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“This is your second notice” — Robocalls on the rise

On both my home phone, and now on my cell, I’ve been receiving warnings that my auto warranty may have expired. In fact, each one of these warnings is “my second notice.” The new form of spam–robocalls–may be much worse than its email cousin. Like email spam, robocalls abuse cheap communication technology to earn revenue with deceptive marketing tactics. Unlike email spam, robocalls try to get your immediate attention — which means that it is harder to have effective countermeasures.

Sadly, I expect that robocalls, fake voicemails and the like will be on the rise in the coming years.

Yea, Larry and I have gotten several of these warranty calls our home and cell phone the last few weeks. I was thinking the same thing :(

Mike — I received a handful of these calls. I knew they were spam, but I wanted to figure out who was calling me, so I responded. After what felt like a 10 minute wait I was finally connected to someone who asked me for my name and other contact information. I cut him off, asking him to clarify who he was and how we received my contact information. He very quickly hung up. How annoying.

Nathaniel, you have a lot of patience!

Just after I posted this item, I received another robocall. This time, it was “[fog horn] This is your captain speaking…”

This stuff is really going to suck.