Canada

you answer your phone?

Sorry to hear you're dealing with that. I don't pick up calls from numbers I don't recognize, with exceptions like if I know a service/delivery person will arrive soon. This is speculation, but I think that picking up fraud calls makes you more likely to be called again. Sorry I can't be more help

Yes. Constantly.

I went from ignoring them, to politely asking them to remove my number from their list, to letting them know that their call is illegal. I also played along for as long as possible (wasting their time), and tried yelling at the top of my lungs. Nothing works.

Criminals don't care, as long as they can make money from someone.

Now, my folks have this feature on their phone where the caller has to verify (pushing a number) that their call is legit. This apparently works well enough that they don't get scam calls.

Another preventative thing I do that I speculate is effective is I don't enter my phone number in online forms unless it's something important to me. They already have an email address of my choosing. Most online shopping, "Contact us" forms - heck no, I'm not entering my phone number. They don't need it. I don't want them to reach me by it. I usually provide valid local #s of large businesses or organizations if a form requires a number

I use a setting on iOS that blocks all calls from numbers that aren’t in my contact book. The only side effect is I have to save business numbers I interact with in my contacts. For the most part this works well for me and since I don’t answer spam calls they usually don’t try more than a few times before giving up. It is interesting to see their call patterns though. Some try daily for a week, others more randomly over a month.

Occasionally I disable the setting for a few hours when I am expecting a call from a number I don’t know.

I had some scammers from "Bell" that said they were giving me a free phone as a reward for being a loyal customer. The problem? I haven't subscribed to Bell in over a decade.

I strung them along for a while and figured out they were probably trying to get my 2FA code so they could hijack my account and presumably order new devices on my credit.

I'm getting tonnes of them. They always say they're from Rogers, for me. They've called about 20 times.

I'm hoping they call sometime when I'm otherwise free so I can waste as much of their time as possible. It's fun to bait them, and it saves them from potentially scanning someone else in that time.

How long has your number been on the no-call list? We have a similar thing in the UK but it takes ages to have an effect. Months to a year.

I deal with the issue by wasting as much of the scam callers time as I can. It seems to be the best way to get my number removed.

I usually say "I'm Mr Smith's personal assistant, this sounds like something he should discuss with you. Please hold the line." And then stick them on mute and forget about it.

With the right words and intonation you can get some of them to stay on the line for AGES.

I use Hiya. $2ish bucks a month and it's seriously cut down the calls I get. I will maybe get 1 a month that sneaks through, and even then it's pretty clear it might be spam

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