, my phone automatically declines the call, but I still see a  message left - although there's no message. So I block the number and send it to the spam center........but it sounds like doing that puts me on some sort of list for more call backs?

All I know is that I've been getting a LOT of these lately. Fortunately my phone handles it for me - I get one ring and it goes straight to voice mail and the phone notes it as spam.

It puts you on a call list for more calls that week.  That could mean one more call or five more robo-calls.  If you were to answer, you would get 15 calls from telemarketers the next week.

My phone does the same thing - automatically declines spam, which is simultaneously great and frustrating.  Somehow my broker's number got flagged as spam so I automatically reject the call from the guy making me money.  My voicemail box is full of 3-second blank spam messages, and "hey, it's Ernie, call me back."