Summer of spam

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Jul 14, 2023

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

“Feels like the spam calls are picking up,” my editor said to me today. Yes, it does. A glance through my call log from this week showed one incoming real call and 10 incoming spam calls.

We wrote a bunch about this in 2019 — here are some ideas for protecting yourself, and yes, I have chosen the nuclear option — and if anything, the situation has gotten worse. The FCC has made some idle threats against carriers, but I have yet to see any real action. At this point, I despair. The FCC doesn’t care; the carriers don’t care; the cost of spam is low for spammers, and the fact that they are ripping apart networks? Doesn’t seem to matter.

It feels like a tide of bullshit is rising

I didn’t use to avoid the phone. As a teenager, I spent hours…

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