Do not call: States sue telecom company over billions of robocalls

Re:Do not call: States sue telecom company over billions of ... by tombert on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @10:30AM (#36058657)

About two years ago, someone named Alnar (a man I do not know) requested information about health insurance. For whatever reason, either as a mistake or otherwise, he gave them my Google Voice phone number.

I was getting, without hyperbole, more than 150 calls per day, about 100 of which were Robocalls, all of which were trying to sell me healthcare. When I would get humans, they were always asking for Alnar.

This went on for about three months, until I just decided to no longer have my Google Voice number route to a "real" phone anymore. I still get about 40 calls a day, most from robots, but they're manifested in the form of transcripts on Google Voice.

I hate Alnar, I hope he steps on a Lego block, but even more I hate that it must be at least a little profitable to do this phone spam. They're making the phones largely unusable.

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Re:Do not call: States sue telecom company over billions of ... by yamtaddle on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @11:15AM (#36059288)

I have a first-initial-last-name gmail address.

Over a period of years, it became basically unusable. A dozen or more people with the same first-initial-last-name have typo'd my email address into enough systems that the volume of crap coming in—some unsolicited stuff that gets through gmail's increasingly-useless spam filters, some technically solicited, just not by me—is high enough that keeping up with it's just not worth it.

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Re:Do not call: States sue telecom company over billions of ... by tombert on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @11:26AM (#36059431)

Yeah, I have a similar problem; I have [firstname][lastname] as a Gmail, and I do get a good chunk of emails targeted to people who are not me.

Fortunately my last name isn't terribly popular in the English-speaking world, and my first name (Thomas) isn't super popular in Germany, so it's not a huge deal. Still, it was annoying enough to where I eventually just bought [lastname].app and set up an email for that.

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Re:Do not call: States sue telecom company over billions of ... by kar5pt on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @11:17AM (#36059319)

I've been getting calls and texts for "Victoria" for literally 5-6 years now. She apparently has been going through forclosure, so I get spam calls trying to buy the house. I know no one named Victoria and have never owned a house.

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