Computer virus scam, nuisance calls

[St_Gabriel]

Had a discussion at work the other day in regards to someone getting quite a few annoying "hang-up" type calls from an overseas number. I have/had the same issue and further into the discussions, the other party mentioned that is was a form of payback from the scammers for wasting their time. This does ring true with me though the timeframe was in the vicinity of a month or so from wasting their time to commencement of calls. These always come at an inconvenient time like when i'm trying to sleep at 2 am in the morning.

Has anyone else wasted their time (my P.B. was 28 minutes and three operators) and then noticed a increasing amount of early morning calls? Maybe I should just hang up and let them get onto scamming gullible people?

[mossy1200]

Im getting hang ups also.
I got them for 20 odd minutes by telling them I was searching my payroll system for all my account details.

[JMemonic]

Talk to your phone provider, they have the ability to block callers, you will need to log the times etc but they should be able to help.

[St_Gabriel]

Talk to your phone provider, they have the ability to block callers, you will need to log the times etc but they should be able to help.

Tried that JMemonic, All Slingshot could do was place a Do Not Disturb on the line between whatever hours we choose, because the calls were originating from outside of the country they couldn't even follow them up.

If the calls were from within New Zealand then they might be able to do something.

I am not looking for a resolution (calls have since petered off and haven't had one in more than a couple of weeks) but looking for a correlation.

[Laava]

I get ghost calls regularly but so far has only been daylight hours. The phone rings and there is no one there and after a few secs I get a female recorded "Thank you" then disconnect. It is an automated system trying to find out when is the best time to call. Usually I get them 2 or 3 days in a row at a very similar time followed up with an actual call from someone trying to sell or scam. They deny having the machine to do that in my experience but I cut them short on principle after I ask them that.

[pzkpfw]

They are just fishing for people who pick up. They have a limited number of operators, so sometimes when you pick up there's no one to "take your call", so you get nothing (or the recorded message).

I find it unbelievable that in this age of computers and data that the phone providers can't do anything about it.

It can't be that hard to gather genuine data of scam callers (i.e. not just legit companies trying to get each other blocked) and do something with those calls.

Just proft driven, I guess.

It's enough to make me ditch the home line and go all Skype/Cell - except with the cell they'd make more money off me anyway (is that the plan?).

[JMemonic]

Tried that JMemonic, All Slingshot could do was place a Do Not Disturb on the line between whatever hours we choose, because the calls were originating from outside of the country they couldn't even follow them up.

If the calls were from within New Zealand then they might be able to do something.

I am not looking for a resolution (calls have since petered off and haven't had one in more than a couple of weeks) but looking for a correlation.

It sucks they cant do anything for you, good to hear they have gotten bored.

[flyingcrocodile46]

I'm thinking of getting rid of all my numbers and just having one 0900 number that costs $2 a minute. That should see an end to the MIL's annoying calls, get rid of the telemarketers and put a smile on my face when the phone rings.

Just 5 minutes per hour of people phoning me would bring in $240 a day. Feck, I talked my self into it

[Oblivion]

Yeap. Not a day goes by where we dont have at least one of these assholes. We have the business line and the home line both at home. So we get double the trouble.

They need to get the lesson that the majority of us dont want their scams and need to fuck right off.

That or do the same back to them. Tis fun.

[imdying]

They (the operators) dial a couple of numbers at once. You get the nobody there or 'thank you' when the other number picked up before you did.

[5150]

[caspernz]

Yeah had the computer virus scam very early in the piece, just said yeah right and hung up.

Went thru a stage where we got survey calls in that precious 6-8pm window. Surveys, life insurance, fund raising for various charities...I choose who to converse with, if I don't wanna it's either no thanks, or put on a creepy Jimmy Carr voice and ask the caller what they're wearing...

Sucks when you have to leave your landline phone live when you go to sleep I guess, I switch mine across to answerphone when I go to bed. If there's a real drama somewhere, my cellphone does the trick.

But yep, one wonders how with modern technology the phone companies can't sort this nonsense out???

[george formby]

I've had dropped calls at home & at work for a year or two now, I've also had the virus scammers, bless em, hours of entertainment. My home brewed theory on the hang ups is telemarketers meeting their hourly quotas. Apparently some centers pay on calls per hour so they hammer their quota & eventually wait for somebody to pick or when the supervisor is around.
Just a thought but it's a lot less paranoid than what I thought originally, my bastard child had tracked me down.....

[Damantis]

that it may be an automated dialer looking for PABX systems in order to hack them ( for a variety of purposes, though the most obvious would be to use the numbers from that PABX to make free calls, originating here etc ) The machine doesn't get the response it's looking for and hangs up, moving to the next number. We get it here at least once a week. Getting pretty damn annoying!

[Akzle]

...autodialers are illegal in NZ.
(probably does not apply to calls originating outside NZ)

go find one of those old emails "how to have fun with telemarketers", print it and put it up next to the phone...

i haven't had a home phone for years, get all my internets through 3G, and have two mobiles, so the only people that can get in touch with me are those i want to.