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Speaker 1: It's night Dan Ray. I'm going you Mazy Boston's news radio.
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Speaker 2: It's a tough loss for the Red Stars tonight and they got a win tomorrow and avoid a sweep. Uh in Toronto. My name is Dan Ray, host of Nightside, and we are going to talk about a subject that I think most people understand, and that is the robo calls that we receive. And I guess we need to get a definition of robo calls. Calls are not They're not calls from robots. There calls from oftentimes people sometimes who live in this country and sometimes people who are calling from overseas, and they are looking to sell a variety of products and indoor services.
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Speaker 3: Uh.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: And we we we are delighted to welcome to a Nightside. Ethan gar Ethan works for a company called you Mail. And Ethan, let me start by saying, I'm unfamiliar with You Mail, but my producer today read a piece about you in the Hill, about your company in the Hill, which talked about robo calls spiking, especially for home phone numbers in certain area codes. Thank god our area code is not one of those. But I got to tell you they're always very active here in Massachusetts. How do you define a robo call? I believe we're talking about people who are live human beings, not robots, but they're calling at all hours of the day, particularly around dinner time. Welcome to Night Siety, Ethan. Thanks for joining us.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's nice to meet you.
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Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 6: I think when we talk about robocalls, traditionally we are talking about pre recorded calls that are being autodial to phone numbers across American but it does cover sort of the wide swath of types of calls people received, everything from spam calls to scam calls, telemarketing calls, and then there's a lot of legitimate robo calls that are made as well.
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Speaker 4: So give you an example there. If your pharmacy calls you to tell you with a automated message that your prescription is ready, that's an automated robo call, but it's probably one you'll be delighted to receive. And that's what makes it a really complicated, complicated issue. Email is dedicated to protecting your phone number. And when it comes to protecting your phone number, it doesn't mean just stopping bad calls. It means making sure the good calls get through as well.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so let me say if I have missed defined this, I mean you're the expert, help me out of the phone calls that we receive, which your unsolicited phone calls, take the phone calls from your friends, from your employer, from your neighbors, and you've put all of those aside. We're talking about the phone. When the phone rings, if you see a number, or if you hear a voice, it's it's not a call that you have have have hoped to receive again the call from the pharmacist. If it's an automated phone, I guess you'd call it as a robo call, but you want to receive that call. What percentage of what we will call under the umbrella of robo calls? Most of my robo calls are people who are calling there's a human being on the other end of the line. Does that mean it is not a robo call? If it's a human being on the other end of the line, wherever they are in the world.
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Speaker 4: We would generally say that if it's a human being call calling, it's not a robo call. But that certainly doesn't mean that it's not a scam or stam call.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, what is the what's the best? I just I'm a stickler for you know, for for words, So pardon me. But if we take all of these calls that that are we haven't invited the call. We don't know who this person is. They're calling us that there's someone who has no relationship with us. This is not someone calling us from our doctor's office, reminding us that we have an appointment on Tuesday. You know, what is the word that that's important or is there a word that covers the umbrella of unwanted calls, robo calls and what else?
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Speaker 4: I think spam calls is probably the best definition to cover all of the unwanted calls that you receive. And we're seeing a pretty big spike in July. Four point three billion robocalls or made to Americans July, and that's quite high. For overall, the last few years, we have seen a decline in the total number of robo calls and spam calls that are being sent to Americans. But the last few months we have seen a precipitous uptick in the number of calls being made to Americans. It's definitely a rising problem, but I would even say that the volume of calls isn't the worst part of it. Robo calls can be going down, but the problem can be getting even more and more dangerous. The people who are calling you, the ones you describe, who are humans on the other end, Often they're trying to purport scams on people. They're trying to reach into people's pockets, steal their money, they're trying to steal people's identities. They're doing some really nefarious stuff, and they're using all sorts of pools, including AI and other means to really try to socially engineer outcomes, often outcomes that are not good for people. Lots of people lose a lot of money to scams that start with telephone calls, emails, and text.
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Speaker 2: Either one of the calls that I get often and I don't know why I get it, but being a talk show host, it's great when I talk to experts like you and can help me better understand. And I mean that seriously. I say that truthful. You are the expert I'm not. But I get these calls and they're generally from people who it sounds to me they're calling from a boiler room. You can hear the other chatter in the background, and I'll say to me, well, hello, I've been assigned to help you lower your electric bill. You know what, what are you paying for electricity? They get right to it, and it's first. Most people don't carry in the top of the head. I mean, I carry my SO Security card by my SO Security number, and maybe you know my kid's birthdays, but that's about it. These days, I don't. Oh, it's like I'm being charged fourteen point three cents per kilo one hour? What do you know? You know? So, what is the purpose of that? Are they trying to sign me up? Or are they trying to get access and information? I assume that's a scheme call. What is the what's their goal with that call?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard to say specifically for the calls you received, that could be you know, if you've said if you're saying that you've gotten multiple calls to that effect, some of them could be more nefarious than others. So, for example, sometimes there are less than above board companies that are selling real products that are using telemarketing to try to get you to switch to their services, which sounds like that might be what you're referring to. Those calls are probably still falling under illegal. You probably didn't you probably didn't give specific permission to that company to call you, So the call itself is illegal. Whether the company itself is trying to specifically scam you out of money or just trying to sell you on their service and telling you that it's going to be a better deal, obviously that's hard to know unless you go through the entire process. But I would say a percentage of a significant percentage of those calls the person on the other line is trying to sell you a load of hot air. They often are trying to get you to give them your credit card information or get or give them a payment in one form or another, or to get your elements of your identity so that they can take money from you. So and that I think is probably for your listeners. Maybe the most important thing to know is you can't tell whether the person on the other on the other end of the line fits anywhere on that spectrum. You can't tell when someone calls you out of the blue and says I AM going to lower your electric bill, you have no idea. If they're legitimate, You have no idea.
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Speaker 2: If they're like you said, that they're totally illegitimate.
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Speaker 4: Go ahead, Yeah, that's and that's the right approach. Unfortunately, there are there are people out there who do want to do cause harm to people. And I think for uh, for consumers, we have to be on our toes all the time. We have to realize that a ringing phone, when it's not someone we we know, when it's not something we specifically ask for, is not is not safe the you know. And I think one of the best pieces of advice is if you get a call like that, just say, uh, hey, can you put this in writing and send it by mail to me? Let's them. Let first of all, they're not going to scammers. A scammer is not going to waste their time, and most of these companies will just move on to the next person.
