Stop Calling!!

[Stacykins]

Yea, I'm on the warpath now. More calls from people who have supposedly gotten calls from MY landline number, one for over a month and was asking for it to stop!

Something is seriously wrong here. It is stressing me out, and obviously causing great annoyance to people who are getting these mysterious calls from my landline. Again, today I have made ZERO calls out on the landline.

 

[goobhen]

Call your telephone company and explain the situation, maybe there is something wrong at their end that they can fix. You may just have to get rid of your landline or it will drive you crazy! Good luck! One time, I lived in an apartment that had a radio tower for a local Christian station radio towner right behind them. On some Sunday afternoons, every time I picked up my phone to make an outgoing call, I would get a sermon over the phone. I would have to call the station on the following Monday to report it, they would do something at the station to fix the problem. It would work for about 3 weeks then would happen again. My mom told me that God wanted me to hear a sermon whether I wanted to or not!

 

[duckluck]

I for one have no plans of ever getting rid of my landline, no way I am putting myself in jeopardy and at the mercy of cell service...BUT, I am going to be calling the phone company. Someone I know did this because they were getting a lot of "unidentified calller", "political call" and so forth calls coming up on his caller ID. He said that, by law, if you are paying for caller ID, all calls coming through MUST be identified by who is calling or not allowed through. He called them, they took five minutes then came back on the line and said they'd fixed the problem, and he hasn't gotten any annoying calls since. Someone also told me there is a hotline to complain about unauthorized calls when you are on the Do Not Call list, and I'm going to look into that too as all my lines are on it...supposedly companies caught calling those numbers are fined heavily.

 

[Stacykins]

A technician is coming out tomorrow to check on things, the physical components. In the meantime, I've unplugged all the landline phones from their phone jacks. Sweet, sweet silence. Of course, right before I did so, I got a call from a woman who was calling back, after getting a call from my number, she read it out exactly.

I am thinking someone is doing some Caller ID spoofing. A telemarketer, for instance, can use pretty simple equipment to fool a caller ID to show a different number than the actual number the telemarketer is calling from. So if these people are getting calls, with my number popping up on their caller ID, they think it is me, when that is not the case.

 

[CGinJCMO]

Most of the "blank" calls I get come from different numbers so there's no point in keeping track. However, on my cell phone, I have gotten one number that keeps calling. I had a soft ring set for unknown numbers (why be in a hurry to answer people I don't know?) but this number has come up a lot now so I changed the ring tone to one that's (hopefully) more noticable. I have tried calling it back, but I get a computer voice asking me to "input my employee number" and since all my work numbers have the same prefix, but not the one that's calling, I was leary of giving it any numbers. I asked a secretary at work if there was anything going on that I should be answering phone calls for and she said not that she knew of. I don't carry my cell at work, can't seem to hear it when I'm driving, and don't keep it near me at home so I keep missing the calls to try and catch it "live" so I can find out it there's a real person on the other end or if it's just another robocall.

CG

 

[Carols Clucks]

My mom gets lots of "blank" calls, but her number is just one digit different than the biggest pest control company in town. We had no idea for years why people were calling and saying they had a roach problem (or mice or rats etc) For a while she used to tell the caller to get off the phone and go stomp those roaches...lol Or she would say, you think YOUR rats are big you should see ours. Bet they lost a lot of business due to wrong number calls.

Now everyone and there uncle wants to come and clean her heating ducts, air ducts, install vinyl siding or replace her windows.

She is on the do not call list and any company I get when I pick up the form claims she called them first and they are just returning the calls. Pretty interesting since she does not have air or heating ducts...so much for the do not call list.


I would love to have incoming calls rejected because they did not have the callers number, how do you do that? We have caller ID and most of them say "Private or Unknown"

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

I would love to have incoming calls rejected because they did not have the callers number, how do you do that? We have caller ID and most of them say "Private or Unknown"

I went to the phone company an said block privates, it cost about $1 a month. Unknowns will still get threw though.

 

[ivan3]

Stacykins

A technician is coming out tomorrow to check on things, the physical components. In the meantime, I've unplugged all the landline phones from their phone jacks. Sweet, sweet silence. Of course, right before I did so, I got a call from a woman who was calling back, after getting a call from my number, she read it out exactly.

I am thinking someone is doing some Caller ID spoofing. A telemarketer, for instance, can use pretty simple equipment to fool a caller ID to show a different number than the actual number the telemarketer is calling from. So if these people are getting calls, with my number popping up on their caller ID, they think it is me, when that is not the case.

If this continues, keep your ph.company service/complaint number by your phone and give it to all live callers and tell them let the phone company have it with both barrels. Our landlines are unpublished and we still get robos and the occasional live troller `this is the hospital calling...'. (answer and one is pinned like a bug for resale to others.who will call more often) However, we never answer unless the caller speaks to a machine and we know the caller.

The phone providers are the worst (cramming/slamming) and they're probably going to buy some `reregulation' (it's never really degregulation) through lobbying, of the `96 telecommunications act in order to more efficiently skim from the wide/wide world of wireless (always check every last charge on the bill).

For more phone `jinx': https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/621428/phone-cramming-how-to-beat-the-scam

 

[Stacykins]

The gentleman who came out to check on everything was very helpful and knowledgeable. He checked everything over, from the lines near here for signs of tampering up to the closest hub. Given that there are no physical calls on our call log that came out from this number, he really thinks our number was used as part of a caller ID spoof. He gave me the how-to on getting the number changed for free, because sometimes the phone company balks about that. And changing the number is the only way to resolve it. If you think about it, I won the 'lottery' almost. Out of the many millions of phone numbers out there, someone used this one for their telemarketing/whatever scheme. There is no protection against someone spoofing you number, other than sheer numbers making is very improbable that it will happen to you! I hope it never happens again!

Anyway, I am very glad he came out on pretty short notice to work with the problem. Usually these things take a while, the phone company giving people the runaround. It may take a few days for the number change to happen, so in the meantime, I've changed the answering machine message to this:

"Hello, you've reached the (Stacykins) residence. If you've recently received a call, this number is being fraudulently used to caller ID spoof. We are resolving the problem with the phone company and are sorry for the inconvenience. If you intended to reach our residence, please leave you name, number, and a brief message, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can, thank you!"

Actually plays out shorter/quicker than it sounds. Took me a few times to say "fraudulently" correctly, hah. I guess today that was a word I couldn't articulate well!

 

[oldrooster]

A technician is coming out tomorrow to check on things, the physical components. In the meantime, I've unplugged all the landline phones from their phone jacks. Sweet, sweet silence. Of course, right before I did so, I got a call from a woman who was calling back, after getting a call from my number, she read it out exactly.

I am thinking someone is doing some Caller ID spoofing. A telemarketer, for instance, can use pretty simple equipment to fool a caller ID to show a different number than the actual number the telemarketer is calling from. So if these people are getting calls, with my number popping up on their caller ID, they think it is me, when that is not the case.

There was a company (part of a now-defunct electronics store chain) that had the same problem in the town where I live, made the local paper even. They had calls out the wazzooo afterwords still about people calling using their number..... now on the clicks some people hear on their phones or instant hang ups yes those are computer dialed calls Indiana has for it's home phone lines a stricter do not call list than the feds do, had it before the federal law went in. I use to have those calls until I signed up for our state list. none afterwords, after 10 or so years we have only reciently got a few telemarketers calling. For those who live in Indiana sighn up for the state version, for all others call your state polititions for a law like Indianas.....