I received a wacky call on my home telephone. When I answered, I heard:
This is 777-3633. Please leave a message.
Then nothing. I dropped the call. The Caller ID, that unreliable, easily-spoofed feature of my POTS line, reported the call as Out Of Area with a number of 999-999-9999. According to the ‘net I’m not alone in receiving this call.
This morning I got a call from Nuance, the software vendor. I use a few of their products, and they were pitching upgrades. Anyway, their Caller ID came up the same way. Unrelated, I’m sure.
The ‘net knows everything – I’m not alone.
Do Not Call’s great, I’m on it and it certainly helps. But it’s not 100%.
Recent legislation allows marketers to mine mobile numbers now, too, and there was talk of a new Do Not Call registry being established. Anyone got more info on that?
What gets me isn’t so much the calls, which are kinda few, but the spam text messages. I don’t use text messaging except very, very rarely, and so that service isn’t part of my plan. That means each one has a real cost, whether or not I read ’em. I guess I really wish the mobile services in the US were more like Europe, where the caller pays the freight. That’s the way voice calling works, so why in the world our mobile carriers went the other way is beyond me.
Google it. Often one or more of the hits are to “unknown number” forums, where someone has chased it down.
Then, there’s always the Do Not Call Registry http://www.donotcall.gov/
That minimized the number of idiots that need to be convinced that you *can* make their handset explode next to their ear, by remote control. :-)