Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

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Tortoise
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Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Tortoise » Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:03 pm

Most of you are probably familiar with "neighborhood scam" calls, which are robocalls that typically begin with the first five or 6 digits of your phone number. For example, if your phone number is (123) 456-7890, neighborhood scam calls will be displayed on your caller ID as (123) 456-XXXX or (123) 45X-XXXX, where the Xs can be anything.

This morning I received two such neighborhood scam calls, but for the first time one of them matched the first five digits in my wife's phone number, not mine. So whoever made the robocall knows there's a connection between her number and mine. A bit disturbing that they know that, but whatever. I guess it's a recent adaptation.

Anyhow, a few years ago I installed a call-blocking/identification app on my phone called Hiya. It works well at filtering out neighborhood scam calls that match the first six digits, but unfortunately it doesn't provide the option of using just five digits. Seems like a no-brainer option to add, especially since most neighborhood scam calls now seem to match only the first five digits, so it baffles me why they haven't done it yet after all these years.

Does anyone know of a good call-blocking/identification app that lets the user block neighborhood scam numbers that match only the first five digits? And not just of my own phone number, but other phone numbers as well (such as my wife's)? Obviously the app would need to let me white-list my contacts, otherwise the additional neighborhood scam filters I define would block some of my contacts.
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Mark Leavy
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Mark Leavy » Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:47 pm

I leave do not disturb on 100% of the time unless I have a call prearranged. Everything goes to voicemail (which is auto transcribed to my email account)

The scamming problem has made phone calls obsolete.

I don’t see a solution. I keep waiting for apple to add whitelisting. I don’t know why they don’t. Or maybe I just haven’t figured it out.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Kriegsspiel » Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:54 pm

In addition to the above posts, I'd suggest making yourself a ringtone that you enjoy. I'm currently using Dance With The Dead - Mask, which would go well with your avatar 8)
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by WiseOne » Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:15 pm

I spent today dealing with the results of a scammer hitting on my mother (who has early Alzheimer's). She fell for it and is now out almost $3K. It could have been worse if not for the credit card alerts I got when they eventually started rejecting transactions. Unfortunately, she's out the amounts that got through because technically it was voluntary. I have less charitable things to say about the store clerks who let an obviously confused elderly woman buy thousands of dollars in gift cards.

Here's what I figured out today as a solution. First, landlines and VoIP provide almost no protection against spam calls. I got on the Verizon website and set all calls to forward to my mom's iPhone. That way she can still use the house phone to make outgoing calls. I thought about getting rid of it, but my mother prefers to use a real telephone for long phone conversations.

Second, I set her iPhone to silence all calls not in her contacts. I explicitly blocked that scammer plus some dude from South San Francisco who called her probably a dozen times this morning before I got there. I dearly wish there was an option to block all such calls. It looks like the "Communication Limits" section of parental controls (under "Screen Time") might do the trick - does anyone know how that works? Does it completely block the calls or do they still show up on the notification screen & call log?

Dealing with email is harder. I stumbled on a really useful tip: create a gmail filter for messages containing the word "unsubscribe", and delete them. Works really well!

That leaves her browsing the internet and clicking on nefarious links. Not sure what can be done about that....
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Tortoise » Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:27 pm

Mark Leavy wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:47 pm
I keep waiting for apple to add whitelisting. I don’t know why they don’t. Or maybe I just haven’t figured it out.
They have it in iOS now (not sure when it was added). As WiseOne alluded to, in phone settings there's an option to "Silence Unknown Callers". Here's the description:
Calls from unknown numbers will be silenced, sent to voicemail, and displayed on the Recents list.

Incoming calls will continue to ring from people in your contacts, recent outgoing calls, and Siri Suggestions.
I think that may be the best solution for me. As you said, even if it's an important call from a number that's not in my contacts, they'll leave a voicemail. And if I'm expecting a really important call from a number that may not be in my contacts, I can simply disable the "Silence Unknown Callers" option for a little while until after I receive the call.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Tortoise » Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:34 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:15 pm
I spent today dealing with the results of a scammer hitting on my mother (who has early Alzheimer's). She fell for it and is now out almost $3K. It could have been worse if not for the credit card alerts I got when they eventually started rejecting transactions. Unfortunately, she's out the amounts that got through because technically it was voluntary.
I'm pretty sure that some financial institutions let you enable text alerts for all credit card transactions, not just ones that are rejected. If you haven't already looked into having such text alerts sent to you, you may want to. That way, if a given charge initiated by your mother looks suspicious, you can potentially intervene or dispute while the charge is still pending (which I think lasts a day or two before it's finalized).
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by pp4me » Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:09 pm

I use Google voice so I can block and/or report as spam any robocalls I get. That only works for a while however because apparently now it is easy for them to change phone numbers.