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Speaker 2: Know what, We're going to take a break here, but I'm going to invite callers to join and share their their experiences. Six one, six seven. I had one that I get a lot of and it's like it's it's a boiler room. You hear the chatter of other callers in the background, and the person comes on and hello, and it's like they immediately try to establish that they are the priority person in the conversation. It's not like, Hi, how are you? My name so and so, you know, how are you this evening? It's I've been assigned to you as you're a representative to lower your electric bills. Well, I've received that pitch, you know, twenty five times in the last two months. So what I do is I normally just block the call. I say, oh, thank you very much, and I've blocked the call if it's on my cell phone. So I hit a call from this guy a couple of well actually was last night, and I said, look, do me a favor, take me off your call list. Now I know that they're not going to take me off the call list, but I was trying to be polite, take me off the call list. So the guy gets upset with me and he says, you can't tell me what to do. Now the conversation has been elevated, ethan. So at that point I told him to go perform and act upon himself, which was anatomically impossible, and hung the phone up. Okay, I can't say what I said to him on the phone, but but he got the message. He got the message. They are maddening, They're maddening. I also want to talk about what my listeners can can do, how they can take advantage or avail themselves of your company. You mail and I'm not sure exactly you know what you guys do, but I want to explore that as well. You certainly have said for us, and well, we've got to take a quick break, but we'll get back to what service you provide to Thank you very much. You just hang right there, we'll get back to you if you'd like to join and ask Ethan a question, or ask him about the phone calls that you've received. I've learned already from this conversation that roboc have to be automated phone calls. But there's a lot of people out there who are sitting on phones, people around the world, and they're just dialing. My understanding is that they just sile numbers which are generated by big computers, and your number gets generated, my number gets generated. If you like to join the conversation or ask Ethan a question, this is your opportunity. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty six one seven, nine, three, one ten thirty Back on Nightside. My name's Dan Ray, and you're listening to Nightside and WBZ Radio ten thirty and your am dial here in Boston. Coming back on Nightside right.
00:12:34
Speaker 1: After the break, It's night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: We are talking with Ethan Garr. He's with the company the name of which is you mail Uh Ethan? Are you a website or what service do you provide? Let's let's get that clarified first.
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Speaker 4: The email does a couple of things, but primarily for your h listeners, we're a mobile app. We provide an Android and iOS mobile app that you put on your phone and it will block spam calls and protect your phone number, but does a lot more. Not only does it stop mobocalls and spam calls, it can filter and block spam texts as well. And we have a service called Privacy Scan and Removal that will actually get your personal information off of public websites, which I think is really important because a lot of times you're mentioning right before the break that a lot of these people are just sort of mass a computer is just mass dialing these That does happen, but it's actually often often they're more strategic and more targeted these days than who they're dialing. Especially the scammers. What they're trying to do is get as much information about you so that when they call you, they can trick you into doing things that you probably wouldn't normally do. So, for example, if they know the names of your children, if they know where you live, your address, your phone number, there's a lot of things they can do to sort of do some social engineering to trick you into giving money doing you know, feeling like there's an urgency or an emergency that you have to help them, you have to rectify by paying them.
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Speaker 7: So I've heard of those where people will call and they'll if they think it's an older couple, they'll have a childlike person on the underwater, Hi, grandma, And you know a lot of times, you know, older people will assume that it's one of their grandchildren.
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Speaker 2: And and I'm in trouble. And I've heard about these scams where you know, I was caught in you know, drinking, uh, and I got to get a lawyer, and can you send me some money from you know, my lawyer. And you know, there are a lot of people who have you know, a half dozen or more grand children, And oftentimes you make the mistake and the first thing you say is you know Billy? Are you? Okay? Now you know who the person thinks they're talking to Billy, So you've given up some information, So I understand what you're doing here your app? Is that free and available to the public or is there a cost involved?
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Speaker 4: The apps are are completely free to download. We do have some premium services, but basic call blocking and running a private, free privacy scan, all of that is free and included with with our basic services.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Okay, so that sounds really interesting, and it's simply, uh, you mail. You go on on your smartphone and you you go to the app store and you find you mail I assume.
00:15:52
Speaker 4: Why yeah, the app store or Google Play a store yep, okay, y ou m a I L And once you find it, find it, you download it. You go through a short onboarding process where we walk you through some settings and that's going to help us protect you. Once you do that, we're going to actually automatically block hundreds of thousands of known spam numbers, so if someone calls you from a known spam number, the call won't even ring on your phone. With some of our premium services, we have call screening because some of these as I said, some of these callers are quite sophisticated. They're using brand new numbers that haven't been used before to make to run scams. So what we do is we offer a call screening service where we actually answer the call and we force the person on the other end to prove that they're a human and to identify themselves. So when you do that, it's going to make it much less likely that a bad call is ever going to get to you.
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Speaker 2: So what you're saying is you in your app essentially intercepts the call. You don't have people sitting around waiting to do this. You're app says who are you calling? What correctly represent? Uh? And and at that point the scam call is are going to realize I'm not going to waste my time. I'm going to try to call so the phone number real quickly correct was before we go to news, and then after news, we're going to go right to phone calls. But you know this business more than better than I do. And so therefore understand my questions are genuine.
00:17:24
Speaker 4: Uh.
00:17:25
Speaker 2: You know Inquiase there was a time when Congress said we're going to there are a lot of the members of Congress. I'm going to stop roball calls, I'm going to stop scam calls. It sounds to me like Congress has totally failed to do that.
00:17:40
Speaker 4: Well, I would just say that the government has actually done some really good things and part of the reason why overall we are seeing less robo calls and spam calls in total in the past few years is because of some of the things that government, government and industry at government in partnership with industry that has done so. But this is a very complex and thorny problem. There is no switch you can you can turn that says robocalls can't be made anymore. It just doesn't. Unfortunately, the way the phone system works, it is complex and some of those things allow us to do really great things. I mean, we have all of these things, including the Internet because of the way our phone system works. So it is a complex problem. I would say that the SEC and SEC are working very hard in terms of enforcement. A lot of legislation, such as the Trace Act, have had significant impact. But what they've done often is they've sort of moved the problem. So whereas we used to see a lot of spoofed calling, spoofed callers, spoof call, spoof phone numbers, so it looked like somebody was calling either from a local number, or it looked like another company was calling you. It's not that it doesn't happen anymore, but some of the things that industry and government have done in partnership have significantly reduced the number of spoofed spam calls that are being made. And that's a good thing. But as we've gotten as saying earlier, less overall robo calls is a good thing, but it does mean that the targeting of these of these bad calls is much more sophisticated. They're using AI, they're using all sorts of tactics, they're doing the social engineering, and you know, occasionally, and more than occasionally, they are hurting the most vulnerable people. It's not usually very I mean, it can be anybody who falls for a scam or or a scam, but the reality is often it's people who are in somewhat desperate circumstances. You know. It's like, you know, if you're if you've been out of work for a long time and someone calls with a job offer scam, right, you're more likely to fall for.
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Speaker 2: It, more likely to give him a social Security number, over the air over the phone in hopes of getting that job. Ethan, I got to take a break for news at the bottom of the hour. We are going to come back, uh, and we've got a bunch of phone calls for you, and everybody is going to learn a little bit more about a very important topic. My name is Dan Ray. This is Nightside. You're listening WBZ Boston's news radio ten thirty on your AM dial. We have Lisa in Quincy, Kerry in Pennsylvania, Pat in Indiana, and Jony in Pennsylvania. The only line that's available right now. There's one more line. You can fill it up six one, seven, nine three one, ten thirty. Back on Nightside with my guest Ethan Garr. He's with the company that is called you Mail. It's an app, and we'll explain how you can put it on your phone if you would like. Obviously, you do that at your own You got to make your own judgment. But I believe that this is an excellent way and you can at least diminish the number of robo calls you might receive during any given period. Coming back on Nightside right.
