Whenever I get a seemingly random call, I say nothing and the computer on the other end also says nothing. If I respond, however, I hear a blip and the computer starts its schpiel.
One piece of advice I heard is to not say "yes" (which is what some people say instead of "hello" or "ahoy, ahoy!"). The basis of that advice is that the scammer is recording you and will use your "yes" to order something in your name.
Whether that's an actual thing or not, being suspicious and cagey and careful about everything you say (on the off chance that the call is legitimate) should be standing operating procedure (SOP).
Same with emails and now texts. For example, several months ago I got a cold email from a creationist, Dave, I hadn't been in contact with for a few years. He needed a personal favor. He was quarantined in the hospital with COVID and on a respirator so he could not speak on the phone and needed to get a gift card for his nephew's birthday. All I had to do was to pick up two cards worth $200 of Google play for playing games online. Then I would just email him the authorization code on the back of the cards and he would pass that on to his nephew. And he promised to pay me back when he got out of hospital.
The first red flag was that we were not friends, so why does this guy with lots of contacts in his church have nobody else to turn to than me? I tried to seek independent confirmation which required me to contact another creationist, Bill -- while Dave always tried to appear reasonable, Bill is one of the worst creationists I have ever encountered. I asked Bill to verify Dave's status and, should this prove to be a scam, to warn Dave that his email had been hacked.
As it turned out, Dave was at home (Cheech & Chong reference) and doing fine and everybody on his email contacts list had been warning him that his account had been hacked. Also, all replies involved a different email address to a gmail account that appeared to have been a randomly generated string (when we make up a name, there's usually some story behind it, but not this one).
In general, I let all calls I don't recognize go to voicemail -- if they really want to talk with me then they can leave a message. Normally that number has to be in my contact list for a name to appear, but some unknown numbers come with a name (and turned out to be about my car's warranty expiring). With scam emails, the title is usually enough to expose them. Though I keep getting some addressed to a "Raphael"; no idea what that one is about.
Interesting though are the scam calls and emails that I get from myself. And I know I wasn't drinking at the time.
One problem is that even if I have a "Robo killer" and am on the do-not-call list, the scammers have some sort of device that randomly generates numbers and even if I block one number, an endless amount of "new numbers" is always generated. There oughta be a law...
There are laws, but when there are laws for honoring do-not-call lists then only criminals will still call you.
™ Version 4.2
