See, for me, if you call me and don’t leave a voicemail, I’m going to assume it was unimportant (or spam) and I won’t call back. Businesses, which are most likely going to an unknown number, should leave a voicemail if they want any action on my part. I mostly don’t want businesses texting me because they tend to spam the fuck out of you. And I’m sure as fuck never going to pick up the phone for an unknown number.
Recently, I’ve been getting calls I’m pretty sure are spam. They are all from different numbers, but all of the area codes are from where I got my phone number, which is quite far from where I live now. Additionally, they all do leave voicemails, but each and every one is exactly thirty seconds of silence.
Spam or not, I can’t figure out the point.
They spoof a number close to your number to increase the chance you pickup, they don’t know you moved.
I’d bet the silence calls are to determine if a phone number is active.
I definitely know about the spoofing - that’s what made me figure it was spam initially.
The waiting for a voice response makes sense, but I’ve never encountered a system that didn’t at least say some form of “hello.” Not this persistent of one, anyway.
Thanks!
Interesting, one of the recent voicemails I received was a very high-quality voice courtesy one of everyone’s favorite text-to-speech companies (perhaps ElevenLabs)
Wonder if it’s possible they were trying to route on the fly, if they had such a low latency system that they’re able to wait for potential victims to say hello before instantly transferring to a human scammer.
Probably a bot waiting for a voice in order to start. It waits until it hangs up.
That makes sense, and I appreciate the information.
You’d think they would have marked me as inactive by now - they’ve been calling every day or two, including weekends, for more than a month. I haven’t answered once! The persistence is the only thing that made me question whether it was spam.
It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until
you are deadit’s no longer profitable to operate the automated service!I got that kind of call for four years after I got a new phone number. 2-3 times a day. Plus texts offering to buy Tuyet’s home, appointment reminders for her & her kid’s(?) doctor, occasional temp-staffing offers. You can’t beat them by not answering.
Had this problem too (phone number is from NM but I’m in MA now) so I just started messing with them. I’d answer “Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albuquerque district office, how may I direct your call?” Click. After about a week of doing this I haven’t gotten a single spam call, this was like 2 years ago. Who cares it it’s “impersonating a federal agency” or whatever, they’re scammers overseas, fuck em.
It’s AI, I’d be willing to bet. Waiting to detect a human before responding with whatever scam they’re selling.
that doesn’t really require AI lol
Playing back a message when you hear someone pick up? No, they’ve been doing that forever. But trying to determine whether you have a human on the line or just their voicemail recording? That’s something that could start to require more sophisticated language models, and the fact that the message didn’t just start rattling something off as soon as something picked up suggests maybe they’re using it. Actual phone scams using AI? Well, if they’re not doing it yet, they will be soon.
Sometimes it’s fun, when you know it’s spam, to answer it while it’s ringing (which may let the operator know ‘hey, they answered, start talking’) and quickly hit Speaker and Mute and enjoy 5-10 sec of them being confused when they hear silence back.
My kid can make 100 push ups, when Nobody’s watching.I love that meme! I can see this one being real though
ya if the child is old enough to know what a phone call is, they are old enough to understand how pointless voicemails are
Mine is “You have reached my phone but not me, I don’t really check voicemail, if you need to reach me, text.” I still get voicemail.
Some voicemail the phone will transcribe, those I read but really don’t listen to them.
Why I still end up listening to a voicemail after reading the transcription:
Edit: Image had a visible phone number in it. Wasn’t mine (just grabbed from Google) but still probably not cool to spread that around. 😔
I’d still have to because the new voice mail notification won’t go away until you at least pop in and delete it or listen.
Some people just can’t fathom communicating other than a voice call lol
The True Crime here is an 11 year old child with a (I suppose) Smartphone.
Can be a normal phone which is what I would do if I where a parent and my kid would have to bike 12 km to school every day.
Normal Phone would be fine :)
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Well yeah, but it is always good to carry a phone with you especially when you bike through somewhere where there isn’t a lot of other traffic or it is off your unusual route. There is nothing wrong with carrying a Nokia 3310 or something
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And what if you fell while you where alone and broke a leg making it impossible for you to walk? Or you friend fell and hit his head open on the road being able to call for help is actually pretty handy.
Like it might sound absurd, but shit happens
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No you are never that far from society in NL, but at moments when every second counts I would rather just have a phone for my kid. Use something like a Nokia, give them a 10 euro prepaid card and if it is used up buy more and take it from their savings.
At least that’s what ill do when I have kids
I think a lot more kids got napped in the States before cellphones were common
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That paranoia came about when crime documentaries got big on TV (and now internet) rather than a consistent increase in abductions. People are really bad at reasoning with probability and undoing attentional bias from media, so they even think it can be likely kids would be abducted if left alone.
