Starting a few months ago, I'm getting a few robocalls a week from "your local google specialist" and such scams. My number is listed in donotcall.gov. It makes me want to not answer unrecognized numbers on my phone.
It's now the case that a database of every phone number (10 billion entries, highly compressible) could be mirrored to every phone, with a reputation score for each number. Or looked up in real time. The phone company won't do it -- it'll have to be independent, like an ad blocker. I'd buy a subscription to that database.
Try nomorobo. They get you to set up simultaneous-ring with one of their numbers. For each incoming call, if it fails their reputation scoring, their system simply "picks up" immediately and plays a pre-recorded message. Your main number then doesn't receive the call (timing issues notwithstanding).
They have an interesting way of building the reputation database: in addition to receiving customer reports, they buy Twilio's "dirtiest" phone numbers, the ones getting so spammed they're unusable by other businesses. If you call ~3 dirty numbers, welcome to the dynamic block list.
How am I just learning about this now? This is amazing. You've been to my house several times; how did you never tell me "uh you know you don't need to be getting those robocalls you get all day"?
You get an audio capcha ("This phone is protected by NoMoRobo. Press $NUMBER to prove you aren't a robot. Press $NUMBER to prove you aren't a robot. ... Goodbye.") $NUMBER is two randomly generated digits.
Presumably one can feedback loop that into the reputation score. Honestly, though, I don't think this is a terribly likely attack.
Yeah, they do this to any number that is listed on a business document ever. I ported my number to run through google voice, which catches only a few of them, and pretty much have stopped picking up most calls from unlisted numbers. It's sad.
The major problem with some of these issues is that if I understand it right, the phone system often isn't always aware of the source of the calls because they get routed through foreign gateways and voip and the number you see in the caller ID is spoofed and has no connection to anything.
The FCC is aware this is happening and these fall within its jurisdiction, but they're having trouble enforcing the rules.
The fact that congress is revoking the FCC's ability to enforce these rules for student loans is just bog standard corruption.
Can confirm, most VoIP termination providers allow you to set your caller ID to an arbitrary string. My cellphone doesn't seem to like it when you put in letters in it (doesn't display the CID at all), but other than that pretty much anything goes.
Yeah that doesn't work at all, they just hang up and move on, they don't stop. No one doing these things is being paid to maintain the list or prune numbers. And for whatever it's worth, the FCC also recommends that if possible you don't pick up at all.
For a robo caller autodialing numbers listed on the do not call list against all FCC guidelines?
It'll totally work with regular telemarketers, but that isn't what we're talking about here.
Basically there's two things going on:
Robo calling, which is restricted under FCC regulations.
And calling numbers on the do not call list, which is also restricted under FCC regulations.
Someone who does both... usually isn't going to stop if you ask them to. I'm curious if you've experienced otherwise, very few people report having any success with that. Most call centers who violate federal two different federal regulations while dialing your number don't particularly spend time maintaining their calling lists.
I don't have direct knowledges of practices of companies who refuse to disclose who they are. What I'm saying comes from the fact that it just hasn't worked for the calls to my line. I switched numbers to make them stop. There's an Internet full of reports of other people saying the strategy you advocate doesn't work for them either, and the government agency that regulates the phone lines explicitly recommends against it.
But we could call that dueling supicions if you'd like.
And just to clarify, you're talking about a US number that's been listed on the national Do Not Call list, right?
And not just regular scam calls, but calls placed by an automatic dialer and answered by an automated system that falls to a human caller only after being answered, right?
How much emphasis would I have to use to convince you that I am participating in good faith and actually understand what a robocall is and all the rest of it?
The ellipsis in my terse comment was sort of grounded in why the hell else would I post what I posted, and now we are 2 or 3 rounds deep in you asking me if I'm really sure.
Picking up at all confirms that your number is valid, connects, and an adult human at least occasionally answers - this makes your number more valuable for passing on to others.