00:21:07
Speaker 1: After this, you're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
00:21:16
Speaker 2: By the way, there was a reference that Ethan gar my guest from you mail, made about artificial intelligence being something else that we have to deal with. We'll be talking about artificial intelligence tomorrow during the eight o'clock hour on Nightside. So if you want to learn a little bit more about artificial intelligence, joining us for a night at eight Ethan. If you're ready, let's get some phone calls for you.
00:21:37
Speaker 5: Okay, sound kidding?
00:21:39
Speaker 2: All right, let's go start it off with Lisa is in Quincy, Massachusetts. Lisa, you were first tonight on Nightside with Ethan Garr of you mail. You go right ahead, Lisa. Okay. If Lisa is not ready, we'll get Lisa. Are you there, Lisa? Once you Lisa's try and Rob. Why don't you get Lisa. In the meantime, we're going to go to Kerry in Pennsylvania. Carry you were next on night so I will get back to Lisa in a moment. Go right ahead, Kerry.
00:22:11
Speaker 8: Hi, Dan Hi, Ethan, a really interesting topic. I could tell you lots of stories. I sit at my computer doing my work, and I have a landline, which is somewhat unusual, but I can sit here and I can answer phone call after phone call after phone call, and they're either AI and some of them some of them are spoof calls. However, spoof calls have changed in the last couple of months because I would get all these spoof calls and I would call them back just to see who was calling. And I would get calls from like Walmart or Kmart or a sheriff's office, all kinds of people that I didn't call, that didn't call me. So it is just really interesting. And now they're doing the area code, so you can't always be sure that of that number unless you know who's calling, because if they're using your six one seven area code for all the calls, okay, well, I guess it might be somebody I know, because I don't know everybody's number, so I don't know there's anything. And this AI people that call, they call every single day, and one right after the other, and I'll pick up the phone, I won't say anything, and then the lady will say can you hear me? Can you hear me?
00:23:45
Speaker 2: When I get the AI calls where they they obviously have a robo call on HI, how are you tonight? Well, I'm glad to hear that I would like to present you an interesting opportunity, and of course prompting you to say, well what is that opportunity? What I like to do is they sound real to me? I'll ask them, you know, what was collyu Strumsky's lifetime batting average, And of course the next question they will say, I didn't quite understand that. Uh, you know, but what what? How can I help you? Oh? How many home runs the Babe Ruth hit nineteen twenty seven. I just asked them questions that I know it's not a human being. What is that? Is that fair game? Ethan? As far as you're concerned.
00:24:40
Speaker 4: Well, while nobody has enjoyed messing with stammers more than me in my lifetime, if I what I would what I would suggest is that you don't interact with stammers. That you don't while it is, it can be, it can be fun, and it can be a little bit of a stress release. I think when you answer these calls, you are signaling to that to that caller that there's a live person on the.
00:25:07
Speaker 5: Other end of that line.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:25:08
Speaker 4: You're you're you're exacerbating it for yourself because now you're you're essentially confirming that your number is live.
00:25:18
Speaker 2: Uh.
00:25:18
Speaker 4: And also UH, in the world of AI, UH, your voice, your voice being out there can be a risk as well. We've heard of voice cloning scams where people are trying to record your voice and then they can what if they you know, if they can go online, they can figure out who your your child is or your grandmother is, and they can call you and use your voice in an AI essentially reproduce your voice. Imagine the harm they can do. So I would recommend uh, Well, I believe me. I've had some fun doing it. I think in today's age, Uh, the best advice I can give you is don't answer these calls and fact put something between you and these calls so that you don't get the calls in the first place. Sure emails a great.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Option, which would be your company you mail. Okay, I'm with you on that. My wife always screams me, don't talk to those people, so she smarted. But that's okay. Of course, when you do twenty hours of radio every night on a major American radio station, if someone wants to get my voice, they probably can't do that anyway.
00:26:28
Speaker 4: That is a fair point.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: Man, Kerry, thank you for your comments. I do appreciate it very much.
00:26:35
Speaker 8: And what are unallocated phone numbers? Maybe Ethan knows what they are.
00:26:42
Speaker 4: On allocated phone numbers, So I think what you're referring to is phone numbers that get essentially, if someone gives up their phone number, that phone number essentially goes back into the system and then yeah, into the pool. And then so we actually use unallocated We buy that, We buy them and use them to find what we call honeypot. This way we get calls coming into phone numbers so that we can learn what the bad phone numbers, what the bad callers are doing calling these numbers.
00:27:14
Speaker 8: Because I've gotten a lot of phone calls and when I call them back, it says the number is unallocated. You for explaining that.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: Okay, well I think that I think that's the accurate explanation. Hey, Kerry, thank you much for your call. Appreciate Thanks very much for listening to Nightside in Pennsylvania.
00:27:33
Speaker 8: Thank you.
00:27:35
Speaker 2: We just lost that one. Okay, let me get I don't know what's going on with that phone. Say we're having some problems, Rob. Let me go to Pat in Indiana. Pat in Indiana, welcome next on nightside.
00:27:47
Speaker 9: Thank you. I definitely want to look into his email. The call has generated so many questions I have my experience has.
00:27:56
Speaker 5: Been and maybe I can be corrected.
00:27:59
Speaker 9: On one time, I may to answer all my phones. Then this person started out kind of mimicking an ad on TV. Asked my name, asked my number, No, no, just my name, my age, and then what insurance company. I was listening at that point, I said, you know, who are you? What's the number? And then I said no, I'm hanging up. After that, I would get up to and this has gone on for three months. I'll get up to fifteen eighteen calls a day. They don't leave a message, and I'm not answering them. But my point was going to be, oh, I was told somewhere might be wrong that like if you do answer and you do talk to them on the phone, that can give them access to use your number for their benefit.
00:28:50
Speaker 5: Therefore, I don't wonder anybody.
00:28:52
Speaker 2: Yes, see, that's a very good question. Let's see if ethan can respond to that. Ethan, some is pat right there that somehow they can hijacker a number.
00:29:01
Speaker 4: It sounds like, well, I don't think it's because you answered. The truth is with spoofing, people can hijack essentially any number. I can. There are tools out there I can make a call from and make it look like I'm calling from any other number. There's some new things in the last few years that the government and industry have worked together to implement that have reduced some of the danger there because calls have to have essentially what's called attestation, which helps us figure out which calls are safe or not safe to a degree. But I've seen where somebody has has spoofed a phone number of a just a regular person and made hundreds of thousands of calls, and all of a sudden, people were calling that number back thinking that this was the stammer who had called them. So it can be quite dangerous. But that has that has dropped UH somewhat significantly. So I don't think Pat, that the issue is that you answered the call and then they sort of gained access to it. I think sometimes your number is just weaponized.
00:30:19
Speaker 2: Pat. I appreciate you all them up on a commercial break, so I got to let you go, but thanks so much for listening in Indiana, and I know you've called before. I hope you call it again.
00:30:28
Speaker 5: Definitely be careful out there.
