I can confirm answering calls and using as much of their time as possible totally works. I’ve been doing this for a year or more now; I get excited when a spammer calls me now. It’s about a monthly affair.
I have a bookmark for https://www.getcreditcardnumbers.com/ - I happily give them all the credit card numbers they want (the ones from that site pass the checksum, but of course isn’t valid in combination with a made up expiry and CVC).
After a couple card numbers fail, they cuss me out, sometimes threaten my life, and never call again.
My theory is they get flagged by their payment processor if they submit many bogus credit card numbers.
It’s about a 10-minute investment once a month. Less time than I used to spend answering and hanging up on spam calls.
Thanks, I've been wasting their time by keeping them on the line (at no cost to me other than the time I used to amuse myself with annoying them) but I didn't know about the credit card generator, weill definitely use that!
This is brilliant. I don't know what a pissed off spammer with who knows how many of your info could do, though. The last time I made one angry for wasting her time, I received even more calls from other spammers.
(1) Usually they think my name is the guy who had my phone number almost 10 years ago. I “correct” them to a fake name, but it shows their record keeping is not good enough to track anyone down.
(2) If they tried to follow through on the death threat, they’d have a hard time getting a visa with “need to kill citizen” as the justification.
Early on, I had a temporary bump in calls after doing this. If you stick with it for a few weeks, eventually you’ll get on enough “real” do-not-call lists that the calls fade away.
I have a bookmark for https://www.getcreditcardnumbers.com/ - I happily give them all the credit card numbers they want (the ones from that site pass the checksum, but of course isn’t valid in combination with a made up expiry and CVC).
After a couple card numbers fail, they cuss me out, sometimes threaten my life, and never call again.
My theory is they get flagged by their payment processor if they submit many bogus credit card numbers.
It’s about a 10-minute investment once a month. Less time than I used to spend answering and hanging up on spam calls.