There isn't much of a peer-to-peer "valid number sharing" market between companies, they protect their lists as a business asset with at least a little value, but larger groups will pass such data around their constituent parts and when a company folds whoever buys their data as a cheap asset is under no obligation to use any do-not-call list as a don-not-call list instead of a real-people-answer-here-add-them-to-the-next-campaign list.
>> and an adult human at least occasionally answers
Funny you should mention, because that is exactly what worked for me. Every time I get a marketing call I say I'm 17 so I can't buy anything from them, sorry.
My experience is the same, 90% of unsolicited calls I get are from the same area code and prefix, only the last 4 digits are new.
I love how it makes it really easy for me to screen the calls however, as no-one I know has the same prefix and there are a couple area codes covering the local calling area.
While that's true, I've never seen a system that will randomize the spoofed number on every call. We regularly see the same number show up on our caller-ID for weeks on end. In fact, in one case the "I'm calling from Windows" people had their caller ID changed to "DO NOT PICK UP" for a few days, I'm guess by a disgruntled employee.
So I think a database would help if it could be updated in near-real time. If 100 people across the country get a call from the same bogus number, it could get added immediately and stop thousands more calls from going out that night, at least.
Having handled a lot of dialer traffic, the less scrupulous will randomize their numbers. My proof of this is that we monitor call statistics, including the ratio of connected calls to attempts, and short calls (under 6 seconds). Carriers often have a strict rule of how much crap traffic they'll take (like no more than 20% can be short calls).
When we implemented caller ID based blocking, our mix of crap traffic stayed the same. Just instead of getting "good" dialer traffic, we'd just get the bad randomizers. This is because the carrier sending the traffic would tune it to make sure they never exceeded the 20% short call limit. Even at the volume we were doing (hundreds of millions of calls a day), there seemed to be a limitless supply of dialer, good and bad.
I've gotten those before and iirc there's a press # to not call again and it's worked so far. Same with the solar tax credit calls but those came back every few months from a new number until recently.
Same here. I also use Google Voice, so they can leave a message which is (often humourously) transcribed and sent as email and sms. The legit calls (eg dry cleaning is ready) get through. The spammers never leave a message.
I do two things for this. One, I have a separate phone line that I largely ignore, and I give this as my main contact line for people or businesses that I have no dire need to talk to. Best Buy, for instance. If it's important, they'll leave a voicemail. This started as a land line, that was expensive but I needed DSL anyway (this was 10 years ago). It moved to a cell phone with basic service.
Fees sucked, so I started (shameless plug) Phone Janitor[1] to give me better filtering. This allows me to check voicemail anywhere, unlike my cell line (unless I sign up for their service) and just transferred it to my own company. Turns out this helps a lot of other folks with similar privacy desires. Control is a wonderful thing.
Ultimately it's really, really crappy, but the Telecoms and the FCC don't want to be too heavy handed in this, and advertisers are finding new ways of skirting the donotcall rules. They ruined SMS in this regard[2] as well, deliberately.
I have a contact in my phone labelled "Spam" that lists 30 numbers and counting. Calls from those numbers go straight to voicemail and their texts are blocked. I'll gladly donate them to the database.
"Lenny" is a hilarious set of recorded messages designed to waste telemarketers' time."
On a personal note, I have to say that there is something so satisfying about a robot answering these calls. A caller normally has the advantage that you can't see them, have no idea who they are, and they can do it at scale. Lenny turns those very advantages against them.
How do you tell between telemarketers and legit cold calls? Maybe something like "if they say the word offer within the first minute, it's a telemarketer, keep them occupied"? Also, it's a bit dishonest to outright have the robot pretend to be the person, maybe they should say "Hello, I am Lenny, the phone secretary of so-and-so"? And once you pass the equivalent of a verbal CAPTCHA, you are allowed through?
I only have one number, so people from work call me from time to time. Though I largely agree - in that case I just have their numbers in my address book copied from the company register, even though they've never called me.
