I can remember a time when I was on the phone a lot. Back when it was permanently attached to the spot on the wall in the kitchen. Eventually it went cordless, or at least one model did, and I wasn't attached to that stupid cable. I talked on the phone quite a bit back then, but by the time I eventually got a cell phone I think I had done about enough of it for the rest of my life.
Fast forward to now and I hate talking on the phone. But that doesn't mean I don't get a lot of phone calls.
And it's probably a similar situation to you, too. Whether you like talking on the phone or not, your number is probably pretty busy these days. Or has been in the past and maybe you've managed to triage the nonsense. But robocalls are a problem for a lot of people, and I'm definitely one of them.
I've managed to whittle down the offending numbers, but sometimes this feels like a Sisyphean task at the end of the day. Because as you all know you block or ban one number, and you'll get a call from another that's super similar to that one. Maybe just one number off. And thanks to the Caller ID function these days, you get a name to the random area codes that pop up.
To be fair, a lot of my own problems with robocalls came after I changed my number to reflect the Pacific Northwest. While I get a lot of unwarranted calls from people who happen to know my name now, I also get a ton more for people looking for a Jennifer.
The problem is compounded when most of these calls looking for Jennifer aren't real by any means. They're robocalls themselves, with people like "William" or "Blake" trying to get me to make $10,000 per month from "working online". These are the types of things I used to see (and still see) in comments sections across websites. Now I get the same messages left as voicemails.
What's probably worse is the text messages. I don't have any idea what type of services this Jennifer person was signing up for, but the text messages are crazy and incessant. Numbers from New York, Portland, California, and even Wyoming all trying to get me to click a link and see this amazing reward.
It's bad enough at this point, after several months of having this number, that I'm seriously considering changing it again. But it's not like I have any guarantee that it will be any better with another number. It could even get worse.
It's good to see that the wireless carriers are finally starting to get a little proactive with blocking these spam calls. (Dear Verizon: automatic anything is typically not great. Let customers opt-in.) Sure, charging customers for this type of feature is really lame, but at least that's starting to not be the common practice.
How do you fare when it comes to robocalls? Have you been inundated with these spam problems for quite some time now, or have you managed to avoid it for the most part? Have you turned to an app/service to help you block them? Let me know!
