Getting more calls after signing up on the Do Not Call List

My former brother-on-law, now residing in hell, made millions inventing at least part of these automatic dialers.  Most in no way look at or use the DNC list.  The list tells them who probably won't take their call plus they don't want to spend a penny when there are so many things they get for free or cheap.  I am sure Capital One Bank sold our phone number.  We've been on DNC list with unlisted/unpublished number since it started and NEVER got these kinds of calls.

3 weeks after buying a new Honda, financed by Capital One, the phone started ringing off the hook.  I called car dealer and he said to look at my papers, they had a document that stated our personal information would not be given out to anyone other us and the finance company/bank.  Even he said could be Capital One.

My advise, is be careful when buying anything you finance.  I wonder how much Capital One makes on these deals if they are actually selling our numbers?  Just to be safe, no more Capital One for us for any reason.

Oh, yeah, "Rachel" from a credit card company, and all the others you mentioned.  Agree....there has been an increase in calls lately.

OK, well I haven't been diligent about reporting what has happened after I signed up on the DNC in January.  So far I have received 3 calls that were automatically blocked.
March 5th  720-499-0868--800notes identifies it as Reward Redemption
March 22   786-607-1805--800notes identifies it as Reward Redemption
April 2        469-458-1227--800notes identifies it as Reward Redemption

So the calls were probably all from the same scammer, and I had already gotten a couple call from them prior to signing up.

So it has been 4 months now, I was wondering, if I am supposed to be getting a lot more calls just by signing up, when are they supposed to start?

I also have been on DNC list from the beginning, I started getting some calls so went to make sure I was still on, and recently have been getting TONS !!!! Landline and cell. Seems like it got worse after going and confirming I was on.

Well I guess you didn't read about my little experiment up there.  So far I have had 5 blocked calls, all from the same people that called me before going on the DNC.  In other words, no new callers.  Now, have you taken into consideration that there are more calls being made by scammers?  Have you factored in that your number is more readily accessible every time you give to to someone, or some entity?  Is your number listed in social media?  There are so many things in play that can cause you to get more calls, that drawing a correlation like that is not very smart.  Remember, correlation does not become causation.

Did you google your own phone to see where it is listed?  I bet you didn't.

Actually, quite a lot of companies sell your number.  I used Safelight to repair a windshield and gave them my cell number as I was away from home when needing the repair.  Next day I get a call from a foreign-sounding person wanting to sell me extended warranty coverage on my car...and this was not a robocall, but a live person who knew my name and make, model and year of my car.  Who else would have sold that info.  Since then those scammers have sold my number to other scammers and now I get calls trying to lower interest rate on my credit card, selling home security systems, selling timeshares, selling bogus vacation packages....it just goes on.  So I don’t answer my cell unless I recognize the number and if the person doesn’t leave a VM so I know who it was, I block it.  Of course, the list of “blocked” calls on my phone is huge since they spoof the number they dial from.

Keep in mind that these people are scammers, and also do things like "War Dialing". Here's an older example of how it works:



Of course, modern computers are much better at this than Matthew Broderick's computer in the movie, but the concept is exactly the same. Some telemarketers use this same technique, and use the call result (ANSWER, NO ANSWER, BUSY, CONGESTION) to see if a phone number is active. If a call is answered, they switch to playing a pre-recorded message (robocall), or possibly transfer to a real person. The number of calls they make can be over hundreds of thousands a day depending upon the number of calls answered and transferred to a human.

Note that this can be used to find all the phone numbers by brute force, and it's relatively inexpensive. And if some of these folks are going to violate a lot of the telemarketing laws, why bother paying for a DNC list they really don't need? It costs less to dial 1,000,000 numbers than the DNC list does - so why bother? In fact, paying for that list would add liability, since when the FTC eventually does get hold of them, it's obvious they "knew or should have known" what they were doing wasn't permitted.

I answer a fair number of calls, and haven't created a scientific double-blind study on it, but don't think the DNC or many other things really impact the number of calls you get and seriously doubt it's causing you to get more calls. It's just if the telemarketing campaign is targeting your area code or not.  Some weeks I get virtually nothing, some weeks I get a couple a day.. Answering calls doesn't seem to have caused my phone to ring off the hook, and I've been doing it for years. I don't buy anything, so my phone numbers aren't marked "sucker" if they are traded around. Based on the small number of calls I get asking for {various fake names}, there doesn't appear to be as much sharing as some would think.

Placing and shifting blame are we?  The old dream....You don't even have facts to prove you "point".  Tell us, are you answering the calls you get?  How are your telephone habits and discipline?  I have been on the DNC since it started, and I get 3-4 calls a month, and that is the total for a cell and a land line.

You are making a statement with no facts.  "Seems like" is not a a fact.  Maybe you need to ask questions, and not be advancing theories when you have no facts.  You need to be asking "How can I get less calls?".

I used to get very few scammer calls, maybe one a week, around the turn of the century. The numbers slowly increased over the years. This year it increased to an average of one a day. This month it has become an average of twice a day, if I include every day of the week.

Monday (July 18, 2016) I got calls from 7 different numbers, and one of them called three times. Today (Tuesday) I got calls from 3 different numbers so far. None of these callers left voice mails.

As far as I can tell with lookups, none of them are alleging to be debt collectors or the IRS. None of these calls are numbers I recognize; three are from my own area code - and NONE of them resulted in search engine results that gave a website of the business that was assigned these numbers. Some of these numbers are probably spoofed.

That's my landline. I get very few calls on my cell phone.

Finally, I am a different William than the one at the top of the page. I have a Mazda.

Thanks for posting that clip, TT! It's a great way of explaining war dialing to those who might be... a bit thick.

Until Mr. Robot does a war-dialing scene, this works well. And even then, it's about as basic as you can get. It's a good movie, too.

And humorous.  Did you get a load of that floppy disk he put in?  I wonder how many people today would even know it was a floppy disk?

Looks like an 8-inch floppy, and the computer is an IMSAI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSAI_8080#IMSAI_in_popular_culture
Computer : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common ... tory_Museum.jpg
Floppy Drive : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/IMSAI_8080-IMG_1479.jpg

Yes William you are probably the only person I know that would have that info at their fingertips.  :-)