Ah. "Cold call" as in "not in your contacts list." Cold call usually refers to a sales call to someone who you don't have a prior relationship with (i.e. isn't current customer or hasn't requested information).
> How do you tell between telemarketers and legit cold calls?
If you're calling someone who didn't give you their phone number with the explicit intent of doing business with you, your behavior is ethically disgusting. Stop smearing your crap in other people's ears and get a real job.
I assume you would take the same position in regards to internet advertising which is quite a bit more controversial.
Sure, you could argue that you've agreed to be advertised to by using whatever service, going out in public, or whatever, but you could make the same case for cold calls or since you've agreed that anyone is able to call you.
I think it's interesting how telemarketers, door-to-door salespeople, and certain forms of direct mail are universally hated but creepy, manipulative, tracking, and malware infested internet ads are "supporting creators." There seems to be quite a lot of, "well the scummy way I make money is ethical" whenever the debate come up.
Do you see a meaningful difference between the two? I honestly want to understand.
> I assume you would take the same position in regards to internet advertising which is quite a bit more controversial.
I do take the same position. If I visit a website looking for one type of content, I want to see that type of content, not ads.
> Do you see a meaningful difference between the two? I honestly want to understand.
Ethically, yes, I think there's a difference: I think internet ads are actually worse because in addition to wasting your time and mental energy like other forms of advertising, they contribute to nearly omnipresent surveillance, which is actually more harmful than wasted time and mental energy, IMHO.
As ad blocking and anti-tracking software becomes more common, hopefully these businesses will die out. The prevailing opinion on Hacker News seems to be that the death of the advertising industry would be a bad thing, but that's entirely selfishly motivated: advertising is driving the tech bubble by keeping afloat thousands of startups which provide no value, and a lot of the Hacker News crowd is coasting on that easy money. But if you can't find an ethical way to make money, you don't deserve the money. My advice to these people is to get a real job: I've worked in software for over a decade and have never worked for a business which was supported by advertising.
These recordings are pretty amazing. I've recently experienced an uptick in spam-call volume (despite being very cagey about who/what gets access to my real phone number), and I think this video just tipped the scales on whether or not I'll be setting up my own Asterix box this weekend. Thank you for this!
The Lenny algorithm is quite simple: wait for silence, play the next recording. That's it.
The recordings are always played in the same sequence. There's no speech recognition involved.
The cleverness, of course, is that Lenny's script (and vocal delivery) seems brilliantly designed to keep telemarketers and scammers going on and on and on...
Anymore, answering the phone simply because it is ringing is an anachronism. Ditto to having a land-line (especially without caller ID!). These companies pushed so hard that they've pushed all the sensible folks out of their reach permanently. And kudos to the new wave of phone OSs that allow for blocking any number from your phone itself. We saw that the government wasn't going to do it, carriers certainly didn't do it, so companies and individuals did it.
It's almost like the best course of action for any of these communication systems is educating the user, and giving them the tools to do it themselves! Who would have thought?!
I bought my phone for my convenience, not anyone else's. It has a whitelist, and if a number isn't on it, it goes to voicemail. Which has a message instructing callers to send me an email, as I don't check my voicemail. I've been running this arrangement for some years now, and it works beautifully.
Bill collectors have been known to spoof caller ID with relatives' phone numbers. Yes, I know this is illegal, but it is still done.
The best approach is audio captcha where you have to enter a random 3 digit code to get the phone to ring. This throws off most call centers because, the part which makes the phone ring is automated. Once the line is answered, an agent is connected to the line.
If the collection agency does not use automated dialing, then DTMF passwords may be necessary. This is a pain for friends and family, but it can be a very effective filter.
Pretty much precisely this. Though my crap phone doesn't have a whitelist feature (it _does_ offer number blocking).
I'm headed toward likely having burner phones I use intermittently for convenience, and some digital service, preferably self-hosted, for other comms. If the telcos don't get a handle on phone spam, they're going to relegate themselves to utter irrelevance all the faster.
