One car accident, endless spam calls

Don't ever answer private numbers. This way you'll be respecting their privacy.

54

Can you explain how a car accident lead to this?

80

Some places accidents are public record so it could be predatory lawyers

72
- My wife had a forgotten bill get sent to small claims instead of actually contacting her. As soon as it hit the small claims court system she got inundated with ads from law firms offering to represent her
  
  18
- I would agree w this. Had a parent get into a minor fender bender & had to help field calls from multiple injury lawyers.
  
  19
Exchange contact info with someone after the accident then that someone is extremely petty. That's my guess.

20
- Yes but what are they doing to get all these spam calls? Are they petty and signed OP up for a bunch of spam?
  
  13
Freedom or something.

14

I’ve never understood why things like this have to be a part of public record. Traffic accidents, traffic citations, bankruptcies, buying a house, and even getting divorced.

All of those are very personal things that should never be a part of public record. And even if they are, the PII should not.

48

Simple improvement: Add a fee to access the personally identifiable information. And make the record of accessing the information public.

Not perfect, but better.

27
- I believe some things (like DMV records) are fee based. But the fee is nominal and wouldn’t stop any predator from doing bad things if they are so inclined. The only thing adding fees does is to financially incentivize keeping the data online and accessible to anybody who pays.
  
  9
- That wouldn't fix anything. There would be a site reselling it for a lower price or a large subscription fee for a specific area.
  
  Almost anything made by governments is public domain so it's legal.
  
  1
Each one of these events is easily shown to have good merits for being public record. Even ignoring the obvious case of "we want to track what the police/courts were actually doing".

Traffic accidents

Occurs in front of your property and cause some amount of damage to your stuff that officers didn't outline in any reports. You want to be able to figure out who did it so you can send them the bill/sue them. Hiding these records doesn't make sense. Other obvious uses would be to find out where someone went/is missing, eg if someone died.

traffic citations

You're attempting to hire someone for a job, part of that job is some amount of driving. Being able to lookup if they have any record of driving poorly would be due diligence you'd expect a company to do. Hell getting into an Uber or Lyft... You might want to lookup your driver. You could be surprised.

bankruptcies

Hire someone to do something related to finances in your company? Or to file your taxes? Might want to actually double check they're not idiots on their own dime either. Someone asks you for a loan, or any other financial related stuff. Records of them defaulting are important.

buying a house

Your dog ran up to me and bit me, then ran away. Being able to get the property details can be highly important.

getting divorced

Can trigger a number of things. If divorce has any kid related issues... and one parent no longer has rights to the child... Schools/doctors can validate that one parent no longer has those rights without just blindly trusting random documents one parent provides.

6
- You make mostly good points — I still disagree, but I can at least see your side.
  
  The divorce and kids thing though is not what you think it is. Divorce and child custody agreements are two separate legal things and child custody agreements are thankfully not a matter of public record.
  
  2
Say that under any thread about any billionaire and watch your comment get double digit downvotes

2
- I don’t like the existence of billionaires anymore than the next reasonably-sane pleb does. But someone’s financial/social status should never be a consideration to their constitutional right of privacy. You’ll just have to find some other way to harangue them for their behavior.
  
  1
Bankruptcy should 100% be a public record.

0
- Why? To publicly humiliate a person? Not everyone is evil; people fall on hard times. It happens. A lot. Why should they be further harassed by predatory practices of being offered loans after they’ve hit the rock bottom of their financial world? Because the first thing that happened when I filed for bankruptcy was to be offered a mortgage loan.
  
  0

These calls might be from lawyers. Check your mail and see if you are getting mail from lawyers. They are all trying to beat each other to get you to sign with them.

29

Sounds like spam to me.

37
How would random laywers have access to your number?

10
- Better call Saul, am I rite?
  
  1
- I don't know how all states operate but they have access to police reports that have your contact info. If it doesn't have your number then background reports.
  
  3
It's all call center spam. People speaking Chinese or Hindi in the background

8
- Which means they're not going to respect your local do not call lists.
  
  2

Highly recommend getting on the national do not call list https://www.donotcall.gov/ . Doesn't stop all spam calls, but it shrunk the amount I got at least

22

Does it expire or something? I used this when I got my current phone number but it's saying my number isn't registered now.

5
- They say it doesn't but my real world experience is that you have to re-register every year or three. But it definitely makes a difference in the legal spam callers at least
  
  5

This is why having a virtual number is good - my google voice number catches the overwhelming majority of the spam

11

That’s what I use it for. I really want to find an alternative provider (Voice and YouTube are the last Google products I use), but haven’t settled on anything yet.

7
- Tell me if you find something ever. 🫶🙈🤜🤛
  
  9
What’s a good non google alternative though?

4
- I use mysudo. It's not free, but pretty cheap at $10 a year.
  
  3
- Normal phone number + carrion is decent
  
  2

most normal wifi calling.

6

What do you mean? Not being on wifi isn't going to prevent spam calls from coming in unless your service is just that bad. Please explain.

12
- im just making a joke
  
  1

Mildly?

7

You can also block calls from unrecognized numbers. Doesn't stop them from being able to leave a voicemail though which is both good and bad

From that screen-> three dots -> settings -> blocked numbers -> block calls from unknown numbers.

6