Scam calls are computer generated auto dialled call and are made in their millions per day. Generally speaking scam calls start off with nobody at the other end until the person receiving the call either speaks or holds on long enough for the automatically dialled call being transferred to a live scammer.
It is during this period of silence that people should just hang up.
If the person called just hangs up immediately rather than engaging with the scammer it is more often than not enough to stop anymore such calls.
If the receiver does not hang up , depending on the response the scammer gets dictates what happens there after.
If the person called engages with the scammer the scammer then knows that they have a) a live recipient and b) a person possibly ripe for being scammed.
This will result in the person called phone number being marked as such. The result is then even more calls from a multitude of scammers.
The best advice is if you receive a call that on you answering with "Hello" or what ever greeting you use is met initially with silence it means that you are receiving an auto dialled call and you should just hang up at that point.
If it is a genuine call of any importance the caller will no doubt call you back within a minute or so. Auto dialled scammer calls do not call back.
Just to give an idea of how difficult it is to block such calls, the USA recorded 4.4 billion autocalls in one month alone so you can imagine how many are made world wide in a year!
