Schreck Shock Calls

[trybefore 6]

I regularly read about these calls in the local rag and recently got one! 

"Female" voice speaking German, "Dad I had an accident etc etc. Arrested etc etc. Can you help me?".

Now I don't have a daughter, so I answered "Well you deserve it!".

The "female" said "Why?", and I answered "Because you called me last week and you're a f-ing scammer".

The voice immediately changed to male and I was cursed in German, English and Turkish

I wasted a lot of his time with insults which he returned and then his "brother" took on the debate so I wasted more of his time. I had fun and in the end he said "I know where you live" to which I replied that I have a big dog waiting for him.

Anyhow reported to the Police and to a good friend who is head of the local Kripo.

 

Question is why does the telephone system allow anonymous calls to private numbers?

Is it a German thing, a European thing or a world wide issue?

Anyone else had experience of them?

 

[kiplette 8,794]

12 hours ago, trybefore said:

why does the telephone system allow anonymous calls to private numbers?

 

How would the telephone system know if it's an anonymous call or your Auntie Pat?

 

I doubt a system requiring scammers to self declare their dodgy numbers to a central telephone system would work, although you never know in Germany...

[RedMidge 6,638]

If it is an unknown, anonymous number  then do not answer. Leave it for your answering system!

[kaffeemitmilch 1,295]

10 hours ago, RedMidge said:

If it is an unknown, anonymous number  then do not answer. Leave it for your answering system!

This is what I mostly do, and I think is what a lot of people resort to. Heck, many won't even answer if they DO know who it is... they're afraid of talking, and prefer texting, where you can think about what you want to say first.

[Dembo 525]

11 hours ago, kiplette said:

 

How would the telephone system know if it's an anonymous call or your Auntie Pat?

 

I doubt a system requiring scammers to self declare their dodgy numbers to a central telephone system would work, although you never know in Germany...

 

How can the phone system not know where the call is coming from?

[JG52 1,044]

If you are a Telekom customer, you can log into your "Telefonicenter" account and add nuisance phone numbers to the call blocking list.  You can also block anonymous numbers.  Other providers might have similar features.

 

[keith2011 2,677]

The scammers rarely use the same number twice so blocking is fairly pointless.

 

[JG52 1,044]

41 minutes ago, keith2011 said:

The scammers rarely use the same number twice so blocking is fairly pointless.

 

 

I suppose one could do nothing and endure the spam calls, but adding the unknown numbers to my blocked list works great.  Before I learned about the feature, I was receiving between five and a dozen calls a day from the same numbers.  I never answered them, but would Google the numbers to determine if they were spam.  Now, when a number shows up on my missed call list, and I don't recognize it, I add it to the blocked call list.  I can't remember the last time I received a spam call.

[catjones 1,702]

Technically, I don't think scammers use the "telephone" system.  Pretty sure it's the internet...VOIP.

 

10 hours ago, Dembo said:

How can the phone system not know where the call is coming from?

 

[fraufruit 42,468]

2 hours ago, keith2011 said:

The scammers rarely use the same number twice so blocking is fairly pointless.

 

The same with email scammers. Always different addresses.

 

The VOIP callers can use VPN.