Burner dumbphone (with whitelist if at all possible), tablet + VOIP + text-to-voice messaging, etc., _not_ on mainstream commercial OS.
Spam and the like are going to ruin telecommunications like they've ruined email. It will be a slower process while they get bolder about skirting rules but they're going to get there.
Wait until these spammers and debt collectors get your social graph, your contact lists and the like, from failed mobile startups. You're going to start getting fake caller ID from friends and relatives.
The endgame is a balkanization of incompatible proprietary telecommunication clients all running you and your devices through a reverse Turing test to confirm legitimate communications. Oh, you'll still be able to get calls if you like, they'll all go to voicemail so your own neural networks can pick out the ones worthwhile to listen to.
I'm actually not all that concerned. Telemarketing has been going on for a very long time. That's what drove the do-not-call registry and related laws in the first place. I'm not saying what still exists (whether because of deliberate loopholes in the laws or simply breaking them) isn't annoying but it doesn't really seem to be getting worse either from personal experience or from the experience of others I speak with.
I get very few junk calls on my cell--though why there isn't a "report junk call" button I don't know. Home gets a steady enough stream to be annoying (2 or 3 a day) but they're easy enough to ignore if I don't recognize the caller ID.
The new number on my cell used to belong to someone with a debt. No matter how often I explain that the person they want is not and never will be available at this number again, they keep calling as they sell the debt and the info to new people.
So they continually robocall my cell phone chasing someone who isn't and never will be at this number. I do not have and never have had any unpaid debts to begin with.
I had to install a call blocking app and I just keep listing new numbers each time. It doesn't buy very much peace, but it blocks enough calls to be worthwhile.
Lobbyist and K-Street are at the core of the problem in the Beltway. I've spent a long time trying to figure out the root issues there, and I think short term limits are the best way to prevent this, because here how it happens.
You get elected on hopes and dreams, and propose a bill, but you are a freshman. The senior guy you ask to help you sponsor the bill which is only 10 pages long then says he will support you if you add an amendment that says X, even that amendment has nothing to do with the main bill, and he has been donated money or promised campaign support by $KSTREETGROUP. If you say no, you get derailed, the bill never leaves committee, and you have made an enemy. You agree, and then the floodgates are open for 10 other sitting house members to throw in their amendments too. Before you know it, your bill is 250 pages and they removed all your original text and it's no longer your bill. If you rock the boat, you make enemies and forever get shoved aside. Agree and support the bill you introduced, that is actually now bad legislation, and all those people say they will help you next time.
In this case, it's more of the, this bill has to pass, so we can add all kinds of little tidbits and the public won't know about them in time to stop it!. Then you might have a guy or two who actually put that tidbit in vote no just so he has some plausible deniability to his constituents who don't know any better because reports on the hill suck these days.
We need to get rid of excessive riders, last minute riders on big bills, extend time for public review, and give power back to congress/senate to take stances without being pushed over politically. The thing is that the lobbyist will mostly just promise to get the guy fired if they push back too much, or they will then donate to another guy who's been in for 18 years and get him to put the pressure on. If we put short term limits (and I don't mean 12 years, I mean 6 year limits) then you can get people who will do stuff and not care about getting booted out, because they never had the intention to turn it into a lifetime job in the first place.
Also, we need to stop the revolving door between the hill and k-street. Staffers should not be allowed to turn around and go work for them, as Jack Abramoff put it, once he promised a staffer a job, he found out that they would do more for him than he even asked them to do!
We have a broken system, and until we address these fundamental problems, all the other issues people are passionate about will never get fixed properly. Fix the system first, then work on the more mainstream issues.