This is why 24/7 location tracking on kid’s phones is completely normalized. Sure, it’s not a bad thing to take precautions, but tracking your kids like a dog seems a bit much. And I’m sure a lot of parents misuse it for a lot less serious things (eg teens being at the mall unsupervised).
I would totally understand if it was in a place where your kids can take a walk or public transport to school or other places on their own. I would also want them to have means to call you.
EDIT: my bad, I ignored the ‘smart’ bit there. I just meant any phone.
Whatever you say Grandpa
Ok, brainrot
I think I was maybe 12 when I got my first smartphone, admittedly they weren’t really a thing much earlier than that and while I definitely have issues I’m pretty sure none of them were caused by the phone
There was no Instagram/TikTok back then, though.
Or Cocomelon, or other services and channels literally designed to break impressionable brains.
here in chile we dont longer use voicemail, cant remember when was the last time i heard one… That said, a lot of people send whatsapp audios, i understand its easier for some folks, but, common!
In Colombia I get a shocking number of voice messages via WhatsApp. I got a 4-minute message from my landlord last week that had 20 seconds of actual information.
The transcribe option in the app is reasonably good, but it’s not 100% accurate.
The absolute worst thing about voicemail is that you can’t just listen to the one you just got. I have about 50 unheard voicemails at this point. You leave one? I have to work my way through 50 just to hear yours. And it doesn’t even let me work from most recent. Nope. Just never going to happen.
Most smartphones offer voicemail transcription now, I believe. Or at least Apple does. I don’t have voicemail set up on my Android phone to check.
huh? Android lets you pick from a menu.
What? How do you set that up?
It’s carrier specific. Mine doesn’t do that either. iPhones seem to be the only ones that force it. Otherwise I get to sit through the same dial-in voicemail service as ever.
Darn, I thought that was the case but I was kinda hoping that I could get around it.
The feature is called “Visual Voicemail”. Your carrier may support it, but if it’s like mine they likely charge extra. iOS works around it by just answering the call and saving a recorded message.
I used to use an app called Hullomail which brought them into an app as voice clips you can see the caller and play or export.
It also showed you missed calls while your phone was off since they can just flag when a call was redirected to them. Super useful.
IIRC they got acquired and removed the free tier but you might still find them useful.
It is ridiculous that in 2025 you still don’t have random access voicemail.
Life must really suck when you’re too dumb to know how things work.
As your dad proved when he couldn’t figure out the condom
Visual voicemail (voicemail transcribed to text) has been a godsend for me. The number of doctors offices that call with an unlisted number is staggering.
Voicemail is actually really nice, if people call you and don’t leave a message, the call was not important or a spam call. Its like the perfect filter.
Yeah but I get like 5 spam calls a week from “Nicole with loan processing” or “Joshua Martinez from the loan issuance department” and they always leave a voicemail that I have to delete because I tried to get a personal loan 4 months ago.
Since about 2006 my voicemail message has been “for a faster response send me a text message.” When I started my business I added my business name and rerecorded the rest. If a client can’t send a text instead of call then I’m going to charge them more.
That’s a greater idea I’m doing that
I’m an old guy, but I hate voice mail. Mine says “You can try to leave a message, but it’s probably full, and I’ll never listen to it anyway, so either send a text to this number, or send an email to XXX, and I’ll get back to you ASAP.”
I used to troll with mine and spell out my name, phone number, email address, website, all twice.
Most voice-mails I got were like “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHY IS YOUR MESSAGE SO LONG”
top kek
This is the way.
Though, I have found that the default message of “pinball_wizard has not configured their voicemail” conveys the same message pretty effectively, too.
i think I have my voicemail as the disconnected phone sound to stave off robocallers. anybody who wanted to call me texted me immediately after to confirm.
Mine emails me an attachment with the recording. It’s a lot easier than the old call up voicemail to listen to your messages etc. Lot of people prefer it to writing with their phones.
I disabled my voicemail. Problem solved.
I’ve never had it enabled
Over here whenever you get a new provider, the voicemail is automatically enabled. You need to actively disable it or you are being spammed with messages from your mom saying “hi, yeah, so I tried to call, but you didn’t pick up… So, I’ll try again in 2 minutes. Bye!” “hi, yeah, so I tried to call you again, but still you didn’t pick up. Why aren’t you picking up? Anyway, I’ll try again in a bit. Bye!” etc.
I don’t like voicemail typically, but I have some voicemails from family members who have passed away and I cherish listening to them.
If I were you, I would save a copy of them somewhere safe. I wouldn’t trust a phone company or my phone to hold on to voicemails forever.
Need to teach her how to turn off voicemail redirection.
