I'm now wondering if it was an attempt at contact tracing. Had they simply stated what they wanted in the message I would have been pretty likely to call them back myself or answer a later call.
I have no idea where they got my cell phone number from, but the whole thing seems poorly handled at best. Anyone with legitimate business will state the nature of that business and allow for a return call. There's just so many solutions to this problem but nearly zero aligned with incentives.
Yep. That was probably about COVID. Health privacy laws prohibit even the vague mention of a condition. The caller has no way of knowing if they have the right phone number, and the last thing you want is "Attention, Rando McUltrarunner at 42 Crustacean Crest Drive, Cleveland, Ohio! You have been infected with COVID! Run, don't walk to your nearest testing facility!" on some stranger's voicemail. Or worse, "We are following up to see if you're doing well after your abortion" ending up on the voicemail or texting app of a 15-year-old girl whose parents might have access to her phone.
Source: Recently completed my company's mandatory annual HIPAA training.
It's not IT-grade authentication, but for wetware it works.
Your doctor's office can do it because you probably have an existing patient relationship, and you already filled out that paperwork on your first visit.
But in the situation of a cold-calling contact tracer, you haven't signed anything at all, so all they can say is "This is the health department and we want to talk to you."
But it would be a good idea nonetheless, it only requires to be accompanied by a serious information campaign preparing first time receivers for the surprise.
No clue how widespread this is, but I can't exactly blame people for assuming any call or voicemail they get is a scam, there are so many out there.
I can, of course, listen to every voicemail, but that's not much better than just picking up the phone when I get a spam call.
So basically the only reason I check my voicemail is to get rid of the notification on my phone
I'm sure there are bills in the works, but those same bills are likely bundled along with completely unrelated nonsense.
Of course, you may not be comfortable with giving Google access to this data...
I actively turned my voicemail off completely.
There is simply no-one who I want to talk to who would choose to leave me a voicemail if I don't answer.
Yep. I never answer unrecognized numbers anymore, and nobody I've talked to about it does, either.
Welcome to what society looks like when social trust declines. It will keep getting worse unless and until people discover that the commons actually matters and is more than something to scam and find some way to parasitically monetize.
More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls. If you only get one unexpected, unknown call a month you will almost always answer it. If you get three a day you will almost never answer it.
We are allowing private businesses and scammers to steal the “commons” of our societal attention. We are doing a very poor job of keeping useful communications channels open: almost every communication medium people rely on for important information gets cluttered with must-ignore spam, making it decreasingly likely an important message is actually received.