> You get elected on hopes and dreams, and propose a bill, but you are a freshman. The senior guy you ask to help you sponsor the bill which is only 10 pages long then says he will support you if you add an amendment that says X, even that amendment has nothing to do with the main bill, and he has been donated money or promised campaign support by $KSTREETGROUP. If you say no, you get derailed, the bill never leaves committee, and you have made an enemy. You agree, and then the floodgates are open for 10 other sitting house members to throw in their amendments too. Before you know it, your bill is 250 pages and they removed all your original text and it's no longer your bill. If you rock the boat, you make enemies and forever get shoved aside. Agree and support the bill you introduced, that is actually now bad legislation, and all those people say they will help you next time.
The alternative is that you're a freshman congressman (so are many of the rest—term limits!—and no-one could be called senior) so you have no idea WTF is going on, so one or both of 1) long-term staff you inherited from your predecessors—mind you, I'm not even sure such people exist under the current system, so this is hypothetical, or 2) lobbyists, who really are so helpful, telling you how to get things done and summarizing complicated bills for you, and won't you just do this one little thing for them? end up running the show.
I think this is a valid potential downfall worth looking into more... unfortunately. I really wonder about the long term-staffer thing. It doesn't seem to me like there are very many of those, simply because they get snatched up into other industries. The congressman I know has two or three dedicated people with them, and the rest cycle in and out, and I don't think the two long-termers would stay if someone else got elected to the seat...
I think the most experienced reps should put together a "congress/senate bootcamp" training package for newcomers, document it well, as to avoid the knowledge-drain of such a proposed system.
One solution, (not that it would ever happen) , is to anonymize the bills. In order to submit a bill, you have to be a house member, but once you submit it your name is stripped off. everyone reviews it and either adds it to a larger bill or discards it. larger bills eventually make it up to group vote.
another deterrent would be a rule that every meeting between congressmen and lobbyist has to be recorded. So CSPAN can air what actually goes in at the negotiating table between these "lobbyists".
finally, if there were some kind of "citizens' lobby" that could influence these assholes the same way corporations do (even though this is how it was supposed to work all along). But the "citizens" are so divided on partisan and emotional issues they'd never agree to form a coalition and lobby on par with industry.
These "citizens' lobby" you pre-suppose exists. Many of them, actually. They tend to specialize. They have names like "The Sierra Club" and "The Nature Conservancy".
How about a constitutional amendment which states that a bill can only address 1 issue. Separate bills would be required for K street lobbyists to address their interests, and then they would have a tougher time getting these passed.
Cool idea, but how on earth do you decide what "1 issue" is?
For example, take a farm subsidy bill. Is it one issue? Or maybe there should be separate bills for corn farmers and wheat farmers? What about large farms and small farms?
I don't have an answer, I'm just playing devil's advocate :)
Taking the example given elsewhere in this thread, a farm subsidy bill. If the original bill was to pay farmers 10% of their annual yield (i'm literally making this up), would an amendment that added a 2.5% tax on commodities trading of the same crops be a rider bill, or an amendment?
If the president declares a disaster area (meaning it is bona-fide) an exception could be made for relief funds, but the bill would only be able to address the disaster issue.
I think executive orders could fit the bill. Also, there's existing legislation which already covers that matter. Plus, you can add a limit to the delay of a bill if it's for the necessity of govt operations like appropriation bills.
I think that might work, though there might be some nuanced missed, but here is the problem: how do you get that bill passed in the first place?!
One option is to vote out all incumbents. Here's the problem with that though: the media aren't doing a good job and the public are too apathetic.
We need a new movement to encourage participation in local/state/federal politics by the younger generation.
I've been asking younger people around me why they don't vote and how I could get them to vote, and almost universally I have gotten the same response. "I would have to feel like my vote would make a difference."
i have been getting crushed by these. i freely admit that the debt is my responsibility ~6k credit cards. but every day 5 calls. fake numbers from my area code (town over) my state doesnt have a chase bank in it and prob no capital one either.
2 months late. call back after i have the money and say i will pay current in a week. all of the collection department (to be clear these are still part of the bank, represented themselves as banking employees, and get routed via a bank number) they offered me $90 bucks off. call back to make direct payment in line with the verbal agreement.
them: sir i have no call notes
me: ok, let me look. i actually do think i said i would phone you back and pay i have that in my call notes.
