According to today's Daily Mail (sorry) last year there were 85 BILLION phone calls made by scammers trying to con us poor suckers out of our hard earned cash.
I didn't get a single scam call last year. Mind you I've got a gafilte fish on my phone (joke there for our Jewish readers).
Can any one guess how they arrived at this figure?
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It's probably a global figure and I would guess it includes calls not answered or going to voicemail. OECD population is about 1.2bn. 85bn calls is something like 1-2 a week per phone line. I would say it's plausible.
That said you should know better than to believe anything you read in that reprehensible publication.
1 or 2 per week? Very plausible. Until I put the blockers on I used to get in some weeks more than 2.
The legislation put in place has cut them but every Friday I stop answering calls unless in my contact list as some of the robot callers find ways around the blocks.
Unsurprisingly, the report they are citing was written by global anti-spam call software app makers Hiya:
https://hiya.com/blog/2019/02/27/robocalls-skyrocket-globally-growing-32...
Presumably that's why they don't give their source, since the 85 billion is essentially a guess made by people in whose best interests it is for that number to be really really big.
Also, the 85 billion refers to those call robots that phone you, which are presumably a different type of spam call to the scammers the article is actually about, since surely nobody who can tie their own shoes is giving out sensitive personal information to those. So even if the number was accurate, it's use in the article is wild propaganda verging on outright lies.
That's why we don't cite the Daily Mail!
I only get them on my office mobile now as the home phone has a blocker on it. Interesting to look back at the refused calls every few days, and I almost miss playing with them, but they drove Mrs d'U mad so needs muct.
I have had 7 so far this morning.
BT are going to disconnect the internet from a line which doesn't have internet on. That does make it easy to spot that its a scam.
I get several every week! Even when I block the numbers, the same organisations call again from different numbers. Consider yourself lucky!
Apparently HMRC have issued a lawsuit against me and there is a warrant for my arrest!!! If so the police aren't doing very well as I go home every evening!
But joking aside, if you're not switched on, and let's face it, if we're on here then we probably are, that could be a very scary message to receive. Something needs to be done to stop these people preying on the vulnerable.
I fail to understand why Ofcom can't force Openreach (or whoever) to ensure that the caller ID that appears on my phone when I receive a call is generated by the telephone network and NOT by the caller, who can currently use clever tech to spoof a fake number (often used when spammers call from abroad yet spoof a UK number).
You are right about the problem. However, it is not "clever tech". As well as tax software I write VOIP software. I have a retail phones account with a wholesaler.
When a VOIP call is issued the software tells the network what caller phone number to use. This number is not validated. I had to sign an agreement with the supplier not to use a number that is not mine and that was it.
It is useful to be able to give out say a switchboard number when phoning from a direct line, but there is no validation by the network.
It is a little complex in that when making a call it is not made "from" a number, but is just made using an account that is not inherently associated with a number. Hence the international spammers can randomly switch from number to number for each call if they feel like it.
Samsung mobiles use a call database system. I think it is the Hiya one and I find it quite helpful, but now I normally don't answer my mobile if the number is not one I know because there is so much spam. My voice mail message says send a text or email. Our switchboard is answered by a voice recognition server (robot) that takes someone's name and tracks the number - either from CLI or if people phone from anonymous numbers they have to type it in. Hence spam gets nowhere.
When a VOIP call is issued the software tells the network what caller phone number to use. This number is not validated. I had to sign an agreement with the supplier not to use a number that is not mine and that was it. It is useful to be able to give out say a switchboard number when phoning from a direct line, but there is no validation by the network.
This goes the heart of my point. Whilst I understand that it may be preferable to show the switchboard number instead of the DDI number, the network should (and certainly could) insist upon some pre-verification of the caller ID number (in a similar way that we often have to verify our email addresses by clicking a link that has been emailed to us). In that way, no VOIP software could show a caller ID that had not been previously verified to the network as belonging to the company making the call.
"Do they make these statistics up?"
No. You are just too unimportant to figure on their radar.
(Certain I am this comment has made your day.)
I get a couple a month. About 2/3 of the world's population own a phone, so that means 7.4 billion people x 2/3 x 24 calls = 118 billion. So that figure is plausible if my own experience is typical.
