From: djheydt@kithrup.com   
      
   In article ,   
   Joy Beeson   wrote:   
   >On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:29:33 -0400 (EDT), kludge@panix.com   
   >(Scott Dorsey) wrote:   
   >   
   >> Joy Beeson   wrote:   
   >> >On Tue, 7 Oct 2025 17:54:37 -0000 (UTC), "Keith F. Lynch"   
   >> > wrote:   
   >> >   
   >> >> maybe one of the victims annoyed by all these unpunished scam calls   
   >> >> will hunt down the scammers and kill them.   
   >> >   
   >> >The people who do the actual calling are slaves.   
   >>   
   >> Many of them aren't people at all but machines pretending to be people.   
   >> Once they think you'll talk they'll transfer you to a human.   
   >   
   >And the human invariably has an incomprehensible accent;   
   >it's no longer possible to find sufficiently-desperate   
   >Americans.   
   >   
   >Whenever I can do so without inconveniencing myself, I   
   >string them along -- time spent reciting to my pocket is   
   >time not spent harassing other people.  But the human always   
   >hangs up the first time he fails to extract my data.   
   >   
   >Sometimes I can get the robot to respond to "do you have a   
   >right to call this number" with "Oh, no, that's not the   
   >case!".   
      
   [Hal Heydt]   
   I've developed a number of tactics that work to varying degrees.   
   Since the calls I get are on a household land (three adults and   
   teenager), I'll ask who they're trying to contact.  If they come   
   up with a name, it's almost invariably pronounced wrong.  I still   
   get calls for Dorothy, to which I reply that she ahsn't been at   
   this number for over three years.   
      
   One type I've been getting quite a bit lately is ones to sell   
   "final expense" (i.e. funeral) policies.  Before it gets to a   
   human, they'll ask how old I am.  My standard reply is, "123."   
   Usual response is a pause, then .  They're looking for   
   poeple from 50 to 80.  Any reasonably astute human would realize   
   that age of 123, is--at the very least--implausible, as there is   
   no well documented record of anyone achieving that age.   
      
   For calls where they're trying to sell some sort of medical   
   policy or service by claiming that I have some specific condition   
   or other, I deamnd to know where they got the data, so that I can   
   file a HIPAA complaint against whoever told them.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)