I got a call yesterda, from an "Elizabeth Smith" at 916 658 3702: the oh-so-sweet and sincere sounding Ms. Smith told me I might not know
that I was still "Pre approved," and promised to keep my file open,
and then asked that I dial 866 776 1384 to get more good news.

It might or might not have been a forged caller ID, but the fact that
the computer played a request to call a toll-free response line tells
me that STIR/SHAKEN is having an effect. As I've already written, I
don't think there will be much improvement in the robocall problem -
most likely, the slugs who plan the campaigns will just wait and see
if the new tactics work as well as the old, and then buy themselves
new laws if their profits drop too much.

As with other sleazy manipulation techniques, robocalls have resulted
in an arms race: my son and his friends, all of whom grew up without
being taught to answer phones politely, have already adopted a new
paradigm: when their phones ring, if they don't recognize the calling
number, they just divert the call to an already-full voice mail
system. That's discomfiting for Baby-boomers like me, but it's a much
more effective way to avoid wasting time listening to the voice of
Ms. Smith(1).

Having paid for the product-placement advertising that convinced every
teenager to want a call phone, and then having paid TV scriptwriters
to show every studly tall white actor or terminally pretty ingénue as
being willing to interrupt face-to-face conversations and answer cell
calls within seconds like perfectly programmed automatons, the
cellular industry is about to reap the whirlwind of manipulation and
deceit that it sowed. In the not-so-distant-future, even aged cellular
users like me will be setting our phones to silent mode whenever
they're talking to actual people, and once again, we'll be screening
like Olympic wrestlers *IF* we bother to check for recorded mesaages
at all.

Bill

1. If I'm not busy and I'm bored, I ask Ms. Smith what she thinks
about items in the news, or for help with a math question, or if
she's a member of the professional phone-callers union.

--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)

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