Them: yes, it says you owe us $100 today.
me : (whered those notes come from mate) oh, ok so you were able to find thr notes. do you have the paymeny arrangements i made with lisa?
Them : no.
me: she offered me an arrangement.
them: oh i do see that yes $30 dollars
me: (i have detailed call notes with her and everones employee number i spoke with extrapolating the rapidly illegitimate deal they can't put in writiing because it is a service and convenience)
sure, well she offered me $90 and i will pay right now, even though i said it wpuld be a week, if you give me the deal she offered which might be in the notes if you look closer (you lieing dickhead)
them: no sir, i can give you $30.
me: let me think about it and consult my notes, i don't feel confortable paying today.
them: ok
---- 2 minutes elapse
robo call local number from town over of 7k people. on line don't answer.
-- robocall from same number. demanding payment. have similar accent to callcenter people, act like they arent affiliated.
look, my fault for not paying and sure i broke the agreement, but fuck this. i dont have to pay i will just never get a credit card this decade. but im trying even on shitty financial terms now to pay you because it is an obligation. but calling me 5x times from fake numbers is fucked up on a 2 missed payments over 2+ years of good standing. couldnt imagine what actual collections would do.
this story was about fictional bank p.j morgones.
also i want to note capital one was cool about it and as professional (or more) than me as i dis reneg on my card services agreement and they called from their real number
That sounds like it's not the bank, but some shady player that the bank sold your debt to for .01 on the dollar. If you want to settle the debt, do some research on these players so you don't just throw the money away without getting any credit for it on your credit report.
correct. I also believed I had been sold to a "debt collector". I do not know much about this, and it may be true but I spoke with the bank directly and they said that was not the case and the main switchboard provided the number to the collections office.
I confirmed the outgoing wire to chase so it is possible that the debt has been sold but they are still representing it? I did a bit of research but someone on reddit suggested a site that provides credit reports and info about the debt and it doesn't appear to be resold but who knows what "resold" means.
Maybe they do it like subprime mortgages and bundle them up or something. If anyone sees this, my advice is find the main phone number of your bank and ask to speak to customer service/ client services so you know you are dealing with them.
take as many notes as possible and record the call if you want. They will specify every phone transfer and often you are being recorded and IANAL but if a disclosure like this has been said, you may be able to record them, if unsure announce you are on the call.
pay directly to the creditor and get as much info as possible.
I worked in the collections industry for a while. It was my first programming job.
I don't understand debtors that don't want to get calls letting them know what is happening. I get it in the sense that they didn't pay their bills and they've chosen denial as their plan for dealing with it but I don't get why anyone else would want to validate that kind of behavior.
But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail.
I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end.
I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections.
The "called in error" rate is not pretty rare. It's quite high in my experience. There are a number of reasons:
1) People who owe money often put fake phone numbers on forms so they can't be contacted. They will sometimes randomly choose your number.
2) Debt collectors don't believe you when you say, "There's nobody here by that name. You have the wrong number," because that's what people who owe them money try to say.
I had this happen to me when I moved into a new apartment and got a new phone number. I told them 3 or 4 times that the person they were looking for was not at this number. I even told them that I had recently moved and was just assigned the number. They literally said, "Yeah, right."
So I called the police. They filed a telephone harassment report for me. I then sent the report to the phone company who set up a tap for me. Whenever the debt collectors would call, I would wait until the call ended, dial a special number and it would figure out what number called me (even if they turned on caller-ID blocking), and note it in a file. After 3 or 4 times, they sent it to the police who contacted the debt collectors and told them to stop harassing me or they'd face criminal charges.
It shouldn't have to come to this for innocent people, but this is by no means an isolated or rare incident. Every person I know has had these types of calls, with differing amounts of success at getting rid of them.
