Something called during dinner yesterday. I hung up almost immediately, but commented to the family that it is getting harder to quickly identify recorded calls.
My 16 year old Andrew remarked that I should ask for the answer to 1 plus 1.
He’s invented telephone captchas! When you get a call and you can’t quite tell if it is a person, ask them a math question. If you don’t get an immediate correct answer, hang up.
There’s a subset of robo callers with a recording that pauses in almost human places, and makes small talk about your expected answers. I find this trend alarming and suspect it takes in lonely seniors pretty well.
Personally, I’ve gotten to where I don’t bother talking any more, if there is any sort of a pause after my hello, or anything recorded or that I can’t interrupt, I just hang up. As they get better though, I’m going to use telephone captchas.