This may just be a curious coincidence, but during the recent brief period in which India and Pakistan appeared on the verge of all total thermonuclear war, my daughter and I noticed that the number of spam phone calls and messages received on our cellphones fell off precipitously. It also just may be a coincidence that when we answer somewhat questionable phone calls, which we must for business reasons – quite often we wind up having a brief conversation with a person speaking English, often very bad English, with a marked Indian/South Asian accent. Neither of us cannot limit ourselves to answering calls only from a contact list as is often recommended, since the spam organizations have begun to spoofing local numbers, and we can’t totally ignore local calls. My cellphone is the main conduit for potential clients to connect with the Teeny Publishing Bidness, and my daughters’ cellphone is similarly the main method of communicating with new and existing real estate clients and realtors.

Honestly, I feel rather sorry for anyone from the Indian sub-continent honestly trying to make a legitimate career in the US in the customer service/public relations field. After years of spam calls, attempted shakedowns from persons with that accent representing themselves to be officers of the law, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration, from banks, debt collectors, and most recently – administrators of the toll roads – my initial reaction and shared with many others, is to hang up so fast that the person on the other end will have their ears ring like the gong that started off old British movies from the J. Arthur Rank Organization. Such spammy-scammy callers – even if the accent isn’t suspect – often also betray a distinct lack of familiarity regarding how American civil authorities really operate. This very week, both my daughter and I both received the following text message (errors and typos included):
“Final notice: Enforcement will begin after May 14st. As of today, your tolls are still unpaid. If you still don/’t pay your tolls tomorrow, you will face the following consequences:
The DMV will suspend your vehicle.
You will face legal action and damage to your credit
You may be considered an illegal driver
Please pay before enforcement”
Pay Now: (link omitted. Of course I don’t click on such things. I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. This particular toll-road scam has been repeated so often that the Texas DMV now has a title page warning users about it and specifically including a statement that their department has absolutely nothing to do with collecting tolls.)

Well, it was rather nice to have the number of spammy-scammy calls and messages fall off, especially the ones which faked local numbers. I know that the Trump Administration has a lot on it’s governmental and law-enforcement plate at this moment, but I really do wish that someone high up in the Federal Communications Commission would eventually get around to turning loose the DOGEs of war on those parties enabling the whole ecosystem of domestic number-spoofing and scammy-spam-calling. At the very least, hit the spam-call boiler rooms with international law enforcement: being a consistent, ongoing annoyance ought to earn some serious penalties, in my opinion. Your thoughts and recommendations?