The future is now old man!
I’m guessing the mass here is from USA. People from EU, where regulations work better, what’s your opinion on this?
Poland here. I really get spam calls, once a week or less. My phone flags unwanted calls as spam so I don’t pick up. If I miss a call from an unknown number, then I Google it. I almost never get to talk to a spam call.
Scamers put effort into learning Polish and you didn’t even hear them out? Harsh.
German here, I also google unknown phone numbers first if they are mobile phone numbers. My business phone number is in the imprint of every website I make due to legal reasons, so I receive around 1-2 spam calls per week.
I’m from the EU. I do the same. I hate getting calls. It forces me to drop everything I’m doing and suddenly switch contexts, which I absolutely hate. So I usually don’t answer unless I expect the call or know the number. If it’s important they can enter a voicemail or preferably send a message, either of which doesn’t require an immediate response and is therefore a lot less annoying.
from the various comments it looks pretty much the same. I have two numbers UK, and PL, and I get spam calls on both of them. It’s gotten to a point where if I don’t recognise a number and don’t specifically wait for a call from somewhere I just ignore it
Yeah, i see that. I guess I’m just lucky then. I mean there’s this one survey company that nags ppl, but you block their one number or ask them to leave you alone and that’s it. And the boring sellers always get flagged by Google so that’s filtered out automatically. Basically, whenever my phone rings, it’s for me personally and it’s a call I’d want to take.
I’m from France, there’s actually a law to force telemarketers to use certain phone ranges, which I’ve blocked.
During some periods, I have a call blocked per day, sometimes more, then nothing for a while.
I sometimes have the odd phone call that passes through, but unless I know I’m expecting a call, or it is from a number I know, I never pick up. It’s usually spam anyway
Sorry OP, but we’re urgently trying to contact you about your cars extended warranty! We save car owners major money from the shock of expensive repairs with affordable extended coverage! For as low as a cup of coffee a day you can have the peace of mind when it comes to car repairs.
“Dang man, wish you had called a month ago. Just totaled my car when I got a DUI and I’ve lost my license. Do you insure bicycles by chance?”
The only time I’ve answered an unknown number in the last decade plus is when I was applying for jobs. Everything else goes to voicemail.
Voicemail is dead too. It just gets filled with a hundred 1 seconds hangups from spam calls being sent straight to it. Every legit person and business will either show up on your ID, sent an appointment text, or an email.
Í found an option at the phone provider to just ignore all unknown numbers. My phone doesn’t even ring.
Mine does that too.
It sends them to voicemail.And my voicemail message is, "Don’t leave a voicemail, text if it’s important. "
Googling just gives pages and pages of SEO crap and scams. Any actual decent site to look up a number on?
It used to give good info, maybe 10 years ago. And remember when everyone’s number was in the phone book? Why isn’t there an online version of that anymore? Not this “buy now” scam stuff.
There really ought to be a crowdsourced database. It could even use AP.
Yeah Google actually. If it’s a legit number a business name will pop up the seo pages are all scam numbers
My sister is aggressively extroverted, and I am about as introverted. She insists on talking over the phone. All the time. I have to recover from it.
I’d prefer to talk on the phone, you get through way more like that
If I don’t recognize the number (meaning it’s not already in my contacts), then you can leave a message. 98% of the time it’s a scam anyways, and the other 2% of the time it’s a doctor’s office confirming your appointment.
Next time you get a unknown caller, they won’t be so unknown anymore https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/
I searched the # of a place I work for and it said it was from some random lady in Florida. I do not live anywhere near Florida
Well we’ve been trying to find a good time to tell you this, might as well be now. You actually work for some random lady in Florida. Sorry about all the misdirection, she’s a very secretive lady
yall been googling phone numbers? i just press the power button once.
It trickier when you’re actually expecting a call but you don’t know what number they will call from, like a job recruiter.
Honestly I just screen these calls as well, call them back immediately if they leave a relevant voicemail, and apologize for not picking up as “the spam and scam calls have got so prevalent that I screen literally every call these days.”
I had a recruiter just today laugh and say “yeah, it’s gotten pretty bad, I do the same thing.” So it’s not like they are going to hold it against you these days.
I tend to block numbers known to spam from a specific exchange, as well as those that duckduck throws shade on
I got a Pixel 8 recently and it can have AI answer and screen the call for you. I just do that.
Doesn’t work on grapheneos unfortunately. Unless I’m doing something wrong
As far as I’m aware it’s just a normal program, not “AI”
It uses Google’s speech to text. As far as you can tell it is a recorded message saying that it’s Google’s call screening system and to give your name and why you’re calling and voice to text to tell you what they say
Then when you hang up it says goodbye to them.
I think the product that was supposed to be AI was the booking assistant
The feature itself advertised that it uses Bard when it was walking through all the first time popups. That’s Google’s AI isn’t it?
Weird, I’ve been using this on my pixel 6 for a long time and I don’t even thing bard was a thing when this came out
Probably depends on the device? My sister’s 7 has no AI features either. The 8’s full of it.
They should have just called the pixel 8 the pixel AI then lol
Surprised that isn’t what the 9 will be called. It’s supposed to have even more AI features. Heck, the 8 Pro apparently can do some things the regular 8 can’t because the 8 only has 8GB of RAM.
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You also can’t easily reverse directory anymore. Now you end up with 30 pages of links to places that will charge you $40 to say that it’s an unlisted cell number.
Well they better start spoofing numbers I might actually answer otherwise they’ve accomplished nothing
Nah man, if it’s not important enough for a call it must not be that important, if you text me I might not even open the message
Nothing like a good voice conversation, face to face or not
Are spam calls that big of a problem, where you live?
I heard spam calls are rampant in the US. I’m not sure about other countries.
it’s gotten significantly worse in EU in the recent years as well, anecdotally, I don’t think I got more than idk maybe 10 spam calls in 2011-2019. Since 2020 I sometimes get as many as 3 a week
Me wearing a suit to use Google.