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TIFU by seeing a call on my dad's phone and answering.

So, on Tuesday, my dad (67) was in the bathroom. I heard his phone ringing, and glanced at it - see, I thought it was a legit call as the phone is set to block calls from non-verified / unknown numbers. It got through, but sometimes spam gets through. The caller ID said it was verified - and the number was from the medical centre in town..So I think “Oh crap. I better take this and hand it to him” so I answer the phone for him so I can say I can put him on.

…What was on the other side was an obvious deepfake promoting someone's election run. It isn't even a person on the other side, so I don't get the fun of putting the phone under a metal bowl and banging the bowl with a spoon.

However, that was all it took to apparently get my dad’s phone number put onto a database of “A real person answered this number - Spam them". Because within a few hours, my dad's phone got another call from the same number and it was more political canvassing. He hangs up and then another call. Then another. And another. His phone is also getting absolutely FLOODED with texts on top of this. When he puts it on a table, it’s practically dancing around like those electric football games.

By Thursday? His phone is just ringing non stop. And I mean almost literally NON STOP. Literally, at one point he was getting so many phone calls and text messages it overrode the “do not disturb” setting. Several times. His voicemail box was full in a day. You look at the call log? Almost all of them are from local offices of doctors, lawyers, contractors, even restaurants.

All of them leave voice mail messages about upcoming elections using obvious AI deepfake voices. Some of them are just a deepfake of a generic person, but some are also celebrities who are apparently campaigning for people they would never promote. My dad literally got a call from a Ringo Starr deepfake promoting an election.

While typing this? He got four calls. There’s just no end to them. He’s going to have to get his phone number changed due to this merciless barrage of spam calls.

tldr? I answered thinking it was a doctor's office calling dad, but it put his number on a list so now he is getting flooded with political robocalls.

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