My mobile number has been on the National Don’t Call Registry since forever. When I first registered my number, spam calls stopped completely for years. It was great. I recommended it to others and it worked well.

Around the middle of 2018, I started getting spam calls again, despite the registry. Most of the calls were from my own area code. It got worse and worse until I decided to install a whitelist/blacklist call blocker. This is completely effective. I put my contacts in the whitelist, my own number on the blacklist, and no more unwanted calls.

The call blocker maintains a log file. It was interesting and satisfying to see the calls that were blocked. Some spam callers would hit my phone six times in 30 seconds trying to get through. I wanted the blocker to play the sound of raucous laughter each time it blocked a call, but, alas, it doesn’t have that capability.

The weird thing is that the spam calls continued for about two weeks and then abruptly stopped. I haven’t logged a spam call now in two months. What’s going on here? It makes me wonder if these robocall operations are a lot more organized than I thought. Maybe they share information — share lists of numbers to avoid because it wastes their time. If that’s true, there might be a larger organization that could more easily be prosecuted for conspiracy than lots of small operators. I dunno.