That really depends on the situation and the debt collector company in question. My phone is on the do-not-call list, and I have never defaulted on a debt. My phone number has also been mine for eight years now. Two years back, I was getting somewhere along the lines of ten-fifteen calls a day about a debt under a completely different name. They were all robocalls that didn't give the option to stop them contacting me, and repeated calls from me to their company, asking that they cease the harassment and that the person they're calling hasn't used that phone number for at least six years resulted in a lot of "Yeah, okay, we'll stop" only for the frustration and annoyance to continue.
In the end, I spent somewhere along the lines of three hours of my time in a single day to get in touch with a high-up enough person that could actually take action and stop the calls. This does not include the numerous previous times I called the company and asked my phone number to be removed from their list, or the amount of frustration the numerous daily calls caused.
From what I understand, debt collector agencies tend to be on the shadier side. Not saying there aren't companies that actually handle matters the way they're supposed to, I'm sure they are, but from what I've seen they're the minority.
There was even a case where an agency had decided that I had a debt (Amusingly, the amount there was $8.95) and went as far as contacting my grandmother in another country and threatening her that they'd take her house away if she didn't contact me and make me pay the debt I owed them.
I've also heard of stories where parents/relatives of friends were contacted and passively threatened with remarks like "We know where you live".
So no, free reign to make robocalls isn't a good thing in my opinion. If anything, companies that make those illegally/after being asked to cease should be getting punished instead.
> But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail.
Most people aren't aware of the FDCPA and its not clear that debt collectors are all that compliant with it. In any case, the FDCPA only requires collectors to stop contact when they have received a written request from the debtor.
> I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end.
Inaccurate numbers getting called (and not just "old numbers that were once valid for the debtor") isn't (AFAICT, from direct experience) a particularly rare thing, nor will debt collectors stop calling when they reach an inaccurate number (nor will they accept a request to stop calling at that number.)
> I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections.
Sure, if by "your" you mean "no one who has ever been, either through intentional misrepresentation to avoid contact by debt collectors, or by past use, or for any other reason, had their account associated with your phone number".
Not all that long after that, pretty clearly based on information gained from Certegy or some other compromise of my most basic checking account information---but bizarrely, not necessarily my name? Something was very wrong in the set of info---a debt collector claimed I'd charged hundreds of dollars to on-line porn sites to my checking account.
Which of course is particularly bizarre, because if it was real, why hadn't they just debited my account in the first place?
So, no debt, but it went into collections, and they didn't give up for more than a year. Can't remember why they gave up, other than that they pretty clearly knew the case was weak, assuming the whole thing wasn't a scam to begin with.
If your information was compromised, its at least possible that whoever was not a debt collector, but posing as one supposedly collecting a debt associated with embarrassing info (that people wouldn't want to be associated with if there was an escalation to a lawsuit) so that they could extort money from you.
>I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing
I hope you're starting to get the impression that errors are not as rare as you believed they were this morning. I know I have received all manner of erroneous debt collection calls (looking for relatives, looking for people I've never heard of, etc).
> and something easy to deal with on the receiving end.
Obviously, it isn't.
> I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections.
If anyone deserves to have their phone bill crammed, it's people who say things like that. I had mine crammed when I was in college & couldn't/wouldn't pay the several hundred dollars in extra charges; it followed me around for years.
BTW, if anyone is a Sprint or Verizon customer since 2010 and has had their bill crammed, there has been a huge fine, & websites set up to pay restitution.
Because once a debt has been turned over to a collections agency it is not in your interest to pay it.
The window of opportunity to not have a credit strike has closed. Paying the bill will not improve your credit. The counterparty has already written off the debt, if suing was a credible option they wouldn't have sold it to collections. They harass because it's their only recourse.
It's a mistake to communicate with collections regardless of the legitimacy of the debt.
> I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end.
> I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections.
Your statement isn't true in many cases.
