Okay, well that was different.

My phone rang this afternoon. It showed as coming from Saskatchewan. I hit decline. In just a couple of seconds, it rang again, same number. On about the fifth time, I finally answered. Woman with heavy Indian accent asked if I was the homeowner, Mr. Streeter. I asked who wanted to know. She gave me a name I couldn't make out and the name of a company I also couldn't make out. It finally turned out she's in real estate and wanted to buy my house. That's when I hung up.

What's freaking me out, or at least really annoying me, is that their auto-dialer knew I was rejecting it and kept calling me back immediately.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

One can tell when people are old and think in terms of a pair of copper wires into the home and a crank to generate a ringer voltage as it was when they were working ....

It must some new fangled BT thing where you can connect an answering machine to your smartphone ...

When you hit reject on the smartphone my dear friend it automatically connects the call to voice mail. There is even a feature where you put in the objectionable jerks # into a reject list that is routed directly to voice mail. However sometimes you will still hear a single ring because it doesn't quite happen instantly. There are even "apps" for these smart phones that share user generated lists of jerks #'s so you gain from others experience.

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Our good old-fashioned copper phone line has an answering machine attached to it. I prefer it to digital voice mail. It's easier for me to hit "play", and to screen calls.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Been monitoring my credit cards... No fraudulent charges, yet... Of all my cards, ONLY Citi-card allows me to "Lock" or "Unlock" my card at will. It's been locked since I opened this thread; and just today, I unlocked it. I will continue monitoring for a few more days.

Yesterday I logged into my banking site for the first time in two weeks and found nearly a grand worth of fraudulent charges on my Visa Debit card. Unfortunately being a debit card it sucks the $ right out of my account rather than accruing a separate balance that can be cleared without affecting one's "real" money.

The only bright side was that all the of the fraudulent purchases were on Amazon.co.jp making them easy to identify and reverse. I am Canadian since birth, so a weird pattern of suddenly buying from a Japanese site and delivering to an address that isn't remotely close to mine should have triggered one of their funky fraud-spotter algorithms but it doesn't seem to have. I reported it and I should have the money back in a week or so.

Check for $0.01 test transactions from unknown sources; they did one of those before they started the binge. I'll be checking my transactions much more often now.

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Really sorry to hear of your misfortune. The whole point of a Debit card is that thieves can only get what is in the account. With a credit card they can go up to the credit limit. I only keep a bare minimum in my debit account, the rest is safely in a deposit account. And I check it weekly.

Thanks. :^) Happily it's all insured and covered. Usually I park the primary/debit account's funds elsewhere which is one of the reasons I was logging into it! It was time for a move... oh.... not so much to move there.

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When you hit reject on the smartphone my dear friend it automatically connects the call to voice mail.

I didn't even think of that. It had to be an auto-dialer to call back again within a couple of seconds of when I hit reject. Which makes it all the creepier.

Our good old-fashioned copper phone line has an answering machine attached to it.

My good old-fashioned copper phone line (well, probably changed to a twisted pair a while back) carries my TV and internet, but not phone calls. I have no land line number for a machine to answer. (My cell number is the same one my parents were assigned for the land line in their first apartment, some four years before I was born... which may be part of the problem.)

After the first time, I might have let it ring out until it went to vm, but I was using the phone for something else at the time and the call kept blocking the screen. I suppose I can look into auto-reject apps.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Yesterday I logged into my banking site for the first time in two weeks and found nearly a grand worth of fraudulent charges on my Visa Debit card. Unfortunately being a debit card it sucks the $ right out of my account rather than accruing a separate balance that can be cleared without affecting one's "real" money.

Really sorry to hear of your misfortune. The whole point of a Debit card is that thieves can only get what is in the account. With a credit card they can go up to the credit limit. I only keep a bare minimum in my debit account, the rest is safely in a deposit account. And I check it weekly.

I use Quicken, so I have it sync with my accounts almost daily. I can catch fraud pretty quickly. The problem with my debit card (which I hardly ever use) is that the credit union will automatically transfer from savings to cover an overdraft in checking (and charge me 7 bucks for it). And if I do go 2 or 3 days between checks and don't know I'm overdrawn, a bill payment might go out and cause another overdraft and another fee.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Our good old-fashioned copper phone line has an answering machine attached to it. I prefer it to digital voice mail. It's easier for me to hit "play", and to screen calls.

Same here. Its one reason I keep it. If its an important call they will leave a message. I used to be annoyed by folks who screened calls. Not anymore. Not with the amount of scammers and robo calls out there.

