My phone is nearly useless: dozens of scam calls daily about car warranties and Microsoft hacks and my myriad of crimes, press 1 or go to jail. So all calls are silenced and I swipe through voicemail transcripts now and again to see if anything was real. The phone companies profit from it and will do only enough to tamp down bad PR, which leaves the regulators, reduced to telling Americans never to answer or return calls from unknown numbers. Perhaps this record $225m fine for robocallers is a good sign of change.
Robocalls are a daily annoyance for many Americans, and they have been rising in recent years, with some estimates showing that billions are made per month. The number of spam calls received in the U.S. rose 26% in the last year, according to Robokiller, an anti-spam call app. The FCC recommends that people don't answer calls from unknown numbers because of the problem. iPhones even have a built-in feature that can send them to voicemail. Often, the scammers pretend to be affiliated with a legitimate company or organization, like the IRS, Apple, or Amazon.
Good luck collecting so much as a penny from a Texas LLC.
A trick I've been considering: get a cellular number from a remote area code I don't live and would never expect to receive calls from, then block all incoming calls from that area code.