I've got two "debts" that debt collectors keep trying to collect. One for ~15 years and one for ~6 years. The reason for the quotes? Neither of these debts are mine.
I was a minor and someone at the hospital assigned something to the wrong patient. I hadn't gone into that hospital that entire year, the previous year, or the preceding year. Yet, they keep trying to collect from a 15 year old kid who only went to that hospital once when he was 11. I somehow doubt they forgot to bill my parents for 4 years. This is the date on the actual documentation, so its not like my parents ignored it for 4 years and I was unaware.
1) The hospital refused to admit fault and could provide 0 evidence I was actually there when it happened.
2) Years later it went to collections, and I was 17. They robocalled and threatened me with jail time and a bunch of other shit. I told them I could prove I wasn't even in the state of California [which was true, I was visiting family on the date I was supposedly at the Hospital ... on the other side of the country ]. Proof was provided.
3) They've since sold this debt several times, and this year, I still get some debt collector calling me. I call them up and point out I can still prove it was physically impossible that I was in the hospital on the date I supposedly incurred this debt.
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The "other debt" is a parking ticket on a car I can prove I haven't owned for years [ I have both insurance and DMV paperwork showing I sold the car years before this ticket happened ], in a city I've never been to, on a date I can prove I was [literally] a thousand miles away at a gas station within an hour of the date/time stamp on the ticket.
Guess what happened?
1) They sent mail to the wrong address [ literally 5+ years old ].
2) They falsely claimed I owned the car at the time and convinced the state tax board to hold my refund when I failed to respond to this "notification".
3) The man on the other end of the phone when I called was abusive, called me a liar, and insisted that I owned the car. He intentionally gave the wrong address verbally to mail documentation proof too. The information he gave didn't match their site at all. When he insisted he didn't get any of the mail I sent him after a couple of months and I must have "sent it to the wrong address", I moved on to the next step.
4) I had to get a lawyer and take the "debt collector" to court in order to get my money back + legal fees. The moment he was notified I filed, I got a phone call saying there was "No need. He found the clerical error and was correcting it." and cut a check for ~$4000 that I got about 48 hours later via overnight mail.
5) Despite the fact this asshole knew he was trying to collect from the wrong person at this point, guess what? He sold it some other schmuck who tried to pull the same shit a couple years later. The only difference was he couldn't get my tax refund hell and just resorted to calling me.
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Now, maybe, I just have exceptional bad luck and I'm just extremely hard to find. I doubt this somehow.
> But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail.
Yeah, every time I do that, they sell it to another debt collector who then calls to "notify me about my debt". I get these same two calls every year.
I've been getting calls for 4 years from debt collectors for someone else. Not for my debt, but for someone else's debt and legal troubles. So when telling them to stop calling me hasn't worked, what can I do? It's 4 years now, and anyone calling for the old person at this point is being negligent.
"I get it in the sense that they didn't pay their bills and they've chosen denial as their plan for dealing with it but I don't get why anyone else would want to validate that kind of behavior."
Because debt collectors are assholes. They lie and harass not only the person in debt, but their friends and families. I support every measure to hamper them in doing business.
I guess I don't understand the point of this. It appears that these legislators don't understand that permanent blocking of calls and texts from an annoying number are just a tap away in both Android and iOS. They'll be spending millions to harass no one.
I don't really understand that lobbying thing, who is paying who to officially make life worse for citizens and how this is justified? PS: I'm not american.
Anyone can lobby and so groups who have similar interests raise funds to send people to speak to government officials about what they would like to see done by the government. It's pretty simple.
Instead of a government for the People, the People, and of the People, it's actually a government for the Opulent Minority, by the Opulent Minority and of the Opulent Minority.
James Madison stated: "Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability."
It's now the case that a database of every phone number (10 billion entries, highly compressible) could be mirrored to every phone, with a reputation score for each number. Or looked up in real time. The phone company won't do it -- it'll have to be independent, like an ad blocker. I'd buy a subscription to that database.