Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 March 8

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March 8

Yes?

The phone rang, I picked it up, and after a few seconds a voice asked, "Hello, Hal?" I answered, "Yes," and the caller hung up.

I read that this could be a scam, where all they need to do me some harm is to get a recording of my voice saying, "Yes." Is this what likely happened? How would they use this? I don't suppose there is anything I can do about it now? --Halcatalyst (talk) 02:47, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

See here for a warning about this sort of call. DuncanHill (talk) 02:52, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

It's difficult to see how a recording of you saying yes could be of any use to scammers. According to Snopes there is no evidence that this is a scam. Probably just some troll.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:16, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

My relative in Poland got a similar call some three days ago, luckily did not answer the call and it fell into a voicemail. The calling number was quite strange, it was about normal length of 9 digits, but it was starting from digits 1234... --CiaPan (talk) 12:11, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Not their real number. See caller ID spoofing. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 22:03, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate your responses. Yes, I had wondered how much traction they would get with just "yes." Snopes calls the claim unproven, and I'm content to let it go at that. --Halcatalyst (talk) 14:53, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

messing with robocallers

On a loosely related note: When I pick up the phone I say "Good day/evening" rather than "Hello", and very often there's a few seconds of silence before a puzzled voice says "Hello??". Is it plausible to suppose that the robo-dialer doesn't alert the human operator of a 'hit' unless it hears "Hello"? —Tamfang (talk) 05:42, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Probably the robocaller calls up the human operator after it hears a human voice, and it takes a little while for them to pick up the phone. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

can't block number on Android

I'm getting a recurring spam call on my Android 7.0 phone that displays as coming from some weird international number. When I try to block the number in the standard phone app, it says the number is invalid. Seems pretty dumb to be unable to block a number based on how it will be displayed on the screen, but there we are. Any suggestions? Thanks. 73.71.213.123 (talk) 21:05, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

This is not a new problem. See [1] or [2]. Ruslik_Zero 19:41, 9 March 2018 (UTC)