One time, I picked up, and it was this seemingly incredibly rude person who sounded real but continue talking in a pushy manner without stopping despite what I said.
It's insane getting so many calls all the time like I owe them a bunch of money or something. Anyone else get this?
The US seems to have completely given up on protecting its public phone network against abuse, while at the same time relying on phone numbers as the primary identifying key and authentication method for humans in countless business processes.
It took years (if not decades) of regulatory neglect to get that bad; I doubt there’s an easy fix at this point. It’s really concerning.
And what's worse is that even if this were to be fixed now, the reputational damage is already done, since many people will probably never change their devices back to ringing again.
> Someone important trying to call can always leave a message but the spammers never have.
My US mailbox is full of spam calls.
Curiously, it seems to have become a cultural touchstone not to leave a voicemail. I have had to educate people about this. My service is with Verizon, and for what I assume are historical reasons the caller will hear rings on their end even if my phone isn't receiving the call (AT&T does not have this issue). If you don't leave a voicemail, I literally have no way of knowing that you called. Said voicemail can be as simple as "call me".
I'm a physician, and the hospital where I do most of my work has a policy against sending PHI over text (a very reasonable policy). So many nurses are reluctant to text me anything, even when it's just "please call Adam on 3 South".
Sometimes, I get robocalls from local PACs, and they get automatically flagged as scams, because the dialer companies that the politicians use, are ones that also run outright scam campaigns, and get blacklisted.
If it were possible to reliably determine the source of a call in the US phone network, spam wouldn't be an issue!
Theoretically, STIR/SHAKEN should enable that; practically, there are too many gaps to enforce it (importantly, it does not travel across TDM, i.e. non-VoIP, paths), so spammers still get away with it.
Nowadays...not so much.
I used to answer and mess with the callers, but no longer do.