00:30:29
Speaker 4: Indiana saw an eleven percent increase in the number of STAM calls last month, so there's a lot getting sent to you.
00:30:37
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for all the good information.
00:30:39
Speaker 2: You're very welcome talk to you. So we'll take a very quick break coming back with my guest Ethan Garr. A company called you Mail us an app you can consider pull down on your phone if you'd like. UH. It's available free of charge, And obviously you gotta be careful with any app you're dealing with. But I think from talking to Ethan that his company's UH efforts are to help us UH and not complicate our lives. We'll take a quick break on Nightside, coming right back with Ethan Garr of You Mail.
00:31:11
Speaker 1: You're on night Side with Dan Ray on w Boston's News Radio.
00:31:17
Speaker 2: Okay, we're gonna try to get everybody in here. We have three callers that are waiting, so I'm gonna ask everyone to be as quick as they can. Jony and Pennsylvania. A lot of outstate calls. I hate Joe.
00:31:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, experience, isn't it?
00:31:35
Speaker 5: Poll for tar in short and I don't have a TAR and I don't drive.
00:31:42
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's a scam call.
00:31:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, you see a lot of auto work.
00:31:51
Speaker 3: And he doesn't drive either, and he doesn't have a park.
00:31:54
Speaker 2: Okay. I think you've given a good example, Joony, of a of a scam call. Anybody, you know, if they call you and they want you to get a long term warranty for your car and you don't have a car, I don't think you need to have a conversation with them. Just hang up. Okay, I do.
00:32:14
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:32:15
Speaker 2: Thanks, JOHNY appreciated the example you gave us. Thank you, very good call. Let me go next to Rachel in Quincy, Massachusetts. Rachel, I hope we didn't inadvertently hang up on you before goret.
00:32:28
Speaker 3: Ahead, No you didn't, Dan, of course I'm here, okay. So so I'm wondering if this app is just the personal use. I had two different things of an eighty one year old mom that I take care of, and she knows if anybody calls it. She's like, no, you got to talk to my daughter, blah blah blah. That's great, which is fine, But I'm gonna tell you something. Yeah, but I'm gonna tell you something that happened last week. I manage a pretty large company financially, and I received a call and this person entered. It was a woman introduced herself saying, I am blah blah blah, and I can't whatever her name was from, and I'm not gonna stay the bank. Can you please tell me who's responsible for the financial end of your company? And I said, well, yes, kind of, I am. What's going on? She said, I kind of? I want to know if you did or somebody did a a c H France for I said, from where?
00:33:48
Speaker 2: And she rich Rachel without giving us a verbatim transcript of the conversation, tell us what you think was going on, because you probably more about this than I do.
00:34:01
Speaker 3: Go ahead, okay, so all right, So what she was asking is if my company, anybody in my company was trying to transfer somebody money, a lot of money. And I said no, I said, and thank you. When I said what's your name? She knew the manage his name from the bank. She knew a lot of other information, but it wasn't from the branch we dealt with.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: Why I'm trying, I'm trying to cut to the chase here because I do have a couple of callers behind you. Give us. The bottom line if you'd be so.
00:34:41
Speaker 3: Op, all right, so I guess one of my yes, I absolutely will. How do you know personal scam from business scam? And does your app help with that?
00:34:56
Speaker 4: The short answer is you can't know, and that's why. So if you're getting a call better, the better thing to do is to stop, try to get as much information as you can and call back the people you do know. Call your own banker back. Don't call that person back, call your own banker back and ask them if they know who this person is. And I think the short answers email tries to help you with both personal and business. We actually offer a second line service so that you can put a protected second line on your phone. This way you can actually separate your work from personal life. So when someone calls you, you have them call your business line and it keeps your main line safe. It's also a great way just to have a number to give them out to businesses or acquaintances who you're not sure you want to have your main number.
00:35:47
Speaker 2: All right, Rachel, I got to get to a couple of more calls. I hope that helps him. Thank you for calling in. We got a little delay there, Okay, thank you. We're going to get Theodore in Baltimore Theatre worked real hard to get you in here. You're next, Go right ahead.
00:36:02
Speaker 4: Buddy, my quick.
00:36:04
Speaker 10: My callers, my scam callers are from India. I can tell and what they do. They call me, and they usually it's a lady. She says, are you there? I answer and some but I learned, as you know, never to say yes. I'll answer if I'll give them a false age and then they click me over to what they call a superbox. I can also hear them in the background, and usually I'll say and it gives me a big laugh every time I'll say hold on, hold on, and I pushed the buddy yeah. And another thing too. I like to end up with this Dan, I too, am one of the few, as you spoke. As you said, they have a landline. We are are a superior breed. And everybody I tell who has the line line just remember we're still with you. I'm keeping my landline and the payphones are coming back. Thank you very much.
00:36:52
Speaker 2: A great call. Always great to hear you. She called more often. Okay, this is whatever our most enjoyable calls. Theodore happens to be one of my best call is he's one of my toughest calls on some nights, but become my great friend over the years. Thanks buddy, talk to you soon. All right. I want to thank you Ethan for joining us and again explained how people can investigate the app that you represent. You mail, tell us, tell us what folks can do and just we had about two minutes left here or what the service is for those of have just joined us late, Go right ahead, Ethan.
00:37:28
Speaker 4: Email this to protect your phone number if you are if you have a phone, you're vulnerable to stam and stam calls, but you can put something between you and those callers to protect yourself. We want to help you not just block the bad calls, but also answer the good ones. We want your mother, your family, your friends always to ring through, and we want you to be able to pick up your phone confidently. There's two things that I think everybody should be thinking about. One is, of course, putting something in at that sort of last mile, something to protect themselves, and I think email is a great way to do that. The app is free. Like I said, there are premium services that we offer, such as call screening, second line service, but the basic service is free, so you can download it. You can see if it helps you, but it will reduce the number of spam calls that are coming through. I encourage everyone to go to email dot com check out our privacy scam that's also free. That's where you're going to see where your information is being bought and sold online by data brokers. It's really valuable to get your information removed and we can help you with that. If the spammers can't find your personal information online, it makes it a lot harder for them to perform to hit you with scams and spam calls. And yeah, finally, I just think just for everyone, it is dangerous out there when you get a call. When a call rings, don't trust the person on the other line. And if you're going to call them back, make sure you can call them back knowing that you're calling back who you think you're calling back, so even you know. We have a safe dialer service where when you go to dial from from the app will actually tell you if that number is safe to call. So, like I said, emails here to protect your phone number.
00:39:07
Speaker 2: Ethan all great information. I really enjoyed the hour here, best hour of the night. Thank you very much for your time, and we might be interested in having you back at some point a few months from now and just do a little refresher here. Thanks so much, Ethancar youmail dot com. When we get back, we want to talk about a new book out just this week, The twenty fifth Hour, How to Thrive and Gain Ridiculous amounts of Time by Getting Out of your Own Way by Neil Shore. We will be back right after the eleven o'clock news. My name's Dan Ray, and this is Nightside in WBZ out of Boston, ten thirty on your AM dial.
