How to stop scam calls that flood your voicemail

We can all relate when it comes to those annoying robo calls that fill up our voicemail. It’s especially frustrating when you’re signed up on the ‘Do Not Call Registry.’

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s four or five calls a day,” said Julie Olson, a victim of the scam. “It’s very disruptive.”

How do hackers get around the registry?

It’s actually quite simple. Hackers ignore the list all together.

The National ‘Do Not Call Registry’ specifically prohibits sales calls to people that have registered with the site online. Which means consumers on the list may still receive political, charitable, debt collection, information, and survey calls.

Det. Jon Price with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office explains hackers typically use a software to get around the system and be able to access millions of numbers on the web.

“The software available just randomly generates numbers, they’ll just call one number after another based on what the software predicts,” Price said.

So what can you do?

If you get repeated illegal calls from the same number, you can consider contacting your phone company to block that number or just simply hang up.

Another tip: if you do happen to answer the call, avoid clicking on any buttons, because that will signal it’s an active working number and scammer will typically sell your information.

Report a scam

Email me at Stephanie.Sierra@KRDO.com.