Are any of you starting to get AI robocalls?

Sean Pedersen spedersen.lists at gmail.com
Wed Apr 4 14:44:30 UTC 2018


Yep. Add it to the list of IRS scams, fake arrest warrants, credit repair, free vacations, etc. The rate of calls has increased dramatically in the past year, especially with the "neighborhood scam" where they spoof their CLID to a local area code and prefix + 0000 through 9999 and blast you with calls, trying to trick you into thinking it's someone local and thus important or legitimate.

I have a second phone I use for work and on-call, so that goes on DND from 6PM to 6AM with a VIP list of people/numbers that can ring through. No problems there, and somehow that number isn't (yet) on anyone's list, so I don't get many calls.

On my personal cell, I started to use an app called Hiya that has been pretty successful. It's available for both iPhone and Android. It powers a lot of the carrier-specific apps like AT&T Call Protect, but unlike them, it doesn't suck. It's a giant database of reports that rate calling numbers and classify them as fraud, scam, neighborhood spoofing, etc. and you can flag them or route them right to voicemail. The only time it doesn’t work is when it hasn't updated its list in a little while and a few sneak through. They just realized a premium version that added some features. I haven't explored it yet.

Went from about 20 calls a week to almost nothing.

Carriers seem to be either uncapable or unwilling to address the issue other than the occasional lip-service reply about "taking customer's $variable seriously." 

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of William Herrin
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2018 3:32 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Are any of you starting to get AI robocalls?

Howdy.

Have any of you started to get AI robocalls? I've had a couple of
calls recently where I get the connect silence of a predictive dialer
followed by a woman speaking with call center background noise. She
gives her name and asks how I'm doing. The first time it happened it
seemed off for reasons I can't quite articulate, so I asked: "Are you
a robot or a person?" She responded "yes" and then launched in to a
sales pitch. The next time I asked, "where can I direct your call?"
She responded "that's good" and launched in to her pitch.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>




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