HACKER Q&A
📣 notional

I'm Being Spammed by Sequential Phone Numbers. What Can I Do About It?


I'm really not sure what triggered this and I'm so lost on how to stop this besides just changing my phone number. I'm hoping with the broad audience on here I can get some advice. I've never experienced spam at this level on a personal device.

For the last 2 weeks I've been getting spammed by sequential phone numbers from my phone number's area code (which I no longer live in same state either).

The numbers look like,

470-220-2708

470-220-2709

470-220-2710

470-220-2711

470-220-2712

...

470-220-2724

Every time I block and report the number but I don't really think the report does anything.

There was another 470 area code sequential phone number set that was also spamming me for a few days but those stopped.


  👤 runjake Accepted Answer ✓
On iPhone, enable “Silence unknown callers” and add the callers you care about to your contacts. The calls will go straight to voicemail.

If you’re expecting a call from some random person, just disable it temporarily.


👤 zzo38computer
Depends what telephone you use, maybe. Can you block an entire range of numbers?

For a land line, maybe something in between to intercept and block the calls, try to make up such thing; for a cell phone, to try to modify the software to add such a capability.


👤 cddotdotslash
Turning on Google phone screen (if you're on Android) has been helpful for me. It doesn't block everything, but a decent number of spam calls get picked up by the Google bot and then hang up.

👤 AnimalMuppet
On an Android phone (or at least on mine), you can use wildcards. So just block 470-220-xxxx or 470-220-2xxx.

👤 gostsamo
What is the exact spam? Can it be reported to the police or to the telecom selling those numbers?

👤 throw14082020
Stop using your phone number. It's a drastic solution, but the sooner we stop and find alternatives, the better position we will be in. You don't get spam called on Signal, Facebook Messenger nearly as much, do you?

Of course there are problems with this, but these can be solved. Phone spam can't.