Telemarketers, scammers and advertisers have ruined modern communication

Unless I recognize a caller’s name on caller ID, I don’t pick up the phone at home. The same goes for calls on my cellular phone.
That’s because most of the calls I get are business solicitations of some sort or charities real and bogus trying to get donations.
My home answering machine is full of mostly hang-ups as well as political ads and scammers pretending to be from the IRS or Microsoft.
Federal “do not call” lists don’t seem to help because scammers ignore them and charities and others are exempt.
The commercial calls are making their way to my cell phone, too.
The rate of scam calls to U.S. mobile users is increasing so fast that by next year nearly half of all mobile calls will be fraudulent, according to a report by First Orion. First Orion works with carriers and offers technology to identify and block spam calls, according to RCR Wireless News.
Scam calls made up 3.7% of total mobile calls in 2017. That percentage jumped to 29.2% in 2018. It is projected to reach 44.6% in early 2019, First Orion said.
Google recently announced a new feature built in to its Android operating system called Call Screen. The service is Google’s latest attempt to curb telemarketing calls on smartphones, Business Insider reported.
Scammers and marketers long ago cluttered email inboxes with spam. But at least Google Mail and other services have done a pretty good job filtering out the unsolicited commercial email.
If there’s a new form of communication, such as social media, marketers and scammers will find a way to abuse it.

Photo: Caller ID on my home phone. (Patrick Seitz)