[ta1234567890]

Pretty much everyday I get 5+ spam calls, almost all from numbers with area codes in Texas (no idea why). The calls start at 7:30am.

My number is in the federal do not call list. I used to manually block every single number from spam calls, but now I gave up.

I’ll just never answer a call unless it’s from a known number and I’m expecting it. Otherwise I’ll just return it later if it’s important enough.

My guess is that phone network operators don’t care because they haven’t figured out a way to make money blocking these calls.

At the same time, the same carriers are going out of their way to block text messages from businesses that legitimately use services like Twilio to communicate with their users/customers. Why? Because the alternative for these businesses is to pay about $3k setup fee + $3k/quarter to get a shortcode for the privilege of texting the carriers customers - the same customers the carriers don’t care about protecting from spam phone calls.

[coldcode]

I fill up my voicemail ever week, 99% of them from the area code of my phone, which is 1500 mi from where I live now, and all are spam. I wish I could just block an area code.

[gregmac]

I use Calls Blacklist [1] to block calls from unrecognized numbers -- just checked, it supports blocking numbers based on "Starts with" so that would probably work, if you're on Android.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vladlee.ea...