My Name is not Aleida

I get it - EVERYONE is getting pummeled by the relentless overseas phone spammers who have zero regard for the National Do Not Call registry. It's frustrating. It's irritating. Number blocking apps provide no relief from the "Congratulations!" voicemails and creepy robo lady messages. The FTC is working furiously to identify and prosecute the registry violators but the process is slow and painful.
     Then there's the added volume you get when some punk named "Aleida" decides to apply for a thousand payday loans and enter your cell number into the web forms. As an individual, there's little you can do other than to inform repeat callers and texters that you're not Aleida.
     There is a technical fix for this problem, but it's not in the individual's power to accomplish. Well, it's two-pronged, really.
     1) Businesses should be required to validate phone numbers entered into web forms before they start calling them and certainly before they sell that number to marketing list agents. This isn't rocket science. If you call the number and someone else than you expected answers, remove it. Trust me, Aleida did not give you my number because she knows me and wants you to be able to find her when she fails to pay back that payday loan. The fact that you turned around and sold my number with Aleida's name attached to it to every telemarketer on the planet is on you, not me, to resolve.
     2) US phone systems should be required to initiate a validation sequence before connecting calls from foreign IP addresses and phone trunks. If the call originates out of the US but displays a US number on the caller ID that isn't registered to a known legal call center, the system should simply drop the call. And so would end the on-going phone scam nightmare that seems to impact mainly senior citizens and lower income Americans. I know, this might cost AT&T all of about $200,000 to implement because the technology is just SO HARD,* but I'm pretty sure they can afford it, as can all the other phone line owners out there. *(This technology already exists.)
    So what can we do as individuals? Not much, but here are few tips:

1. Invest in a call blocker and block the telemarketers who call you more than once from the same number. (Some are dumb enough to do that.) UPDATE 12/2/15 Here's some great advice from, of all places, AARP: http://blog.aarp.org/2015/10/02/blocking-unwanted-phone-calls/?cmp=SL-DSO-OUTBRAIN-DESKTAB-MONEY-MONEYBLOGALTHEAD-MIXED-DIVERS_Stop+Unwanted+Phone+Calls+for+Good%3A+Here%27s+Wha_1121332953_1534127
2. Report Do Not Call Registry violators at https://www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx
3. Let your provider know you have higher expectations from them than simply routing the calls with faked caller IDs to your phone. (Trust me, if subscribers united and threatened to sue providers for billing them for the gazillions of minutes & text messages consumed by spammers they could easily block, they'd respond.)
4. DON'T ANSWER CALLS FROM NUMBERS YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE. If Americans would stop answering these calls and falling for the scams, the scammers would go out of business and our phones would stop disrupting us 15 times a day with bogus cruise prizes and IRS collection threats.

I know that last one is tough. I chastise my 60-something mom often about dropping everything to answer calls from numbers she doesn't know. She still doesn't listen. But if you let those calls roll to your voicemail and no one leaves a message (or the voicemail is left by a robot), you'll know which numbers to block. To make sure my loved ones and work peers were in on the plan, I updated my outgoing message with a funny little blurb to let folks know that I only answer numbers I recognize and always return calls when a human leaves a message explaining who they are and why they're calling. Okay, that last part isn't always true. I recently received a message from an amazingly honest New Yorker telling me it was a telemarketing call and to kindly call back. Sorry but I blocked the number and didn't return that call. Sure, I could've called back and tried to glean enough info to report the guy to the FTC for his DNC list violation, but figured I'd give him a break for being so refreshingly honest.