this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
1785 points (98.1% liked)

memes

16250 readers
2493 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Recently, I've been getting calls I'm pretty sure are spam. They are all from different numbers, but all of the area codes are from where I got my phone number, which is quite far from where I live now. Additionally, they all do leave voicemails, but each and every one is exactly thirty seconds of silence.

Spam or not, I can't figure out the point.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They spoof a number close to your number to increase the chance you pickup, they don't know you moved.

I'd bet the silence calls are to determine if a phone number is active.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I definitely know about the spoofing - that's what made me figure it was spam initially.

The waiting for a voice response makes sense, but I've never encountered a system that didn't at least say some form of "hello." Not this persistent of one, anyway.

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Interesting, one of the recent voicemails I received was a very high-quality voice courtesy one of everyone’s favorite text-to-speech companies (perhaps ElevenLabs)

Wonder if it’s possible they were trying to route on the fly, if they had such a low latency system that they’re able to wait for potential victims to say hello before instantly transferring to a human scammer.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Probably a bot waiting for a voice in order to start. It waits until it hangs up.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That makes sense, and I appreciate the information.

You'd think they would have marked me as inactive by now - they've been calling every day or two, including weekends, for more than a month. I haven't answered once! The persistence is the only thing that made me question whether it was spam.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until ~~you are dead~~ it's no longer profitable to operate the automated service!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I got that kind of call for four years after I got a new phone number. 2-3 times a day. Plus texts offering to buy Tuyet's home, appointment reminders for her & her kid's(?) doctor, occasional temp-staffing offers. You can't beat them by not answering.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Had this problem too (phone number is from NM but I'm in MA now) so I just started messing with them. I'd answer "Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albuquerque district office, how may I direct your call?" Click. After about a week of doing this I haven't gotten a single spam call, this was like 2 years ago. Who cares it it's "impersonating a federal agency" or whatever, they're scammers overseas, fuck em.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's AI, I'd be willing to bet. Waiting to detect a human before responding with whatever scam they're selling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

that doesn't really require AI lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Playing back a message when you hear someone pick up? No, they've been doing that forever. But trying to determine whether you have a human on the line or just their voicemail recording? That's something that could start to require more sophisticated language models, and the fact that the message didn't just start rattling something off as soon as something picked up suggests maybe they're using it. Actual phone scams using AI? Well, if they're not doing it yet, they will be soon.