If the dialer stopped working I'd never notice, but if the phone app broke entirely I'd stop getting calls from telemarketers and loan scams.

And vacation sweepstakes, and shitty recruiters, and IRS scams, and...

This must be the elephant in the room. Traditional telephony has become dominated by bad actors. They hit a critical mass and now my phone app is a waste of space.

I've always found it weird how everyone I know seems much more cautious about phone usage than me: for example, I've never understood why people don't answer numbers they don't recognize.

I'm slowly realizing that this is because apparently people are inundated with spam calls? I think I may have received one solitary spam call in my entire life. I can't really account for the discrepancy

> I've always found it weird how everyone I know seems much more cautious about phone usage than me

I wouldn't say I'm cautious, it's simply that if it were important, why would you call?

I basically consider phone calls as unimportant as paper letters. Check in on them every few weeks.

> I wouldn't say I'm cautious, it's simply that if it were important, why would you call?

Claiming this in general is trivially rebuttable by the fact that I know many people who feel precisely the opposite: if it's important you call, if not you text.

If anything, that view is less irrational than yours: a mode of communication that's immediate, loud, sustained for many seconds, and hits a device that most people have on them constantly fits far more easily with realtime urgency than any other mode of communication.

On top of THAT, there are still stupid legacy systems (that are nonetheless important) that use old forms of communication. My insurance was cancelled while I was on a backpacking trip and they called me and sent me a letter without bothering to send me an email. The fact that Blue Shield are fucking idiots doesn't change the fact that I was without proper medical insurance for th rest of the year (due to ACA enrollment limits). I could easily see the same being true of phone calls.

What would you expect me to do if it were important?

It seems to me I can either call, which most likely causes a loud and persistent ringing noise that signals "someone wants to talk to you right now, please pick up the phone". Or I can send you a text which will make a quick beep on your phone and then go away.

I can deal with the text when I want -- or not at all. Whereas the call arrives when you want.

I actually adopted the "don't answer the phone" strategy about 20 years ago, when first I got voice mail. I wish everyone had. But nowadays I don't even listen to my voice mail.

In my case it seems to be a random anxiety. I don't want to make calls. Oddly, I'm basically OK with receiving them, thought spam calls are unreasonably annoying.

Where do you live? I'm the same, 0 spam calls ever, but I live in NZ.

Looking over my call log, I have five incoming from humans I wanted to hear from over the last seven days.

I have 27 from random numbers/places that I know from experience are scams. This is a US number.

If you find your life lacking opportunities to get in to obscenity shouting matches with random con artists, it is great! Otherwise, not so much.

Wow, that's terrible. No wonder Google Dialer has a spam filter - I never understood the point of it but now I do.

Swede here, and non-private number (indexed by hitta.se, etc). Getting roughly 1 spam call per year, and that's a high estimate.

California, USA

This must be an American thing. In New Zealand I still use the phone app for talking to people. I've never recieved a spam call - a few calls from companies I already donate too asking for more etc, but that's it. How many "bad" calls do you get a month?

10-15, which is far more than I get legitimate phone calls

I have never received one. Ever. I have had a mobile phone for twenty years. This problem seems very specific to the US.

I don't think it is specific to only US, in India i get on average 10/week, I never had a problem in Germany though.. it depends on regulations i guess

It is an American thing. I had 2 degrees and Telecom (or Spark or whatever the fuck they are now) and never had any spam that I recall. Coming back to the US, my number got text spam on a number I literally gave to no one. -_-

I get about 2 per week. This was true in Canada & the US -- Canada used to be much worse but has gotten better.

However, in both cases, it was nearly 100% spam. I talk to family via video chats, and friends via facebook, hangouts, whatsapp, etc.

I get more of those on my Google Voice/Hangouts number than my actual phone number .. and I still get them on my actual phone number, even though I have given that information to NO ONE! -_- ... fuck you Cricket (really ATT).

The irony is TrueCaller was originally created to combat telemarketing calls..

I'd only notice when other people start complaining they can't get hold of me... which frankly I'd be okay with 99% of the time. The thing I hate about the phone is the expectation that I'll reply right away and participate in a phone call that's intrusive of my time. Frankly, I find a lot of people feel the same way about texting or emails. I have quite a lot of people that text me and if I haven't replied within a minute or two I get the "well?" or "can I get a response?"... "Yes, and I'll respond when I'm good and ready! Lest I need to remind you that my phone is for my benefit, not everyone else's!"