If someone fills out a web form looking for quotes, and that form pushes them into entering their phone number, and you use that number to call them instead of responding with an emailed quote, that is most certainly spam.
I don't think this is really true, because spammers call numbers at random (or perhaps, in sequence). They are not working through the published phone book.
Please don't equate email spam to phone call spam. A phone call often requires immediate attention to filter out. Its an interrupt-based process. Email is a different animal.
Spammy emails are somewhat annoying, but they're 10x better than spammy phone calls. Any company that wants me to do things over the phone will drop right to the bottom of my list, especially if they want to do it by them calling me rather than me calling them.
OK, so if the spammer wants you to call back, they must leave a number. So say, if someone offered suitable SaaS, you could put that number on a list to be voicemail spammed. At one minute interval, from random numbers.
I've got several different phone numbers, and they each receive different amounts and types of spam. You'd think given the limited size of the phone number space, that spammers would just dial numbers indiscriminately. However, it appears that they still operate using lists of more-likely victims. By entering my phone number in random forms, I'd worry that it could be used as another indication of a good number to call to bother real humans. Of course that's in addition to the obvious doxing of my online nym if done from the wrong browser VM.
I can handle the email spam. Just a thought, but I have a presentation number on my CV that's only active when I'm jobhunting - otherwise it just rings out. Are you talking about phone spam? That would be several million times more irritating.
> Because while it's a common assumption that the spam callers do this, they don't actually do this
It sure looks like they do. Spammers have been calling our office lines daily (including numbers that aren't assigned to anyone and aren't given out). The spam calls come in numerical sequence. They're clearly just working through every possible phone number, in sequence.
It's about mass marketing spam, not people you know. People you know will call from a consistent phone number, and you can use time tested methods such as not answering instead of making them pay 0.10 to talk to you.
I end up with voicemails from spammers all the time. They'll ring me and while the phone is ringing, they'll ring me again so they get sent straight to voicemail and can leave a message.
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