Your cell phone getting hammered by spam calls?

For about the past 6 months or so, I’ve been getting absolutely hammered by spam voice-calls to my cell phone. Sometimes up to 10 or 20 per day.
These are always recorded announcements suggesting to “push 1” etc to speak to someone about somethingorother … my mortgage, my insurance etc etc etc.
This is in spite of the fact that I am very careful with my cell number.

Anyone else been getting their cell phone spammed like this?

When I’ve looked up the offending callers (numbers) online, websites online indicate that these callers are apparently doing this to 10’s of thousands of cell phone owners … particularly as these sites show lists of thousands of reported individual, offending numbers.
These websites are ones which list the phone numbers of these "offending" callers and give people a chance to post what numbers are doing this, and comments.

Here are two odd things noted from these “reporting” websites …
When people actually try to “push 1” etc to get to a live person, they rarely ever actually manage to talk to someone … and when they do, there is apparently rarely any actual solicitation for the alleged “product”. People report actually being berated, insulted and so forth, or, asked for personal information … but no legitimate business solicitation.
Further, each individual number appears to be calling for a host of *alleged* businesses including mortgage stuff, car insurance, appliance warranties, and dominoes pizza just to name a few.

A further point … It is obvious that these callers are doing what was known in the old days as “war dialing” … a practice that is specifically illegal by the FCC. It involves using computers to call random numbers (in this case using specific area codes and prefixes).

So I asked myself …
Why would someone war-dial thousands of numbers repeatedly for no apparent business reason whatsoever????

One possibility is that, WHEN you actually get someone on the phone, they are merely trying to get your personal information. But they apparently pick-up so seldom that this does not seem to be the total answer.

The only other theory I could come up with is that it could very well be THE ONLINE WEBSITES, THEMSELVES that are behind the calling … all those click-thru’s are how they sell the advertising space that you see on them for Intellius, etc
Further, these website often suggest you list *your* cell phone number when you make your "complaint".
Uh-huh.

If this is the case, they’ve opened the sites … then war-dialed hundreds of thousands of people to “drive” them onto the internet in a search for info about who is calling them over and over.

In any regard, war-dialing is illegal and the FCC will take reports of this behavior. FCC complaint forms can be found at …
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/1088D-R.pdf

I do not have that problem as I have the no call thing.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

The governments do not call list also applies to cell phones.

You can register your cell phone with them.

I have been getting a load of calls from the 215 area on a new phone that I had not registered....My other cell phone has been registered since I had it.
There is an online site where you can check them to see just who these people are.
One of them was ATT, and someone had posted a name and number to call to get off the list, and I had to leave a voicemail with my number and ask her to take me off the list, and you know what?
I never got another call from them.
All I did was google the number and it showed the site that I mention above.

To register your cell phone..
call toll-free, 1-888-382-1222 (TTY 1-866-290-4236), from the number you wish to register. Registration is free. (From the "Do Not Call" website...you have to call from the cell phone you wish to register)

You can also register your cell phone on the Do Not Call website just like you can your home phone. I use my cell as my primary number (often it's the only number I give out), and I haven't received one spam call in the seven years I've had it.

I never got one but I registered my cell phone number on the Do Not Call registry as soon as it was available.

I think I've had one spam call on my cell in 3 years of having my current number.

I haven't had Spam calls, but plenty of calls for the previous holder of the number. They must flip those phone numbers quickly.

A warning I read about is, you pick up and the caller lures you one way or another to press a couple keys and what they've done is forward their call from outer mongolia to tim-buk-tu, and you get charged with the call.
I don't pick up if I don't know the number calling.

I love the people who complain you didn't answer because they blocked their number from showing.

You gotta give up somethin' to get somethin'. No number, no answer, period.

The mobile phone has developed very rapidly, some parts are constantly updated, include and the and so on.

ya might think about looking into the party that sold you the phone.....
third party phone salesmen have a perfect list of new numbers to sell to the scumbags who war dial.....
 
my last company got new blackberries for everyone, and not three days later 18 out of 23 brand new phones were getting cold calls, and these were business management phones

Note posts 1 through 10 were originated in 2008 so information here may be outdated.

By the way, the cell phone are more and more popular and it has developed very rapidly, some parts are constantly updated, include  and so on.