Sometimes I just like to have some fun with them because I'm retired and don't have anything better to do. I can give you several examples but here's the last one from a caller warning me that the warranty on my car was about to run out even though I hadn't even owned that car for about 5 years.

Caller: Blah, Blah, Blah
Me: No Habla Ingles
Caller: You want someone that speak's Spanish?
Me: Si, Espanol por favor
Caller: Transfers me and someone speaks something in Spanish
Me: No habla Espanol. En Ingles, Por favor
Caller: Transfers me back

Repeat until I actually start hearing people laughing in the background at my joke.

Like I said, I have too much time on my hands, especially nowadays.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by WiseOne » Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:15 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:34 pm
WiseOne wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:15 pm
I spent today dealing with the results of a scammer hitting on my mother (who has early Alzheimer's). She fell for it and is now out almost $3K. It could have been worse if not for the credit card alerts I got when they eventually started rejecting transactions. Unfortunately, she's out the amounts that got through because technically it was voluntary.
I'm pretty sure that some financial institutions let you enable text alerts for all credit card transactions, not just ones that are rejected. If you haven't already looked into having such text alerts sent to you, you may want to. That way, if a given charge initiated by your mother looks suspicious, you can potentially intervene or dispute while the charge is still pending (which I think lasts a day or two before it's finalized).
Yep it's set that way now. I set alerts for all transactions larger than a dollar.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Mark Leavy » Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:08 pm

Good info.
Thank you both.

My sister bears the brunt of most of my mom’s issues, but I end up paying for them. Its a system ;)
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Mountaineer » Sat Dec 05, 2020 9:11 am

Mark Leavy wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:08 pm
Good info.
Thank you both.

My sister bears the brunt of most of my mom’s issues, but I end up paying for them. Its a system ;)
No Habla Ingles. ;D ;D ;D
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by I Shrugged » Sat Dec 05, 2020 12:39 pm

We use MagicJack for the land line. They have a call screening option that requests the caller to press a certain digit. If they do, the call comes through. If not, not. It’s cut our spam on that line to basically zero. Now if only the cellular companies would offer the same feature.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by WiseOne » Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:43 pm

Nice tip, Shrugged!

It's amazing to me that with the incredible onslaught of spam calls, there's been so little effort put into coming up with simple solutions like these. And for elderly/cognitively impaired persons, the spam issue is even more serious. I read that the scams pulled on this particularly vulnerable group amounts to $37 billion annually. Scary.
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by vnatale » Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:54 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:43 pm
Nice tip, Shrugged!

It's amazing to me that with the incredible onslaught of spam calls, there's been so little effort put into coming up with simple solutions like these. And for elderly/cognitively impaired persons, the spam issue is even more serious. I read that the scams pulled on this particularly vulnerable group amounts to $37 billion annually. Scary.
To put in perspective that HUGE amount....Major League Baseball is an extremely high profile sport with much media coverage in every way. Yet its total annual revenues are only about $10 billion in comparison.

Vinny
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by Mark Leavy » Sat Dec 05, 2020 3:06 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Sat Dec 05, 2020 12:39 pm
We use MagicJack for the land line. They have a call screening option that requests the caller to press a certain digit. If they do, the call comes through. If not, not. It’s cut our spam on that line to basically zero. Now if only the cellular companies would offer the same feature.
I worked with a guy that would always answer his home line in a monotone "You have 15 seconds to enter your 4 digit code."
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by l82start » Sat Dec 05, 2020 4:10 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:54 pm
In addition to the above posts, I'd suggest making yourself a ringtone that you enjoy. I'm currently using Dance With The Dead - Mask, which would go well with your avatar 8)
i gave my contact list a ring tone... everything else (all unknown callers) it plays a clip of the menu from the Monty python skit...


Egg, bacon and Spam
Egg, bacon, sausage and Spam
Spam, bacon, sausage and Spam
Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon and Spam
Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam
Spam, sausage, Spam, Spam, Spam, bacon, Spam, tomato and Spam (vinyl record)
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam
Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top, and Spam

O0
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Re: Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

Post by vnatale » Sat Dec 05, 2020 4:42 pm

After the New York Yankees won the World Series in 1996 (first time in 18 years)....I was so excited I put on my answering machine the radio call of the final out of the final game. That message was a FULL minute long. A minute is a LONG time to have to listen to an message before you can leave your own.

Someone had to really want to talk to me or leave a message to endure having to first listen to a message for a full minute.

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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