That’s what happened to a Reddit user on AT&T by the nickname of “bawbeelite”, but, thankfully, there’s a workaround – sort of.
Hundreds of spam calls
Image by PhoneArena
As shown in a Reddit thread, the AT&T subscriber got 231 spam calls (plus an extra 35 were flagged as such) in a single month, out of 437 analyzed calls. The author says this “feels like a lot”, and I completely agree. In fact, I’d regard more than one spam call a month way too much.A fellow Redditor pointed out that people should stop entering their phone numbers into websites across the net, but another person came up with a clever solution.
Set up a Google Voice number
The trick is to set up a Google Voice number and to use it exclusively for web activity, unless you’re absolutely sure the service you’re feeding your info to won’t spam you. This method apparently works, as the Redditor “FJQZ” says they’ve rarely got spam calls in the last four years:
Image source – Reddit
This isn’t a solution that works 100% of the time, since, as another commenter puts it, there are lots of scam job listings, which can get your number as well.
Moreover, the author of the thread says they’re a business owner and their number is on the internet.
Spam farming a local area code
Other AT&T users say they get 5-6 spam calls per day, all from their local area code.
This is also known as “spam farming a local area code” and it’s basically when scammers fake their caller ID to make it look like they’re calling from your neighborhood. They cycle through numbers with your same area code or prefix so you think it might be a legit local call.
The logic is simple, but effective: people are more likely to pick up if the number feels familiar. Once you answer, they either try a scam on the spot or just confirm your number is active so they can hit you again or sell it off. It’s all illegal, and the whole trick is built on making you trust a call that shouldn’t be trusted at all.
As I said in the beginning, we can’t fully escape spam calls, but I think carriers ought to do more to prevent such calls – maybe AI will finally prove useful in that scenario?
