Retirement discovery ... the house phone rings 5 times a day from cold calls...

[rayinpenn]

Oh and the World has discovered ill be 65 in July and will likely need gap insurance, Hooray! Funny thing those callers to my cell phone try to sound like they are with the government. They all want to make me aware of my ‘options’.. It’s six months away and I don’t want to think about my ‘options’. Just how did they get my number?

The land line calls come from all over the country. In case any of those losers are reading this: We have Caller ID if I don’t know you we aren’t picking up. Not now, not ever. I may just pick up the phone and hang up on you before you have a chance to talk.

I’m thinking of ‘deep sixing’ the land line...
I suspect the cold callers have an informant who’s lets them know when I am napping. The Mrs is not above suspicion! If this continues I may have to slip something in her tea.

 

[gwraigty]

We ditched our land line years ago. It doesn't stop the scam/spam calls. I've read that a computer program generates numbers to call. Eventually it hits on real numbers. We also don't pick up if the number isn't in our contacts list.

 

[W2R]

I’m thinking of ‘deep sixing’ the land line...

Good idea! This solution worked beautifully for me, plus it saved me the (about?) $40-$45 per month that a landline phone costs these days. I can spend that on doo-dads from Amazon instead.

Almost none of the spammers seem to have found my cell phone, for some reason. When I get a spam call on my cell phone, which is only maybe 2-3 times a week, I don't have to get up to answer it because it's right here beside me. Since it has caller ID, I just disconnect from the spammer and that's the end of it.

 

[GrayHare]

Only 5? That would be a slow day here. With so much spam calling it's easy to see why so many people no longer answer their phone.

 

[OldShooter]

We dropped our wireline and switched the number to Ooma premium service IIRC $10/month. Their spam blocking is pretty good right out of the box and has improved as we have blocked numbers.

Our current policy is that unless the callerid is someone we recognize, we let it go to VM. Most spammer robots don't leave VM so those we block automatically. Where they prove they are spammers by leaving a spam VM, again we block.

Don't pick up and hang up. Then they know they have a good phone number. I have an MP3 of the phone company "disconnected line" tone on my computer. Occasionally I answer and play that into the phone. Whether it works or not I don't know but it is amusing.

 

[Another Reader]

A few days ago I incorrectly hooked up the phone so it goes through the new all-in-one. Now spammers talk to a fax line on the 4th ring. Thinking of leaving it that way as I never get any important land line calls now.

 

[Amethyst]

We've always just used an answering machine, which comes on at the 4th ring. Spammers simply hang up. The rare spammer who leaves a message, is easily identified as spam! Thus, we have never had to deal with the "looks like your computer has a problem, can you give us your password so we can take a look?" folks.

When we're waiting for callbacks from contractors and the like, we look for the name on the phone screen. The spammers are now spoofing local exchanges - fooled us once or twice, but really it's not that hard to tell the phony numbers, from the few numbers we get calls from.

 

[karen1972]

Luckily for me I have some super old area code on my cell phone and thus any phone # from that area code is spam, which makes it very easy to block. I have no idea where they get numbers or even address.. my honey is 45 and got medicare letters in the mail for months after we moved.

 

[Walt34]

We have a call blocker that works wonderfully out of the box and numbers can be added as needed.

 

[REWahoo]

What is this "house phone" you speak of? DW has a phone and I have a phone, but our house has no need to take or make calls.

 

[Lakewood90712]

Only 5 spam calls per day ? Are you sure the line connection is good ? Most get more.

Only keep landline for 2 reasons, 911 calls and fax machine ( ya still use one )

 

[W2R]

Only 5 spam calls per day ? Are you sure the line connection is good ? Most get more.

Only keep landline for 2 reasons, 911 calls and fax machine ( ya still use one )

I don't use a fax machine, and if I really needed a fax to be sent or received, the UPS store around the corner will be glad to help for a buck or two. The last time I needed this service was in 2015 for some reason when buying my house.

As for 911 calls, I did one from my cell phone after a car accident a few years ago, and the 911 operator knew exactly where I was which was a surprise. I guess they must have some way to get that from gps information in my phone but I didn't know they could do that immediately like that. It's a complete mystery to me.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Whats a house phone?

