Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Are home phones now a sign of vulnerability?

We get a lot of junk calls now at home on our unlisted home wired phone. Many hangup calls, "survey" calls, robocalls -- our home phone number needs a spam filter. It's beginning to resemble my mailbox -- mostly junk.

Of course many homes no longer have fixed phones -- especially in all adult households. We keep ours for everyday use, as a security measure, and because we keep our mobile phone minutes low. As the junk level rises though, a combination of Google Voice and an increase in our mobile voice minutes becomes more appealing. [1]

Some of the calls these days drop as soon as I pick up. I wonder if they're looking for more vulnerable sounding voice. As fixed line phones become less common, they will become a marker for the vulnerable elderly [2]. The sharks will move in ...

[1] Google doesn't support moving a home number to GV, just a mobile number. So we'd have to first move to a mobile, then cancel the mobile...
[2] Not a new trend, Google tells me I wrote about this in 2004! -  Phone Phishing (spam): coming soon to the elderly and the vulnerable

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