Speaker 1: Your best protection against robocalls? What's going on? I'm rich Demiro,
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Daily robocalls. We can't live
Speaker 1: with them, We can't live well, yeah, we can live
Speaker 1: without them, but it's kind of tough to imagine a
Speaker 1: world without robocalls because they're so prevalent these days. The
Speaker 1: worst part the calls are getting more frequent and scammers
Speaker 1: are getting better and better at trying to make us
Speaker 1: pick up the phone. So how can we stop this madness?
Speaker 1: Recently I had a fascinating conversation with Jonathan Nelson. He's
Speaker 1: the director of product management at Haya. This is a
Speaker 1: technology company that creates software and solutions to help us
Speaker 1: combat robocalls.
Speaker 2: So we have our own algorithms, the machine learning algorithms
Speaker 2: that look at call patterns that we see and can
Speaker 2: pick out when particular scammer numbers come online. We also
Speaker 2: get reports from users and work with the FCC and
Speaker 2: the FTC.
Speaker 1: HYA used to be whitepages dot com, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Android apps which would id all callers on my phone.
Speaker 1: So why does it seem like we're getting so many
Speaker 1: robo calls these days?
Speaker 2: For robo calls to be successful, they really need three things.
Speaker 2: They need to be able to make calls an extreme
Speaker 2: high volume for cheap, which you can do now thanks
Speaker 2: to voiceover IP or VOIPE technology. They need to be
Speaker 2: able to do so without getting caught, which is easy
Speaker 2: to do with the way the phone industry works these days.
Speaker 2: And then they need victims who will fall for it,
Speaker 2: which unfortunately.
Speaker 1: We still have now. There are several reasons for these
Speaker 1: robo calls. Many of them are selling products and services.
Speaker 1: Others are just outright scams, but mainly they just want
Speaker 1: us to pick up the phone so they can hook
Speaker 1: us in some way. And one of the newest tactics
Speaker 1: is called the neighbor scam. This is where the phone
Speaker 1: number displayed on your caller ID looks a lot like
Speaker 1: your phone number.
Speaker 2: This voiceover IP software that they have makes it very
Speaker 2: easy for them to impersonate a phone number that's similar
Speaker 2: to yours automatically, so it's not done manually at all.
Speaker 2: They're able to just do.
Speaker 1: It in bulk. Nelson showed me a demo tool high
Speaker 1: A built that does basically what the robo callers do.
Speaker 1: I made up a phone number, he typed it into
Speaker 1: the website in seconds, My phone rang and the number
Speaker 1: that popped up on my caller ID was the number
Speaker 1: I just made up. While robo callers use tools like
Speaker 1: this in bulk, he says, there are lots of websites
Speaker 1: available to even the everyday person where they can do
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 2: The way the phone system works makes it very difficult
Speaker 2: for the government agencies to track down who created the calls.
Speaker 2: It's a very, very long process. It has been ruled
Speaker 2: that all robo calls are illegal unless you specifically requested it,
Speaker 2: like a prescription reminder. So if you answer it no,
Speaker 2: you were talking to someone committing a crime. So do
Speaker 2: not trust anything you hear. If it's intimidating or encouraging,
Speaker 2: you should not take it seriously.
Speaker 1: So how do you stop the calls? Well, you can
Speaker 1: grab an app like Hyas of course, to help you
Speaker 1: identify and block these spam calls. AT and T has
Speaker 1: their own app called call Protect, which you can download
Speaker 1: for free, and that's basically a white label version of
Speaker 1: highest software. And T Mobile offers free spam call protection.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's already activated on your account depending on your plan.
Speaker 1: Others you might have to just tell them you want it.
Speaker 1: Other carriers might charge you a small monthly fee for
Speaker 1: the protection, but your absolute best defense just don't pick
Speaker 1: up the phone.
Speaker 2: If you've phoned your phone number for a long time,
Speaker 2: if you'll applied for a lot of mortgages or payday loans,
Speaker 2: that gets your number out into databases that these scammers
Speaker 2: can buy. But a lot of it is just simply
Speaker 2: they are trying numbers to see if anyone picks up,
Speaker 2: and if you do answer the phone, you are known
Speaker 2: to be a valid number and you will get more calls.
Speaker 2: Answering the phone tells the scammer that the phone number
Speaker 2: is active and so they will more than likely call
Speaker 2: more frequently.
Speaker 1: You can watch my video on how easy it is
Speaker 1: for robo callers to spoof your caller ID. That's on
Speaker 1: my website. Just go to richon tech dot tv to
Speaker 1: watch it. And thanks for listening. If you like what
Speaker 1: I'm doing here with the daily podcast, please rate and
Speaker 1: review it in the Apple podcast app. Just hit that
Speaker 1: link where it says write a review. I'm Rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real soon.