"Don't like telemarketing scams? Neither does Verizon."

[fernandobot]

One way dead-end telemarketing scam/fraudulent call solution.

Proposal summary: Verizon would create a database of numbers that it can ping prior to alerting the customer with phone number X of an incoming call from phone Y and prevent the completion of the call if the incoming number (phone Y) is determined to be a number incapable itself of accepting incoming calls from any number.

The database it would ping would have numbers that have been blacklisted as "one way" numbers or numbers that the system has checked and determined that they are not capable of accepting incoming calls by the busy tone heard. there's obviously going to be some critical thinking involved on exactly how that would function, taking people that have the distinctive "busy" ring disabled into consideration. Verizon could call every customer once and once the call rings through elimate them from the list and continue through the list of customers until you have a dwindled the list down. Perhaps even a simple "We just wanted to thank you for being a Verizon Wireless customer" message could be played if you're trying to avoid calling without reason. One inconspicuous phone call from a random number is all it would take to begin the elimination of numbers; people would be oblivious to the purpose of the call, leading to a high success rate in data gathering.

This process would definitely be an investment into the infrastructure, but could lead to more potential customers.

After collecting the necessary array of data points to be able to proceed to make the system operational Verizon could create a test market and if everything is cleared Verizon could market the idea and garner the appreciation of it's millions of customers by elimating these fraudulent phone calls and potentially saving people from the headache of the scammers alongside those manipulating their numbers to be a nuisance.

[Ann154]

The scammers are spoofing the numbers they call which seem to change on a daily basis. The education of their customers is the best defense against the scammers while working on their offense to shutdown the scammers.

[fernandobot]

I'm not quite sure you are understanding the concept. granted, education works best, but scammers don't usually spoof numbers that are already being used (legitimate phone numbers that are linked to real people).

think of an autodialer dialing numbers one after another. starting from 000-000-0000 and incrementing by 1 digit each time it completes a call. it might take a while to go through all available numbers, but each time the number states it's invalid or you get a fast busy (as in the case with a lot of these scam numbers) it would be adding that number to a data set that could be used to prevent that number from completing a phone call and furthermore prevent if from being a nuisance to you.

[Ann154]

Except these scammers have been using a REAL number. If you read the posts throughout the community you will see one of the numbers they use is 1-800-922-0204 and if that looks familiar, it is. That number is the 1-800 number for the Verizon Wireless Customer Service. It is the same number you can call from a landline the reach an agent for Verizon Wireless. I have personally received a call from this number that was in fact the scammers. Thanks to my previous reading on the community forum here, I knew within a few seconds of listening to the automated voice that it was a scam. I also know that they spoofed the real number because I had that number saved as a contact number on my phone along with the other Verizon Wireless numbers I keep handy for reference.

The numbers used by the scammers change, the website domain change almost daily. Whatever program you think they need to create to stop this is going to have to adapt just as fast.