Do pervy phone calls still happen?

[scalt]

Nowadays, with the internet, and calls being much more traceable than they used to be, the perverts have many other ways of frightening people, but I remember that it was quite a scary thing in the 90s and earlier; there were documentaries about it, and in one book of safety stories for children (stranger danger, etc.), there was one story about a child who answered the phone to one of these callers, and the story was full of advice on what to do about it, including the now discredited advice of blowing a whistle down the phone.

Scam phone calls tend to be the unwanted ones now, but I'm just wondering if the lewd ones do happen nowadays, and if it's something we should warn our children about, as well as all the many, many other things.

Why is blowing a whistle down the phone discredited advice ?

I'm a manager for a 24/7 call answering service, and we get quite a lot.

I had one from a woman last year, that was a first!

I’m a therapist and I don’t accept phone calls anymore because of the number of calls like this. Men are gross.

Accidental Flower sounds like a good band name !

Yes. I was a Samaritans volunteer and used to get about 4 per shift.

What?🤣 Not my fault if I blow a whistle and they chose to call!

I know some of the breastfeeding helplines used to get them occasionally. Samaritans too and mental health charities. What is wrong with people

Don't wheel out this nonsense about human rights. No one is siding with the perpetrators of crimes.

The point is that now women are not told they have to deal with it on their own, the advice is to report and get police support.

In the past it was treated as less of a serious thing and women were left to respond alone.

Yes I've recently had issues. I work for a charity and someone gave out my personal number. A gentleman called asking for the charity help. I explained it was my personal number and how to access the charity help. He kept calling but talking dirty and moaning. He withheld his number and no matter what I did he kept calling, until my husband and I swapped phones for a few days. After he'd answered a few times he stopped. He never did apply to the charity for help so only have his mobile number.

The Samaritans and helplines generally are free and anonymous. Most volunteers are female. More prevalent on weekends after the pubs shut. Stops genuine callers in distress getting through.

I used to work for the RAC and got loads, at least 5-10 each night (free phone no!) the best one was ‘flip flop man’, every single night “are you wearing flip flops” do you own flip flops, what shape are your toes, what colour are your nails, all with a wet clicking sound going on😳😱 those days were so fun, if I heard a colleague saying ‘a bit like monster munch’ I knew he was on!

Don't wheel out this nonsense about human rights. No one is siding with the perpetrators of crimes.
It's not my nonsense, I will add. I'd blow a whistle down the phone, any day.

Used to work on a parenting helpline and we used to get at least one a shift.

Not telephone calls , but in my area today there is a report of an elderly man exposing himself on a bus .
He must have forgot they now have cctv , and he was arrested a few hours later . Pervy idiot !

I work in a fertility clinic and we get a fair few, usually around donating sperm or producing a sample

Flip flop man sounds like he's having a breakdown!

I used to work for Childline answering the phones and there were a lot^^ of those kinds of calls. It was so grim.

A friend of mine works for Samaritans and they often get people calling up pretending to need help when they're actually just pleasuring themselves.

My first job after leaving school was in an all women office whose telephone number appeared in national newspapers. We were always getting calls. Switchboard always put them through to us. The call would go out that there was a perv on the line and everyone would rush over to listen in and take the piss. Ridicule always got rid of them. It was the 80’s - I don’t think our language would be allowed today.

Some men are twisted and weird.. that's awful situation

I got a pervy phone call when working for the NHS on a Saturday shift, so only me in my section.
It was almost certainly the colleague that had been sacked a month earlier.
I reported it to my manager later and was told ‘you know you love it.’
My managers response was more upsetting than the call but not surprising sadly.

Fuck that, how in fuck do these people become manager's.. straight to HR with that one.

In online AA we can get "zoom bombers". It happened in my very first online women's meeting, I didn't know what on earth was going on.

I used to work in a 999 and a 192 call centre. You wouldn't get any on the 999 calls but every day some pervert calling 192

Yes, a friend who was a Samaritans listener for many years in the UK and Ireland confirmed that such a big volume of calls started being sex calls that it contributed to her decision to stop volunteering. She did say that in some cases these callers were clearly disturbed, rather than, say, a bunch of teenagers deciding to phone the number and start asking her whether she liked pegging, but that in some cases someone would have been talking for fifteen minutes before she realised they were wanking, preventing her from taking other calls.