They’re the mosquitoes of the tech world.
“It starts at about 5 o’clock. It goes from about 5-9 p.m., there’ll be 2, 3, 4, calls,” says 93-year-old Carl Arfa, from Boca Raton. He says sometimes they try to sell something, sometimes it’s no one.
“Last night I had three calls, one of which had a 561 number, so I answered it like an idiot and there was no one there again.”
That’s the best thing you can do: don’t answer says David Parizek, our tech expert. He is the Chief Information Officer at InfoStream.
“They have four people in the same room as them that says, ‘we got a real one. Let’s add them to the list. We’ll keep bombarding them, somebody will get through,’” he says.
It’s a major problem and it’s only getting worse, according to YouMail, a robocall blocking and tracking service, there were 4.1 billion robocalls nationwide; that’s 12.5 per person.
Carl, who signed up for the “do not call list” in 2003, still gets hammered with calls.
“(The calls) are a waste of everybody’s time,” he said.
On your cell phone, there are apps you can use, both from your provider and 3rd party that can catch at least some of them, but the problem will likely persist. Some suggestions from David: NoMoRobo, TrueCaller, Mr. Number.
“Until we have a worldwide system that can control all the cell phones and all the connections, we won’t have a solution,” David says.
“My wife always says thank you. She’s very polite. I’m not polite. I was a sergeant in the Army. I was never polite,” Carl says.