I lived in Chicago for years but moved away a while ago. I still have my 312 number.
A couple years ago I started getting about 10 calls a day from 312 area codes that immediately hangup when I answer. I tried remaining silent, speaking, anything, doesn’t matter… same result.
I have a Google Pixel and often it will send it straight to voicemail and I always get a 4 second blank voicemail. On occasion the calls will pass the filter and ring, no one or nothing ever says anything though.
I’m guessing these are bots with spoofed ID checking to see what numbers are active. Hell, in the 90s I used to wardial to check for active carriers with my dial up modem.
For now all I can do is mark each call as spam and block and delete the voicemail.
Changing numbers isn’t an option so maybe I have to just live with it.
Any ideas Lemmy?
My favorite calls are the ones that play a recording woman’s voice speaking Mandarin. They always come from the 312 area code as well.
Never understood those. My only guess it’s a service looking for active numbers and it logs it when it finds one.
Yeah, it might be Cantonese actuall, if I’m not mistaken a lot of the residents in Chinatown in Chicago speak that. Just spam but in another language.
What’s odd is that all of these calls hang up if I bother to answer. So yeah, could be looking to see if active, and if that’s the case, there must be like a dozen different outfits doing this because nearly that many every day