Speaker 1: It's night Dan Ray. I'm going you Mazy Boston's news radio.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: It's a tough loss for the Red Stars tonight and they got a win tomorrow and avoid a sweep. Uh in Toronto. My name is Dan Ray, host of Nightside, and we are going to talk about a subject that I think most people understand, and that is the robo calls that we receive. And I guess we need to get a definition of robo calls. Calls are not They're not calls from robots. There calls from oftentimes people sometimes who live in this country and sometimes people who are calling from overseas, and they are looking to sell a variety of products and indoor services.
00:00:46
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: And we we we are delighted to welcome to a Nightside. Ethan gar Ethan works for a company called you Mail. And Ethan, let me start by saying, I'm unfamiliar with You Mail, but my producer today read a piece about you in the Hill, about your company in the Hill, which talked about robo calls spiking, especially for home phone numbers in certain area codes. Thank god our area code is not one of those. But I got to tell you they're always very active here in Massachusetts. How do you define a robo call? I believe we're talking about people who are live human beings, not robots, but they're calling at all hours of the day, particularly around dinner time. Welcome to Night Siety, Ethan. Thanks for joining us.
00:01:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's nice to meet you.
00:01:43
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:01:44
Speaker 6: I think when we talk about robocalls, traditionally we are talking about pre recorded calls that are being autodial to phone numbers across American but it does cover sort of the wide swath of types of calls people received, everything from spam calls to scam calls, telemarketing calls, and then there's a lot of legitimate robo calls that are made as well.
00:02:08
Speaker 4: So give you an example there. If your pharmacy calls you to tell you with a automated message that your prescription is ready, that's an automated robo call, but it's probably one you'll be delighted to receive. And that's what makes it a really complicated, complicated issue. Email is dedicated to protecting your phone number. And when it comes to protecting your phone number, it doesn't mean just stopping bad calls. It means making sure the good calls get through as well.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: Okay, so let me say if I have missed defined this, I mean you're the expert, help me out of the phone calls that we receive, which your unsolicited phone calls, take the phone calls from your friends, from your employer, from your neighbors, and you've put all of those aside. We're talking about the phone. When the phone rings, if you see a number, or if you hear a voice, it's it's not a call that you have have have hoped to receive again the call from the pharmacist. If it's an automated phone, I guess you'd call it as a robo call, but you want to receive that call. What percentage of what we will call under the umbrella of robo calls? Most of my robo calls are people who are calling there's a human being on the other end of the line. Does that mean it is not a robo call? If it's a human being on the other end of the line, wherever they are in the world.
00:03:36
Speaker 4: We would generally say that if it's a human being call calling, it's not a robo call. But that certainly doesn't mean that it's not a scam or stam call.
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is the what's the best? I just I'm a stickler for you know, for for words, So pardon me. But if we take all of these calls that that are we haven't invited the call. We don't know who this person is. They're calling us that there's someone who has no relationship with us. This is not someone calling us from our doctor's office, reminding us that we have an appointment on Tuesday. You know, what is the word that that's important or is there a word that covers the umbrella of unwanted calls, robo calls and what else?
00:04:24
Speaker 4: I think spam calls is probably the best definition to cover all of the unwanted calls that you receive. And we're seeing a pretty big spike in July. Four point three billion robocalls or made to Americans July, and that's quite high. For overall, the last few years, we have seen a decline in the total number of robo calls and spam calls that are being sent to Americans. But the last few months we have seen a precipitous uptick in the number of calls being made to Americans. It's definitely a rising problem, but I would even say that the volume of calls isn't the worst part of it. Robo calls can be going down, but the problem can be getting even more and more dangerous. The people who are calling you, the ones you describe, who are humans on the other end, Often they're trying to purport scams on people. They're trying to reach into people's pockets, steal their money, they're trying to steal people's identities. They're doing some really nefarious stuff, and they're using all sorts of pools, including AI and other means to really try to socially engineer outcomes, often outcomes that are not good for people. Lots of people lose a lot of money to scams that start with telephone calls, emails, and text.
00:05:50
Speaker 2: Either one of the calls that I get often and I don't know why I get it, but being a talk show host, it's great when I talk to experts like you and can help me better understand. And I mean that seriously. I say that truthful. You are the expert I'm not. But I get these calls and they're generally from people who it sounds to me they're calling from a boiler room. You can hear the other chatter in the background, and I'll say to me, well, hello, I've been assigned to help you lower your electric bill. You know what, what are you paying for electricity? They get right to it, and it's first. Most people don't carry in the top of the head. I mean, I carry my SO Security card by my SO Security number, and maybe you know my kid's birthdays, but that's about it. These days, I don't. Oh, it's like I'm being charged fourteen point three cents per kilo one hour? What do you know? You know? So, what is the purpose of that? Are they trying to sign me up? Or are they trying to get access and information? I assume that's a scheme call. What is the what's their goal with that call?
00:06:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard to say specifically for the calls you received, that could be you know, if you've said if you're saying that you've gotten multiple calls to that effect, some of them could be more nefarious than others. So, for example, sometimes there are less than above board companies that are selling real products that are using telemarketing to try to get you to switch to their services, which sounds like that might be what you're referring to. Those calls are probably still falling under illegal. You probably didn't you probably didn't give specific permission to that company to call you, So the call itself is illegal. Whether the company itself is trying to specifically scam you out of money or just trying to sell you on their service and telling you that it's going to be a better deal, obviously that's hard to know unless you go through the entire process. But I would say a percentage of a significant percentage of those calls the person on the other line is trying to sell you a load of hot air. They often are trying to get you to give them your credit card information or get or give them a payment in one form or another, or to get your elements of your identity so that they can take money from you. So and that I think is probably for your listeners. Maybe the most important thing to know is you can't tell whether the person on the other on the other end of the line fits anywhere on that spectrum. You can't tell when someone calls you out of the blue and says I AM going to lower your electric bill, you have no idea. If they're legitimate, You have no idea.
00:08:50
Speaker 2: If they're like you said, that they're totally illegitimate.
