I'd like to do so, me too! However I had no 20 minutes to spend for this just the moment they called

Get one of those apps that allow you to make a whitelist. Only the numbers that you specify in the whitelist are allowed to call. Phone doesn't ring on the non whitelist numbers. At the end of the day you can look at the missed calls and see if you recognize any. They spoof the phone numbers anyway so it's really meaningless. That's where we are because of the spammers. Just don't answer the phone.

Tell your friends/business's, give me your number so that I can put you on the list. Otherwise you can't call me. I've never had anyone get mad at that yet. They are in the same boat. I even got a call from my own number a month or so ago.

There are several. I played the game, but before I got onto LQ. I stopped when I removed the landline phone (kept the landline for internet access) and all those calls stopped...

At this point in the U. S., cellphones are as vulnerable to scammers as landlines.

Someone called me today (on the landline) claiming to be from the U. S. Social Security Administration. He kind of fumbled around for a while as if he hadn't studied his script, so I told him to send me a letter on official letterhead addressing whatever he wanted to discuss.

Rule of thumb: The U. S. government does not call on the telephone. It sends letters.

Long ago with the typical phone handset and base, got a call, they started off immediately with their pitch. So I put the handset down on the desk without hanging up. Who knows how long they gabbled, I just kept working with their white noise mumbling on the desk.

Eventually I detected the upward lilt of a question, followed by silence.

And then a brief utterance, like, "Hello, sir, are you there?", more silence.

And then the final "click, click, klunk!" as they got their handset lined up and back on it's receiver.

I shrugged and hung up my phone.

Problem is they now use robots to call you, "smaht" systems to detect a human answerer, or voicemail.

AND there's no handsets to slam down anymore if that's your style!

I've lately started following a tip from the AARP newsletter (yes, I'm over 50).

If I don't recognize the caller ID, I answer the phone and say nothing. If it's a computer, it will hang up after about 20 seconds. If it's a human, after a while he or she will say something like, "er, hello?"

Of course, it still might be lying human scum, but sometimes it turns out to be a legit and slightly confused caller.

You can still scream in their ear (provided nobody's watching you)!

It's quite obvious that people do this not because they are criminals but because they can make a legal living from it - probably not in "The West" but maybe in some poorer countries. I'm trying to see something mitigating, but the only thing I can think of is sheer poverty and inability to get any other job. Or maybe scammers get paid more than [.insert.menial.job.here.] - so there's an aspect of greed also...
Surely they must know that what they're doing is not good, cultures aren't that different around the world.

This is an old fashioned landline phone that I bought decades ago. It does what a phone needs to do: allows me to make and receive calls. But there are no apps for it.

I believe that BT do a blacklist service nowadays but not a whitelist as far as I know.

I suppose the best thing to do would be to shunt the call over to Lenny or another Lenny-like bot. Raspberry Pis have bluetooth so if one has a mobile, it should also be possible to do that even with a mobile, though bluetooth is much harder to arrange for.

Are answering machines for land lines still available?

I'm sure there are. People use them less now because BT provides this automatic voicemail service. But I'm old-fashioned. If someone I know takes the trouble to ring me, especially if it's a relative ringing from abroad, I don't want them to go straight through to voicemail. I want to be there for them at the other end of the line. It's the way I was brought up.

I was also brought up to give my phone number so that, if there is a crossed line, the person at the other end will know and hang up. Actually that seems to be useful with unwanted calls too. When I give my number, the caller often hangs up immediately. The numbers, I gather, are dialled automatically but if someone answers, a human being seems to enter the loop. They hear me recite my number and think, "Oh no, not her again! She's hopeless! She never bites."

How does that work? Do you pick up your handset and punch in a code to turn the voice mail service on and off?

Yes they are, I purchased one off of amazon not to long ago.

Thank you.

More or less. You have to set it up initially with a recorded message. I've forgotten how you do that; it was a long time ago! Once it is set up, you don't need to switch it on. It's on permanently. After a certain elapsed time (which you can't control but it is about seven rings), the unanswered call is diverted automatically.

If there are messages waiting for you, you get a special warbling dial tone. Then you punch in 1571 to hear the messages. It's the same code for everyone.