Blocking "Neighborhood Scam" Calls

[vnatale]

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

[Mark Leavy]

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."

[l82start]

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

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

[vnatale]

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