Spammers are Using My Number

It appears some spam phone callers have somehow decided to use my phone number to start calling people. I base this off the fact that I’ve now had two different people call me up within the last two weeks, wondering why I keep calling. These are people I don’t know. I haven’t called them before. They just seem to be calling me out of the blue, and when I answer, they’re fairly irate, wondering why I keep harassing them.

Needless to say, it’s a bit disconcerting to get yelled at by strangers, and I’m more than a little put out about it. On the other hand, my options for dealing with it aren’t too great.

On the one hand, I could do what I always used to do, and just not answer the phone when strangers are calling. However, this became more difficult once I became the Stake Executive Secretary. Now there are members from across the state calling me sporadically, and it’s usually easier for me to help them if I just pick up the phone when they call. Otherwise, I have to deal with trying to get back in touch with them, which isn’t always a hop skip and a jump. (Due in part, no doubt, to the number of spam calls we all keep getting, which makes us want to just not answer the phone.)

I can enable a call filtering service on my phone, which sends unknown numbers straight to my voice mail. Again, not the ideal. Instead of doing that, I think I’d just stop answering my phone first. Either way, if I go down that path, I’d probably change my voice mail message to something like “If you’ve been getting calls from me regularly, know that my number has been picked up by some spam services. It’s not me. Please just block my number, so both of us don’t have to deal with them.” But then again, there are actually people who I am trying to reach, not all of them known to me. I don’t want someone I’m trying to reach from the stake to think I’m a spammer, because then I can’t do the things I need to get done.

So for now, I’m kind of just hoping that this problem goes away on its own. Countless ostriches with their heads in the sand can’t be wrong, can they? It becomes a balancing act between how I want to disrupt my life.

Why has it gotten to this? Why is it that people are using technology to do idiotic things like have robots call strangers in an effort to convince those strangers the IRS wants their money? Probably because a portion of those strangers fall for the scam and send those robots money . . .

I’m just saying, if they’d had spam callers on The Jetsons, the future might not have looked quite so rosy. Where’s my flying car and my cushy button pressing job?

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