00:08:53
Speaker 4: Go ahead, Yeah, that's and that's the right approach. Unfortunately, there are there are people out there who do want to do cause harm to people. And I think for uh, for consumers, we have to be on our toes all the time. We have to realize that a ringing phone, when it's not someone we we know, when it's not something we specifically ask for, is not is not safe the you know. And I think one of the best pieces of advice is if you get a call like that, just say, uh, hey, can you put this in writing and send it by mail to me? Let's them. Let first of all, they're not going to scammers. A scammer is not going to waste their time, and most of these companies will just move on to the next person.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: Know what, We're going to take a break here, but I'm going to invite callers to join and share their their experiences. Six one, six seven. I had one that I get a lot of and it's like it's it's a boiler room. You hear the chatter of other callers in the background, and the person comes on and hello, and it's like they immediately try to establish that they are the priority person in the conversation. It's not like, Hi, how are you? My name so and so, you know, how are you this evening? It's I've been assigned to you as you're a representative to lower your electric bills. Well, I've received that pitch, you know, twenty five times in the last two months. So what I do is I normally just block the call. I say, oh, thank you very much, and I've blocked the call if it's on my cell phone. So I hit a call from this guy a couple of well actually was last night, and I said, look, do me a favor, take me off your call list. Now I know that they're not going to take me off the call list, but I was trying to be polite, take me off the call list. So the guy gets upset with me and he says, you can't tell me what to do. Now the conversation has been elevated, ethan. So at that point I told him to go perform and act upon himself, which was anatomically impossible, and hung the phone up. Okay, I can't say what I said to him on the phone, but but he got the message. He got the message. They are maddening, They're maddening. I also want to talk about what my listeners can can do, how they can take advantage or avail themselves of your company. You mail and I'm not sure exactly you know what you guys do, but I want to explore that as well. You certainly have said for us, and well, we've got to take a quick break, but we'll get back to what service you provide to Thank you very much. You just hang right there, we'll get back to you if you'd like to join and ask Ethan a question, or ask him about the phone calls that you've received. I've learned already from this conversation that roboc have to be automated phone calls. But there's a lot of people out there who are sitting on phones, people around the world, and they're just dialing. My understanding is that they just sile numbers which are generated by big computers, and your number gets generated, my number gets generated. If you like to join the conversation or ask Ethan a question, this is your opportunity. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty six one seven, nine, three, one ten thirty Back on Nightside. My name's Dan Ray, and you're listening to Nightside and WBZ Radio ten thirty and your am dial here in Boston. Coming back on Nightside right.
00:12:34
Speaker 1: After the break, It's night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: We are talking with Ethan Garr. He's with the company the name of which is you mail Uh Ethan? Are you a website or what service do you provide? Let's let's get that clarified first.
00:12:56
Speaker 4: The email does a couple of things, but primarily for your h listeners, we're a mobile app. We provide an Android and iOS mobile app that you put on your phone and it will block spam calls and protect your phone number, but does a lot more. Not only does it stop mobocalls and spam calls, it can filter and block spam texts as well. And we have a service called Privacy Scan and Removal that will actually get your personal information off of public websites, which I think is really important because a lot of times you're mentioning right before the break that a lot of these people are just sort of mass a computer is just mass dialing these That does happen, but it's actually often often they're more strategic and more targeted these days than who they're dialing. Especially the scammers. What they're trying to do is get as much information about you so that when they call you, they can trick you into doing things that you probably wouldn't normally do. So, for example, if they know the names of your children, if they know where you live, your address, your phone number, there's a lot of things they can do to sort of do some social engineering to trick you into giving money doing you know, feeling like there's an urgency or an emergency that you have to help them, you have to rectify by paying them.
00:14:20
Speaker 7: So I've heard of those where people will call and they'll if they think it's an older couple, they'll have a childlike person on the underwater, Hi, grandma, And you know a lot of times, you know, older people will assume that it's one of their grandchildren.
00:14:39
Speaker 2: And and I'm in trouble. And I've heard about these scams where you know, I was caught in you know, drinking, uh, and I got to get a lawyer, and can you send me some money from you know, my lawyer. And you know, there are a lot of people who have you know, a half dozen or more grand children, And oftentimes you make the mistake and the first thing you say is you know Billy? Are you? Okay? Now you know who the person thinks they're talking to Billy, So you've given up some information, So I understand what you're doing here your app? Is that free and available to the public or is there a cost involved?
00:15:23
Speaker 4: The apps are are completely free to download. We do have some premium services, but basic call blocking and running a private, free privacy scan, all of that is free and included with with our basic services.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Okay, so that sounds really interesting, and it's simply, uh, you mail. You go on on your smartphone and you you go to the app store and you find you mail I assume.
00:15:52
Speaker 4: Why yeah, the app store or Google Play a store yep, okay, y ou m a I L And once you find it, find it, you download it. You go through a short onboarding process where we walk you through some settings and that's going to help us protect you. Once you do that, we're going to actually automatically block hundreds of thousands of known spam numbers, so if someone calls you from a known spam number, the call won't even ring on your phone. With some of our premium services, we have call screening because some of these as I said, some of these callers are quite sophisticated. They're using brand new numbers that haven't been used before to make to run scams. So what we do is we offer a call screening service where we actually answer the call and we force the person on the other end to prove that they're a human and to identify themselves. So when you do that, it's going to make it much less likely that a bad call is ever going to get to you.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: So what you're saying is you in your app essentially intercepts the call. You don't have people sitting around waiting to do this. You're app says who are you calling? What correctly represent? Uh? And and at that point the scam call is are going to realize I'm not going to waste my time. I'm going to try to call so the phone number real quickly correct was before we go to news, and then after news, we're going to go right to phone calls. But you know this business more than better than I do. And so therefore understand my questions are genuine.
00:17:24
Speaker 4: Uh.
00:17:25
Speaker 2: You know Inquiase there was a time when Congress said we're going to there are a lot of the members of Congress. I'm going to stop roball calls, I'm going to stop scam calls. It sounds to me like Congress has totally failed to do that.
00:17:40
Speaker 4: Well, I would just say that the government has actually done some really good things and part of the reason why overall we are seeing less robo calls and spam calls in total in the past few years is because of some of the things that government, government and industry at government in partnership with industry that has done so. But this is a very complex and thorny problem. There is no switch you can you can turn that says robocalls can't be made anymore. It just doesn't. Unfortunately, the way the phone system works, it is complex and some of those things allow us to do really great things. I mean, we have all of these things, including the Internet because of the way our phone system works. So it is a complex problem. I would say that the SEC and SEC are working very hard in terms of enforcement. A lot of legislation, such as the Trace Act, have had significant impact. But what they've done often is they've sort of moved the problem. So whereas we used to see a lot of spoofed calling, spoofed callers, spoof call, spoof phone numbers, so it looked like somebody was calling either from a local number, or it looked like another company was calling you. It's not that it doesn't happen anymore, but some of the things that industry and government have done in partnership have significantly reduced the number of spoofed spam calls that are being made. And that's a good thing. But as we've gotten as saying earlier, less overall robo calls is a good thing, but it does mean that the targeting of these of these bad calls is much more sophisticated. They're using AI, they're using all sorts of tactics, they're doing the social engineering, and you know, occasionally, and more than occasionally, they are hurting the most vulnerable people. It's not usually very I mean, it can be anybody who falls for a scam or or a scam, but the reality is often it's people who are in somewhat desperate circumstances. You know. It's like, you know, if you're if you've been out of work for a long time and someone calls with a job offer scam, right, you're more likely to fall for.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: It, more likely to give him a social Security number, over the air over the phone in hopes of getting that job. Ethan, I got to take a break for news at the bottom of the hour. We are going to come back, uh, and we've got a bunch of phone calls for you, and everybody is going to learn a little bit more about a very important topic. My name is Dan Ray. This is Nightside. You're listening WBZ Boston's news radio ten thirty on your AM dial. We have Lisa in Quincy, Kerry in Pennsylvania, Pat in Indiana, and Jony in Pennsylvania. The only line that's available right now. There's one more line. You can fill it up six one, seven, nine three one, ten thirty. Back on Nightside with my guest Ethan Garr. He's with the company that is called you Mail. It's an app, and we'll explain how you can put it on your phone if you would like. Obviously, you do that at your own You got to make your own judgment. But I believe that this is an excellent way and you can at least diminish the number of robo calls you might receive during any given period. Coming back on Nightside right.
