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Comment by patrickhogan1 | Hacker News Reader

Something changed about 1 year ago where the spam calls I get are 10x higher than in the past. It got so bad I had to change how I use my phone. Any caller not in my contact list goes immediately to voicemail.

I’ve tried several robocall blockers, but they tend to cause connectivity issues.

If anyone else has this problem, what are you using to prevent robocalls?

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I just stopped answering any/all unknown phone numbers. Only my contacts get me without leaving a message. I'm sure it's caused me to lose business, but I can't find a better way of maintaining my own productivity/sanity. I do disclose this practice in the outgoing message, and encourage callers to text me if they don't get an answer. Whatever software the robocallers use doesn't seem to be smart enough to clock this as an alternative channel, but I'm sure some AI product will make this worse.

Yup, we went to this not too long ago. Many calls a day, mostly medicare scammers.

Pixel phones are excellent at blocking spam calls. In fact I will not let my mother use any other phone despite her desperately wanting an iPhone.

My SO has an iPhone and she gets at least 3-4 spam calls a day. I get probably 1 a week that gets through the filter, which you can screen with a bot anyway.

Same. I have a Pixel on Google Fi and get like one spam call every 2 weeks. And it always shows "possible spam" in big red letters.

My girlfriend on the other hand gets several a day with a Samsung on A&TT. And it's worse for her because she is a real estate agent and can't afford not to take calls.

Pixel phones. Night and day difference from my wife’s iPhone. Same carrier. It’s simply not an issue.

I have an iPhone and I basically never get spam calls.

Interesting. To be clear I get spam calls but they are rejected or screened automatically. If I look through my call history I can see some them.

There are most certainly other factors at play.

My wife recently switched from a Samsung to a new iPhone which prompted my observation (not a pixel phone of course but still it got worse for her). All anecdata.

Pay a service like Optery to get your info off of spam lists. I answer my phone when I get calls because I don't get enough spam calls to not do that.

Same thing happened to me several years ago.

I just send anyone not in my contacts to voicemail (using the iOS setting) and delete all the robocall voicemails about once per month.

I’ve given up and just don’t answer calls from anyone that isn’t in my contacts list.

If it’s important they’ll text me or leave a voicemail with a callback number.

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