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[/quote]

Old James

GOOGLE VOICE NOW FILTERS OUT UNWANTED CALLS, THANKS TO UPDATE

Last summer, Google took the initiative of adding anti-spam features to Nexus, Pixel, and Android One phones, allowing your device to warn you if you were receiving a ring from a “suspected spam caller.” Now, Google Voice is receiving the same functionality.

These measures have resulted in twice as many caught spammers, 20 percent fewer spam reports from customers, and 40 percent more calls correctly identified as spam, according to Google. The steps to enable spam filtering in Voice have been laid out on the company’s support site.

EDIT....
I use a Google Voice number for those store "reward" cards and any other place that insists on a phone number to register, etc...

I find the GV junk/spam filters have always been good but occasionally one or two junk calls would sneak through every week or two. Will see how it goes from here.

Nomorobo has been letting a lot of junk calls through on my land line this week. Normally it is less than one per month I have to report back to them as a junk call.

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Nomorobo has been letting a lot of junk calls through on my land line this week. Normally it is less than one per month I have to report back to them as a junk call.

The problem is that once one scammer has your phone number, it gets circulated around all the other scammers. I never give my landline number to anyone except friends and family, it is always the mobile number. With a landline it is easy to find your home address, not so with a mobile, only your provider from the code.

Not true.
It's the service provider that "leaks" lists of phone numbers.
No matter if it's a landline number or a mobile number.

Nomorobo has been letting a lot of junk calls through on my land line this week. Normally it is less than one per month I have to report back to them as a junk call.

The problem is that once one scammer has your phone number, it gets circulated around all the other scammers. I never give my landline number to anyone except friends and family, it is always the mobile number. With a landline it is easy to find your home address, not so with a mobile, only your provider from the code.

Not true.
It's the service provider that "leaks" lists of phone numbers.
No matter if it's a landline number or a mobile number.

Leak? computer dial all 10 digit numbers from 0000000001 to 9999999999 and find us some suckers!

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Nomorobo has been letting a lot of junk calls through on my land line this week. Normally it is less than one per month I have to report back to them as a junk call.

The problem is that once one scammer has your phone number, it gets circulated around all the other scammers. I never give my landline number to anyone except friends and family, it is always the mobile number. With a landline it is easy to find your home address, not so with a mobile, only your provider from the code.

Not true.
It's the service provider that "leaks" lists of phone numbers.
No matter if it's a landline number or a mobile number.

Leak? computer dial all 10 digit numbers from 0000000001 to 9999999999 and find us some suckers!

That's called Brute Force.
Scammers do it the easy way:)
There are many lists on the Internet.

Oh. Calling my sister require 14 digits!

"We may pass your details onto associated companies unless you un-tick this box". Many people miss that.

And how do you really know that it is un-ticked after you "ticked" it?
Many people miss that.
Personally I don't tick those requests unless I trust the company.
Actually never.

There are many lists on the Internet.

Yes there are and for silly money. When you buy something on the Internet there is often some small print that says something like "We may pass your details onto associated companies unless you un-tick this box". Many people miss that.

and in invisible print, unticking this box immediately transmits all information you have entered to our mailing list department to be resold in perpetuity to fraudsters, our mailing list department is not covered by any other term or condition. Same thing as the phone call that asks you to press 9 to be removed - er added to fraudsters phone lists.

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@Janne - Those boxes most always come pre-ticked, meaning that you have to positively opt out, else you are by default opted in.

Are you sure?
Pseudo code to handle a scammer tick box.

If ticked then opted in.
If not ticked then opted in.

Been there, Done that:)

And sometimes they say tick (or check) to opt out. And sometimes the sense changes part way down the list to catch you out (I seem to remember UK Income Tax forms having that quirk).

Read what the words say, very carefully.
Read them again to make sure.
And then throw the form in the bin.

Read what the words say, very carefully.
Read them again to make sure.
And then throw the form in the bin.

And as Mr Punch would say " That's the way to do it " ;-)

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Life is what you make of it :-)

When i'm good i'm very good , but when i'm bad i'm shi#eloads better ;-) In't I " buttercups " p.m.s.l at authoritie !!;-)

@Janne - Those boxes most always come pre-ticked, meaning that you have to positively opt out, else you are by default opted in.

Are you sure?
Pseudo code to handle a scammer tick box.

If ticked then opted in.
If not ticked then opted in.

Been there, Done that:)

Absolutely. Never mind the very legitimate site that was hacked to transmit an extra copy of the data entered to the fraudsters and the legitimate site is in the dark..

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I wonder why all the the phone scammers keep speaking English to me and my GF.
Don't they know we don't speak English here?
OK we understand it but doing business agreements in English?
No way!

Actually most calls are from Kolkata, India.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centres

An investigation by the Guardian has established that this scam, which has been going on quietly since 2008 but has grown in scale