00:21:07
Speaker 1: After this, you're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
00:21:16
Speaker 2: By the way, there was a reference that Ethan gar my guest from you mail, made about artificial intelligence being something else that we have to deal with. We'll be talking about artificial intelligence tomorrow during the eight o'clock hour on Nightside. So if you want to learn a little bit more about artificial intelligence, joining us for a night at eight Ethan. If you're ready, let's get some phone calls for you.
00:21:37
Speaker 5: Okay, sound kidding?
00:21:39
Speaker 2: All right, let's go start it off with Lisa is in Quincy, Massachusetts. Lisa, you were first tonight on Nightside with Ethan Garr of you mail. You go right ahead, Lisa. Okay. If Lisa is not ready, we'll get Lisa. Are you there, Lisa? Once you Lisa's try and Rob. Why don't you get Lisa. In the meantime, we're going to go to Kerry in Pennsylvania. Carry you were next on night so I will get back to Lisa in a moment. Go right ahead, Kerry.
00:22:11
Speaker 8: Hi, Dan Hi, Ethan, a really interesting topic. I could tell you lots of stories. I sit at my computer doing my work, and I have a landline, which is somewhat unusual, but I can sit here and I can answer phone call after phone call after phone call, and they're either AI and some of them some of them are spoof calls. However, spoof calls have changed in the last couple of months because I would get all these spoof calls and I would call them back just to see who was calling. And I would get calls from like Walmart or Kmart or a sheriff's office, all kinds of people that I didn't call, that didn't call me. So it is just really interesting. And now they're doing the area code, so you can't always be sure that of that number unless you know who's calling, because if they're using your six one seven area code for all the calls, okay, well, I guess it might be somebody I know, because I don't know everybody's number, so I don't know there's anything. And this AI people that call, they call every single day, and one right after the other, and I'll pick up the phone, I won't say anything, and then the lady will say can you hear me? Can you hear me?
00:23:45
Speaker 2: When I get the AI calls where they they obviously have a robo call on HI, how are you tonight? Well, I'm glad to hear that I would like to present you an interesting opportunity, and of course prompting you to say, well what is that opportunity? What I like to do is they sound real to me? I'll ask them, you know, what was collyu Strumsky's lifetime batting average, And of course the next question they will say, I didn't quite understand that. Uh, you know, but what what? How can I help you? Oh? How many home runs the Babe Ruth hit nineteen twenty seven. I just asked them questions that I know it's not a human being. What is that? Is that fair game? Ethan? As far as you're concerned.
00:24:40
Speaker 4: Well, while nobody has enjoyed messing with stammers more than me in my lifetime, if I what I would what I would suggest is that you don't interact with stammers. That you don't while it is, it can be, it can be fun, and it can be a little bit of a stress release. I think when you answer these calls, you are signaling to that to that caller that there's a live person on the.
00:25:07
Speaker 5: Other end of that line.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:25:08
Speaker 4: You're you're you're exacerbating it for yourself because now you're you're essentially confirming that your number is live.
00:25:18
Speaker 2: Uh.
00:25:18
Speaker 4: And also UH, in the world of AI, UH, your voice, your voice being out there can be a risk as well. We've heard of voice cloning scams where people are trying to record your voice and then they can what if they you know, if they can go online, they can figure out who your your child is or your grandmother is, and they can call you and use your voice in an AI essentially reproduce your voice. Imagine the harm they can do. So I would recommend uh, Well, I believe me. I've had some fun doing it. I think in today's age, Uh, the best advice I can give you is don't answer these calls and fact put something between you and these calls so that you don't get the calls in the first place. Sure emails a great.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Option, which would be your company you mail. Okay, I'm with you on that. My wife always screams me, don't talk to those people, so she smarted. But that's okay. Of course, when you do twenty hours of radio every night on a major American radio station, if someone wants to get my voice, they probably can't do that anyway.
00:26:28
Speaker 4: That is a fair point.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: Man, Kerry, thank you for your comments. I do appreciate it very much.
00:26:35
Speaker 8: And what are unallocated phone numbers? Maybe Ethan knows what they are.
00:26:42
Speaker 4: On allocated phone numbers, So I think what you're referring to is phone numbers that get essentially, if someone gives up their phone number, that phone number essentially goes back into the system and then yeah, into the pool. And then so we actually use unallocated We buy that, We buy them and use them to find what we call honeypot. This way we get calls coming into phone numbers so that we can learn what the bad phone numbers, what the bad callers are doing calling these numbers.
00:27:14
Speaker 8: Because I've gotten a lot of phone calls and when I call them back, it says the number is unallocated. You for explaining that.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: Okay, well I think that I think that's the accurate explanation. Hey, Kerry, thank you much for your call. Appreciate Thanks very much for listening to Nightside in Pennsylvania.
00:27:33
Speaker 8: Thank you.
00:27:35
Speaker 2: We just lost that one. Okay, let me get I don't know what's going on with that phone. Say we're having some problems, Rob. Let me go to Pat in Indiana. Pat in Indiana, welcome next on nightside.
00:27:47
Speaker 9: Thank you. I definitely want to look into his email. The call has generated so many questions I have my experience has.
00:27:56
Speaker 5: Been and maybe I can be corrected.
00:27:59
Speaker 9: On one time, I may to answer all my phones. Then this person started out kind of mimicking an ad on TV. Asked my name, asked my number, No, no, just my name, my age, and then what insurance company. I was listening at that point, I said, you know, who are you? What's the number? And then I said no, I'm hanging up. After that, I would get up to and this has gone on for three months. I'll get up to fifteen eighteen calls a day. They don't leave a message, and I'm not answering them. But my point was going to be, oh, I was told somewhere might be wrong that like if you do answer and you do talk to them on the phone, that can give them access to use your number for their benefit.
00:28:50
Speaker 5: Therefore, I don't wonder anybody.
00:28:52
Speaker 2: Yes, see, that's a very good question. Let's see if ethan can respond to that. Ethan, some is pat right there that somehow they can hijacker a number.
00:29:01
Speaker 4: It sounds like, well, I don't think it's because you answered. The truth is with spoofing, people can hijack essentially any number. I can. There are tools out there I can make a call from and make it look like I'm calling from any other number. There's some new things in the last few years that the government and industry have worked together to implement that have reduced some of the danger there because calls have to have essentially what's called attestation, which helps us figure out which calls are safe or not safe to a degree. But I've seen where somebody has has spoofed a phone number of a just a regular person and made hundreds of thousands of calls, and all of a sudden, people were calling that number back thinking that this was the stammer who had called them. So it can be quite dangerous. But that has that has dropped UH somewhat significantly. So I don't think Pat, that the issue is that you answered the call and then they sort of gained access to it. I think sometimes your number is just weaponized.
00:30:19
Speaker 2: Pat. I appreciate you all them up on a commercial break, so I got to let you go, but thanks so much for listening in Indiana, and I know you've called before. I hope you call it again.
