Tutor
•
3 Messages
Sierra Leone Calls
WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING TO HELP CUSTOMERS THAT ARE BEING BOMBARDED BY THESE SIERRA LEONE SCAM CALLS????? SURELY TO GOD THERE IS SOME SORT OF TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS THAT YOU CAN BLOCK THESE CALLS RATHER THAN LEAVING IT TO US TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH.
Accepted Solution
Official Solution
ATTHelpForums
Community Support
•
2.7K Messages
5 years ago
Hi All,
There is a new uptick of spam calls coming from Sierra Leone. The FCC has warned those receiving these calls, not to answer or call back.
Remember, AT&T will never ask you to send us your personal or account information via email or text message.
At times, it can be hard to determine if a call is legitimate so AT&T created the Call Protect App. It notifies you of suspicious calls and allows you to report them. Below, you will find additional AT&T resources that will:
Protect Your Call Experience
Download the AT&T Call Protect app. (for Android and iOS)
Download the AT&T Mobile Security App.
Protect Your Online Experience
Be CyberAware & Improve Your Security
Phone scam tactics (things AT&T will not do and what you should ignore)
Phone scams can be difficult to detect, so pay special attention to calls that:
Protect yourself from deceptive callers
Resources & things to know
Check out our Fraud & Security Resources to learn how you can protect your personal information and how to report concerns. Check out what the FCC is doing.
Learn more about what AT&T is doing to stop these robocalls.
ChrisZ, AT&T Community Specialist
0
MicCheck
ACE - Expert
•
14.1K Messages
5 years ago
You have the capability of blocking numbers on your phone.
0
formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
•
116.6K Messages
5 years ago
Sierra Leone?
Every one gets spam calls. Don’t answer unknown numbers.
0
0
MCOTA64
Tutor
•
3 Messages
5 years ago
0
pgrey
Master
•
3.5K Messages
5 years ago
@MCOTA64 They're not really "targeting" those people, or anyone, really, it's more that they buy a "list of known working numbers", from someone else (all done outside the purview of any US laws, for the most part), and then they just robocall them.
As others have mentioned, you can set up blocks, or simply not answer, these, as I do.
Reporting them to the DoNotCall website, will help too, in some cases, at least those where they are local to the US (this is a diminishing number, IME).
0
0
Gary L
ACE - Expert
•
16.5K Messages
5 years ago
I find it much easier to read when it's not ALL CAPS, thank you.
What is the point of that question? Of course, the answer is NO.
0
0
MCOTA64
Tutor
•
3 Messages
5 years ago
0
formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
•
116.6K Messages
5 years ago
For home phones you can get nomorobo. For cell phones, you can set do not disturb, and exception “contacts list only”.
Carriers have tried many methods to curb spam calls. As fast as they figure it out, is how fast the scammers get around the blocks. It’s been in the news constantly. There is yet to be a consistent working fix. I’ve used a few apps, and now none work. The best method is to not answer the phone if the number isn’t identified.
0
0
pgrey
Master
•
3.5K Messages
5 years ago
@MCOTA64 Yeah, the issue is, that text is often not quite what it seems. It might be using a "i", from another language (different character set, looks the same, more or less)
This means that instead of seeing something like "Sierra", which should be (ASCII, for simplification, no Unicode here today...) it would look like "115 105 101 114 114 097", to the logic looking at the number/ID info (there's usually a LOT more data that's not shown).
Even something simple, like a character set from Latin1, for example, makes the code conversion to:"115 69 101 114 114 097". Some phones might not have this character data available, so you might see something more like "S~rra", just as an example.
Hopefully this gets the idea across; as you can probably imagine, the number of permutations on this can get very large, very fast.
Anyway, there are tools out there, as @lizdance40 mentions, that do use more advanced (even some with AI constructs) "interpretation" of the incoming call strings, and work okay, until they don't ;-]
Keep in mind though, that ALL the processing for this, must happen in a very small amount of time, computationally. It's one thing if you're drawing lines, in a tight loop of code, but yet another to be comparing hashes (a quick mechanism to match sets of data like this), a LOT of them, in a matter of a few hundred milliseconds, given that the phone needs to ring (or not, in some cases).
My rule is, if I don't recognize the name, and the number is from outside our local area codes, I pretty much never pick up (unless I'm expecting a call, obviously). I figure most legitimate businesses that need to reach me should *at least* have a valid caller-ID-data-set, hmm...
0
0
QuarryRye
Master
•
3.2K Messages
5 years ago
How is AT&T supposed to know that you don't want calls from Sierra Leone at 1 AM? If AT&T just guessed you didn't want that call and blocked it, customers would be angry that the call from their mother overseas was being blocked. All AT&T can do is deliver calls to the phone.
You make it seem like your elderly relatives just randomly started getting calls from scammers overseas. I've never had that problem in over a decade of having cell phones, and most cell phone users don't. At some point, your relatives did something to get their names on a list of phone numbers for scammers to use, and there's pretty much no hope of getting that number off. Do Not Disturb is a great solution. Changing their phone number is another.
0