this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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I get that feeling when I press "report spam" and gmail suggest I "unsubscribe from them", that that's exactly what the spammer want, a ping back so they know I'm susceptible, that I'm an engaging fool, and get put on all the lists.
Not sure if emails work the same way, but this is how phone scammers work
If you interact with a phone scammer, send them to hell or do anything at all with them, you just get added to a big lost of people that respond to scam calls and so you get more calls
I try waste as much of their time as possible. It seems I've been such a cunt and wasted so much of their time that they have put my number on a blacklist.
I have a work phone and a personal phone. The work phone i answer calls from I known numbers all the time. My contact information gets passed around as part of my business. For a while I had scammers hitting my number 3-4 times per day. I answered and fucked with them every time. A little free stress relief through the day. Now I almost never get them anymore.
My personal phone I have always screened all the calls. It still gets hit with scammers 2-3 times per week.
I guess you are right. There is a list going around of numbers who waste their time.
I have recieved two spam emails over the course of my life and two or three on messengers of varying degrees of privacy. Am I just lucky?
That's what I figured too. Make sure to be the biggest pain for them. Seems dumb to put someone that is savvy and not a rube on a list to be called more. I would think the not answering scam calls would get you more calls because they are unsure of you.
I defiantly got onto the call more list at one point but I kept being the biggest pain in the ass and one day they just stopped completely. I once had these one people on the phone for 6hours straight and went through about 4 transfers in the process. They connected with my VM at one point where I was live developing a fake bank website I had passed through from my host. Did u know u can embed the password game into a website extremely easily and conveniently I needed a password reset and needed help. Yes I stole the idea from kitboga.
Jesus Christ dude. 6 hours?!
Ignoring calls is easy enough. I value my time more.
If I don’t recognize a number I just don’t answer it. No time commitment.
Kotboga’s record is around 54 hours. It’s amazing.
Tbh I see it as free entertainment. Doing dishes and telling some guy that u computer needs a windows update and after he says to click the ignore button 500 times to say u want to update to ensure no scammers can hack you.
I don't have the patience to keep it up for a long time but I barely get any scam calls after pushing the button to talk to someone and then just asking about the plot holes in their script. Like the one claiming there's going to be a warrant for me, why does the guy need to ask for my name and other information? Why would revenue Canada (of anyone who isn't a scammer of some sort) ever want any kind of payment in gift cards? I'll use a tone of voice on the verge of laughter, too.
One time, after I asked, the guy just asked me why I even pressed the button to talk to a person and then hung up. Most of the time they just hang up. Sometimes the English option seems to only be there to make it seem more realistic for those who would pick the Chinese option because the call disconnects right after picking English.
Though more recently I've just been hanging up early in the recording when I do get the odd scam call. They might filter that, too, because even the volume of those calls stays low. Which makes sense because even just making the calls probably costs them something, even if it's just pennies.
They get paid for that time. They literally do not care.
You’re only wasting your own time.
They have to meet a quota... wasting their time means they aint out scamming someone else.
Most scammers do NOT get hourly pay, at least in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, or the Caribbean. They’re paid solely on commission for the money they make for the scam call center they work for, or they work for themself so nobody is paying them.