Posted at my job...

I have been writing a western about the Civil War period. I have tried to use language like they did back the but the spell checker on my computer is always trying to change it into proper English.

A year ago i purchased a new phone. Had to get a new number and five days a week i get texts claiming that i am eligible for a dollar amount in a loan. The spelling and poor grammar is atrocious.

I wonder what all the previous owner of the number was into.


When i was much younger i took pride in my ability to spell. I could always tell if i spelled a word incorrectly Today i have trouble spelling. .

georgeinsc said:

A year ago i purchased a new phone. Had to get a new number and five days a week i get texts claiming that i am eligible for a dollar amount in a loan. The spelling and poor grammar is atrocious.

I wonder what all the previous owner of the number was into.


When i was much younger i took pride in my ability to spell. I could always tell if i spelled a word incorrectly Today i have trouble spelling. .

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Some of the misspelling may be an attempt to get around spam filters. Of course, it could be that the spammer is just stupid, and those are not mutually exclusive conditions.

Your texter may have been offered a couple of options: 1.) work for a living, or 2.) answer this get rich quick scheme in the local supermarket classifieds. Their laziness excluded option 1, and their stupidity failed to exclude option 2, which only works if they can find a bunch of idiots at least as stupid as themselves.

One thing to point out (phone wise, not text at this point), is that phone companies are supposed to be SHAKEN/STIR compliant, but while my company says they are, they are not required to (at least at this point) filter out calls from callers who are not compliant. That may be coming, though. I'm still getting calls from "Card Services", people who want me to join in on a malpractice/product liability lawsuit, and auto warranties (I don't drive; never have).

Sorry to ramble, and apologies to any actual marketers who are offended by my message. Unfortunately, my exposure lately to "marketers" is indistinguishable from "liars".

-- Tom

achaios said:

Some of the misspelling may be an attempt to get around spam filters. Of course, it could be that the spammer is just stupid, and those are not mutually exclusive conditions.

Your texter may have been offered a couple of options: 1.) work for a living, or 2.) answer this get rich quick scheme in the local supermarket classifieds. Their laziness excluded option 1, and their stupidity failed to exclude option 2, which only works if they can find a bunch of idiots at least as stupid as themselves.

One thing to point out (phone wise, not text at this point), is that phone companies are supposed to be SHAKEN/STIR compliant, but while my company says they are, they are not required to (at least at this point) filter out calls from callers who are not compliant. That may be coming, though. I'm still getting calls from "Card Services", people who want me to join in on a malpractice/product liability lawsuit, and auto warranties (I don't drive; never have).

Sorry to ramble, and apologies to any actual marketers who are offended by my message. Unfortunately, my exposure lately to "marketers" is indistinguishable from "liars".

-- Tom

Click to expand...

My wife has gotten a lot more telemarketing calls on her phone than I have, and so far the "SHAKEN/STIR" protocol only seems to have identified "some" of the telemarketing calls but not stopped them from coming thru.

Some calls will come up with the words "Spam Risk" instead of the phone number and some calls will come up with something like "Telemarketer" but many telemarketer/spam calls still come thru with the actual phone number (likely not their real number) because there will be a lot of calls with numbers we do not recognize and many from a lot of different states, I haven't kept count but the calls have supposedly come from likely over 25 (or more) different states, most of which we don't know anyone from

In the past we both had gotten calls which our phone said was from our OWN number (of course we knew better than to answer it) and I have had at least one person call me in the past asking why I was calling their number, I had to try to explain to them that it wasn't me calling but a spammer must have called them and made it LOOK like it was coming from me.

Anyhow, I wonder how the "SHAKEN/STIR" protocol distinguishes between knowing which calls to label as "Spam Risk" and which to label as "Telemarketer" (what is the difference ? )

.....just as I was typing this a "Spam Risk" call just now came thru on my phone

So far "Spam Risk" does seem to come up a lot more than "Telemarketer".

.....and why do so many calls that we know are very likely telemarketers/spammers still come thru with a phone number instead of being labeled as a "Spam Risk" or "Telemarketer" ?

I have always had my cell phone registered on the National Do Not Call Registry for telemarketing & spammers, and, to the best of my knowledge, I have never received a spam/telemarketing call. It's free, simple, and takes about 30 seconds to do: https://www.donotcall.gov/

SHAKEN/STIR is supposed to be using certificates to verify that the phone number sent in caller ID actually is under the control of the originating phone company. If I'm interpreting the last bulletin I saw correctly, 90% of the calls aren't yet validated.

I'm not sure how calls from your home phone actually originating from some other phone you legitimately control are handled.

At some point, either the calls need to be rejected, or at least flagged all of the time when then caller ID fails authentication. I would love to see phone companies fined out the wazoo when they allow forged calls from telemarketers in Lower Scumsuckerland access to their networks.

-- Tom

Wolf-Dog said:

I have always had my cell phone registered on the National Do Not Call Registry for telemarketing & spammers, and, to the best of my knowledge, I have never received a spam/telemarketing call. It's free, simple, and takes about 30 seconds to do: https://www.donotcall.gov/

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So is mine, but my cell phone number belonged to another guy over 20 years ago, and those irresponsible "content farm" web sites, which post other people's data along with ads they make money on, keep that number visible.

-- Tom

GKL said:

Anyhow, I wonder how the "SHAKEN/STIR" protocol distinguishes between knowing which calls to label as "Spam Risk" and which to label as "Telemarketer" (what is the difference ? )

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It doesn't. SHAKEN/STIR only validates that the caller actually owns that number. It is only supposed to prevent people who generate random numbers to call from to hide their identity. I don't know if it will prevent people from using a number they own, but is in fact not active.

-- Tom

Wolf-Dog said:

I have always had my cell phone registered on the National Do Not Call Registry for telemarketing & spammers, and, to the best of my knowledge, I have never received a spam/telemarketing call. It's free, simple, and takes about 30 seconds to do: https://www.donotcall.gov/

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Thanks, thought we already did that long ago, but maybe there's a way to double check and see if we already listed our numbers.

achaios said:

SHAKEN/STIR is supposed to be using certificates to verify that the phone number sent in caller ID actually is under the control of the originating phone company. If I'm interpreting the last bulletin I saw correctly, 90% of the calls aren't yet validated.

I'm not sure how calls from your home phone actually originating from some other phone you legitimately control are handled.

At some point, either the calls need to be rejected, or at least flagged all of the time when then caller ID fails authentication. I would love to see phone companies fined out the wazoo when they allow forged calls from telemarketers in Lower Scumsuckerland access to their networks.

-- Tom

Click to expand...

achaios said:

It doesn't. SHAKEN/STIR only validates that the caller actually owns that number. It is only supposed to prevent people who generate random numbers to call from to hide their identity. I don't know if it will prevent people from using a number they own, but is in fact not active.

-- Tom

Click to expand...

Okay, thanks for the added info, I'm still learning more about all this stuff !