00:30:28
Speaker 5: Definitely be careful out there.
00:30:29
Speaker 4: Indiana saw an eleven percent increase in the number of STAM calls last month, so there's a lot getting sent to you.
00:30:37
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for all the good information.
00:30:39
Speaker 2: You're very welcome talk to you. So we'll take a very quick break coming back with my guest Ethan Garr. A company called you Mail us an app you can consider pull down on your phone if you'd like. UH. It's available free of charge, And obviously you gotta be careful with any app you're dealing with. But I think from talking to Ethan that his company's UH efforts are to help us UH and not complicate our lives. We'll take a quick break on Nightside, coming right back with Ethan Garr of You Mail.
00:31:11
Speaker 1: You're on night Side with Dan Ray on w Boston's News Radio.
00:31:17
Speaker 2: Okay, we're gonna try to get everybody in here. We have three callers that are waiting, so I'm gonna ask everyone to be as quick as they can. Jony and Pennsylvania. A lot of outstate calls. I hate Joe.
00:31:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, experience, isn't it?
00:31:35
Speaker 5: Poll for tar in short and I don't have a TAR and I don't drive.
00:31:42
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's a scam call.
00:31:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, you see a lot of auto work.
00:31:51
Speaker 3: And he doesn't drive either, and he doesn't have a park.
00:31:54
Speaker 2: Okay. I think you've given a good example, Joony, of a of a scam call. Anybody, you know, if they call you and they want you to get a long term warranty for your car and you don't have a car, I don't think you need to have a conversation with them. Just hang up. Okay, I do.
00:32:14
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:32:15
Speaker 2: Thanks, JOHNY appreciated the example you gave us. Thank you, very good call. Let me go next to Rachel in Quincy, Massachusetts. Rachel, I hope we didn't inadvertently hang up on you before goret.
00:32:28
Speaker 3: Ahead, No you didn't, Dan, of course I'm here, okay. So so I'm wondering if this app is just the personal use. I had two different things of an eighty one year old mom that I take care of, and she knows if anybody calls it. She's like, no, you got to talk to my daughter, blah blah blah. That's great, which is fine, But I'm gonna tell you something. Yeah, but I'm gonna tell you something that happened last week. I manage a pretty large company financially, and I received a call and this person entered. It was a woman introduced herself saying, I am blah blah blah, and I can't whatever her name was from, and I'm not gonna stay the bank. Can you please tell me who's responsible for the financial end of your company? And I said, well, yes, kind of, I am. What's going on? She said, I kind of? I want to know if you did or somebody did a a c H France for I said, from where?
00:33:48
Speaker 2: And she rich Rachel without giving us a verbatim transcript of the conversation, tell us what you think was going on, because you probably more about this than I do.
00:34:01
Speaker 3: Go ahead, okay, so all right, So what she was asking is if my company, anybody in my company was trying to transfer somebody money, a lot of money. And I said no, I said, and thank you. When I said what's your name? She knew the manage his name from the bank. She knew a lot of other information, but it wasn't from the branch we dealt with.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: Why I'm trying, I'm trying to cut to the chase here because I do have a couple of callers behind you. Give us. The bottom line if you'd be so.
00:34:41
Speaker 3: Op, all right, so I guess one of my yes, I absolutely will. How do you know personal scam from business scam? And does your app help with that?
00:34:56
Speaker 4: The short answer is you can't know, and that's why. So if you're getting a call better, the better thing to do is to stop, try to get as much information as you can and call back the people you do know. Call your own banker back. Don't call that person back, call your own banker back and ask them if they know who this person is. And I think the short answers email tries to help you with both personal and business. We actually offer a second line service so that you can put a protected second line on your phone. This way you can actually separate your work from personal life. So when someone calls you, you have them call your business line and it keeps your main line safe. It's also a great way just to have a number to give them out to businesses or acquaintances who you're not sure you want to have your main number.
00:35:47
Speaker 2: All right, Rachel, I got to get to a couple of more calls. I hope that helps him. Thank you for calling in. We got a little delay there, Okay, thank you. We're going to get Theodore in Baltimore Theatre worked real hard to get you in here. You're next, Go right ahead.
00:36:02
Speaker 4: Buddy, my quick.
00:36:04
Speaker 10: My callers, my scam callers are from India. I can tell and what they do. They call me, and they usually it's a lady. She says, are you there? I answer and some but I learned, as you know, never to say yes. I'll answer if I'll give them a false age and then they click me over to what they call a superbox. I can also hear them in the background, and usually I'll say and it gives me a big laugh every time I'll say hold on, hold on, and I pushed the buddy yeah. And another thing too. I like to end up with this Dan, I too, am one of the few, as you spoke. As you said, they have a landline. We are are a superior breed. And everybody I tell who has the line line just remember we're still with you. I'm keeping my landline and the payphones are coming back. Thank you very much.
00:36:52
Speaker 2: A great call. Always great to hear you. She called more often. Okay, this is whatever our most enjoyable calls. Theodore happens to be one of my best call is he's one of my toughest calls on some nights, but become my great friend over the years. Thanks buddy, talk to you soon. All right. I want to thank you Ethan for joining us and again explained how people can investigate the app that you represent. You mail, tell us, tell us what folks can do and just we had about two minutes left here or what the service is for those of have just joined us late, Go right ahead, Ethan.
00:37:28
Speaker 4: Email this to protect your phone number if you are if you have a phone, you're vulnerable to stam and stam calls, but you can put something between you and those callers to protect yourself. We want to help you not just block the bad calls, but also answer the good ones. We want your mother, your family, your friends always to ring through, and we want you to be able to pick up your phone confidently. There's two things that I think everybody should be thinking about. One is, of course, putting something in at that sort of last mile, something to protect themselves, and I think email is a great way to do that. The app is free. Like I said, there are premium services that we offer, such as call screening, second line service, but the basic service is free, so you can download it. You can see if it helps you, but it will reduce the number of spam calls that are coming through. I encourage everyone to go to email dot com check out our privacy scam that's also free. That's where you're going to see where your information is being bought and sold online by data brokers. It's really valuable to get your information removed and we can help you with that. If the spammers can't find your personal information online, it makes it a lot harder for them to perform to hit you with scams and spam calls. And yeah, finally, I just think just for everyone, it is dangerous out there when you get a call. When a call rings, don't trust the person on the other line. And if you're going to call them back, make sure you can call them back knowing that you're calling back who you think you're calling back, so even you know. We have a safe dialer service where when you go to dial from from the app will actually tell you if that number is safe to call. So, like I said, emails here to protect your phone number.
00:39:07
Speaker 2: Ethan all great information. I really enjoyed the hour here, best hour of the night. Thank you very much for your time, and we might be interested in having you back at some point a few months from now and just do a little refresher here. Thanks so much, Ethancar youmail dot com. When we get back, we want to talk about a new book out just this week, The twenty fifth Hour, How to Thrive and Gain Ridiculous amounts of Time by Getting Out of your Own Way by Neil Shore. We will be back right after the eleven o'clock news. My name's Dan Ray, and this is Nightside in WBZ out of Boston, ten thirty on your AM dial.