 

[rodi]

I have a land line for a few reasons- but it's hooked up to magic jack and forwarded to google voice. That way legitimate callers leave a message and I call right back. Spammers don't... Never rings since it's forwarded. I can make outgoing calls on it. And since magic jack is cheap ($5/month) it's an easy way to keep a phone number that is tied to several old accounts/systems.

I've considered dropping it. And probably will when/if we move.

I don't get a lot of spam on my cell.... but google or t-mobile or someone tends to show "scam likely" as the caller id when it is a spam call...I let those go to voice mail.

 

[badatmath]

I have a land line and nothing special - get maybe 1 spam call every few months. I don't know the secret but its unlisted and unpublished if that helps.

 

[braumeister]

I've saved well over $2K since ditching the landline five years ago and getting Ooma. The quality of VOIP (at least in our current and previous homes) is every bit as good as the landline was.

And thanks to Nomorobo (included with Ooma) we get about one spam call a month.

 

[ncbill]

My relative had their land-line number for over 35 years.

I considered keeping it via Ooma or Google Voice.

But it's been nothing but spam calls for the last 6 months, so away it goes at the end of this month.

 

[RobbieB]

2 rings and they all talk to the box.

 

[Gumby]

We still have a landline. If I pick it up and don't hear anything immediately, I know it is an auto-dialed spam call and hang up.

 

[Nick12]

If it is a live person on the other line, I tell them you are on a recorded line. They usually give up and hang up. Another thing I do is ask them their direct phone number and I will call you back. They usually give up and hang up to. Another thing I do is speak Spanish to them and that ends the call really quick.

 

[target2019]

You can transfer the line and use options to block calls. We use Tracfone. Costs about 100 per year initially. Now it is 50 just to extend the unused minutes, texts, data.

 

[scrabbler1]

My land line is linked to Nomorobo which blocks many but not all junk calls. Most of the calls to it which get through are from spoofed numbers, some of which are the "neighbor" spoofs where the area code+exchange matches mine. Other junk calls often come from those "Health Care Hotline" faked numbers which usually but not always manage to stay one step ahead of Nomorobo. When a call does get through, I often answer it but stay silent, just to mess with them a little. If I hear a robocaller begin its speech, I hit the # sign a bunch of times which I once heard confuses the robodialer. Not sure if it works, though.


If I get 2 or more junk calls from the same number, after I have reported it to Nomorobo, I can add that number (or a legit number I just don't want to hear from) to my blocked-call list. Thanks to these features and options, I don't get too many junk calls on the land line any more.


I don't have the same features and options on my cell phone. It's a simple flip phone with pay-per-minutes, so I don't want to burn up my minutes answering it just to listen to the speeches. I'd say nearly half of the junk callers there are from neighbor spoofed numbers. I have given out my number to maybe 10 people, so it is easy to identify a caller not on my contacts list. Anyone who has my precious cell number I have already told not to use it unless they tried calling me on my land line unsuccessfully. Can't use Nomorobo there.


When the cell phone rungs, and I see a number and not a name from my contacts list, I just lift the lid on my phone a half inch and let it close right away. This doesn't burn up any minutes and ends the noise pollution from the ringer. Maybe it's not the best thing to do because the robodialer "believes" the call got through. Sometimes, by mistake, I hit a button on the side of the phone which seems to trigger a rejection of the call. Not sure if that is any better, and I can't figure out which button I actually hit to generate that response. I may go a few days without a junk caller on the cell, then get 3 or 4 per day on it. Around 90-95% of all calls/texts on my cell are junk, making my cell phone mostly a receptacle for unwanted calls and texts (and I do have to pay for those unwanted texts; I have called and yelled at the biggest offender there).

 

[donheff]

We kept our land line # on VOIP but let Nomorobo pick up a large portion of the spam. We hear them as single rings that then stop. There are still a fair number of commercial calls that come through but we don't answer if a known caller doesn't come up on the phone screen.

So far I have only seen a few spam calls on my mobile but I worry that will be the next target.