Don’t you just despise ‘card services?’
Robocaller: 鈥淗ello. I鈥檓 calling from Card Services.鈥�
Me: 鈥淐lick!鈥�
Admittedly, I can鈥檛 see them, but show of hands: Who just loves getting those kinds of calls?
What about those inquiries about your car鈥檚 warranty?
I鈥檓 certain nobody鈥檚 hand just went up. (If yours did, you can put it down now.)
Robocalls have become America鈥檚 Public Enemy No. 1.
Sadly, for the time being, a whole slew of governmental agencies have been relatively powerless to stop them.
You can always use one of those free apps you can find online to try to block robocalls (Robokiller or Nomorobo are just two of them).
But robocalls still get through.
Or you can buy one of those pricey contraptions that their makers claim will thwart those never-ending calls from crooks on the other ends, hoping to lure you into forking over cash for stuff that you hadn鈥檛 even contemplated.
According to the people at Truecaller (a cellphone app), 60 million Americans have fallen prey to phone scammers since last year. That鈥檚 1 in 3 Americans. That means $29.8 billion in real losses.
Many people, including me, have signed onto state and National Do Not Call registries.
Do those registries work?
First, most robocalls are illegal. The people making them don鈥檛 care if you鈥檝e signed onto a Do Not Call Registry.
Second, some legitimate telemarketers buy lists of numbers culled from the National Do Not Call Registry.
They鈥檒l pay $69 for a single area code in 2022.
When they buy, you鈥檒l get called, anyway.
In recent years, the most nefarious culprits have resorted to some pretty sleazy tactics.
They know people use caller ID. So, they disguise their calls to make them appear to be from a similar are and exchange as yours.
They鈥檙e guessing you鈥檒l probably trust people who call from a similar number.
A couple of years ago, I got a call from myself. It was somebody spoofing my name and number.
There was a time when all we had to worry about was email spam.
There was, and still is, no shortage of internet thieves reaching out to us online, with the hope of reaching into our pockets.
Most of that stuff gets automatically sent to our spam folders. But it still gets through sometimes.
Yet, as persistent as spammers tend to be, they aren鈥檛 nearly as maddening as robocallers, with their annoying pitches to try to make us change our electricity providers.
Many of those robocalls come from India. For some reason, those folks seem to believe Americans are easy pickings.
They鈥檒l try to get any tidbit of your personal information, so they can use it to dig into your bank account.
I sometimes answer their questions with nonsense.
Robocaller: 鈥淲hat is the year and make of your car, sir?鈥�
Me: 鈥淚 have a 1938 Ford Mustang Bus.鈥�
Robocaller: 鈥淐lick.鈥�
That鈥檚 usually followed by Mrs. Owens telling me to, 鈥淪top that!鈥�
At this point, I have an apology to make.
This is about more than just people getting their hands on your cash.
There are also people plotting political skullduggery out there.
There are a couple of well-known right-wing aficionados of our most recent former president Donald J. Trump.
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl are famous for their shady political activism.
Now they鈥檙e the subject of several criminal and civil complaints because of their alleged robocalling activities before the 2020 presidential election.
Investigators claim that their organization robocalled as many as 85,000 people in a number of battleground states.
Those calls focused on Black voters, by claiming that if they used mail-in ballots, they鈥檇 be subjected to having their private information used by police departments so that they could track them down for outstanding warrants.
And that the same information could be used by credit card companies to have them collect for outstanding debts.
None of it was true.
Now the FCC has proposed that Burkman and Wohl pay a $5.1 million fine.
India鈥檚 robocallers want our money. Worse, some Americans want to upend our democracy.
Disgusting.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.