aaaah. silence.

[ChowderMan]

fwiw -

I have an iPhone 5s - OS updated to whatever Apple pesters me about updating to.

this may or may not work for you, depending on the situation - but.....

I was getting 5-20 calls a day from spammers.
the Tricare insurance thing
the IRS is coming to arrest you thing
the pain management survey thing
the do you need a rehab facility thing...

so instead of attempting to block every pestering call - which very rapidly became a very long list....
I set up the privacy function on the iPhone such that any call from any number not on my contacts list goes directly to voice mail. the phone does not ring, it does not vibrate, it does nothing. you will see a "missed call" notice. it also silences the "Unknown" callers.

any pest spammer who leaves a voice mail goes onto the blocked caller list.
any pest spammer that calls me twice from the same bogus caller ID goes on the blocked caller list.

now, obviously any one who actually knows you and/or has a legitimate reason for calling will leave a voice mail. and you can easily add them to your Contacts.

the silence is absolutely golden.
there are (at some cost) call blockers for a lot of different models - but these depend on blocking every pest individually - a daunting task because every day they change their spoofed caller ID....

[Adillo303]

First off, I think your idea is great.

I am really surprised about spam callers on your cell. I have not yet seen that. Certainly on my home phone. When I ask them how they can look at themselves in the mirror and be a spammer, they usually hang up and i feel better.

Spam callers are great tension relievers. One can say afternoon to them. They totally don't count.

[ChowderMan]

my DW doesn't get similar spam. we were discussing it one day, and she was telling me how crazy I was when her phone rang. wanna' guess?

spammers buy phone lists "with qualifiers" just like the do for email addressi.

if you think the Do Not Call List effective, major rer-think required. frankly I think the spammers buy the Do Not Call List and use all those entries thinking "these folks are least bothered and most likely to answer..."

the "law" made it illegal - so it all moved off shore. the law needs to be changed to hold the "beneficiary" responsible at $5k a pop. when the fraudster "businesses" get hit with the fines for hiring some off shore outfit (Your Honor, we did not make those calls....[we hired somebody in India to do it for us]) perhaps the situation will get under control.

...tension relievers - I just terminated the land line service. the number is on the Do Not Call List. we were getting 20-30 calls per day. this is not a tension relief.....

[Adillo303]

Oh gosh!!!! I don't get anywhere near that volume. Maybe five at most. Since one of the things I do for a living is phone systems, I have one in the house. After I am done with them, or if I don't want to deal with them in the first place, I have a mailbox set up with a repeating message that says " You are a telemarketer." All I have tho do is push a couple buttons and they are off to that.

I am sorry for all that grief.

[Mountain man]

Not nice and threatening works for me. I delete all cell phone messages and seldom turn it on anyway.

[Doc]

Thanks CM. Great idea. We added a cell line for my wife years after I'd got our original number. We shared that one for 10 years or more. Then we added a line for her about 4 years ago. She gets spam calls. I do not. We are guessing whoever had that number prior to her got on a bunch of lists somehow. Will try your trick and see if that works for her. If not we considered getting a new number, but that is a huge hassle for us.

Would you mind giving more detail about how you set up the privacy function?

edit to add:
I'm guessing you go to settings - do not disturb and set it to 12am to 11:59pm and only accept calls from contacts. Kewl. Great idea.

[ChowderMan]

doc -

and even getting a new number comes with no guarantee...
in the ole'days, people sat there & actually dialed. there was some benefit to the spammers not to call old/not in service/fax/ etc numbers. now it's dialed by computer and they just don't care....

we can spot the old dumb dial every number in the exchange routine - my wife's cell is about 150 digits away from mine, so mine rings, hers rings....

anyway - from the main screen...

Settings
Do Not Disturb
Manual slider to on/green
Allow Calls From > (select) All Contacts

iPhone 5 / AT&T
this in
Apple's Version 8.3 - altho I've updated at least once since

[Doc]

Thanks CM. Will give that a go.

[ChowderMan]

did it have an effect?

curiously, after 3 months, my spam calls have dropped to two per week; on Tuesday. first they dial me as "unknown"; then 2-3 minutes later I get a call from a local/adjoining area code.

now, the off-shore "we'll call any number forever for a price" companies only work when paid. any domestic types eventually do get nailed. so, did the scamming root companies stop paying or did my "never answers" number make their "drop" list....?

but, , , , they sell your number. so while it's curious the calls have dropped off severely, there's no way I'm removing blocks/ignores - a single "this number answers" event can lead to years and years of spam calls.

very very very few are doing the 'dial every number in the exchange' thing anymore. DW just does not get the calls I do. somehow, somebody got my cell number and sold it as a hot prospect. frankly I think it was the Honda dealer - they have a really really really bad record of lying.

[chocolate moose]

wow. that's awful.

[ChowderMan]

...awful

it got so bad on the land line I had to turn the ringer off and set the voicemail to answer on ring one. after 2-3 months of (near) nothing but spam calls I cancelled the land line service.

the Verizon rep asked why, then proceeded to softly tell me how this was all my fault and for just a few dollars more I could sign up for their service x,y,z - etc etc etc.

I told the rep point blank - the phone companies need to put a stop this this, not me - and since you don't want to cancel my service here's a newsflash: I'm not paying Verizon another dime, whether the dial tone is there or not, and I've got a lawyer that works cheap if you want to challenge the cancellation.

[Adillo303]

I don't get a lot of spam calls on the landlines. I do hate their ones I get.

My problem is spam email. At least a hundred a day and that is after my spam filter stops, I don't know how many.

[ChowderMan]

...spam email

oh yeah. another whole galaxy of hurt...

I have a couple "trash email addresses" I use - my personal stuff I never hand / give out. it helps, it's not perfect.

there is a decent rated third party solution - MailWasher
essentially you forward all your email to MailWasher - it has seriously big time user filters / controls to 'dump' spam. yeah,,,, takes a bit to get it set up "right

I've taken a slightly different tactic - I set up disposable email addresses for all the places I really don't want 20 emails per day from. when it becomes overwhelmed, I use a different one. tspamtrap1@ / tspamtrap2@ / etc.