Help with spammers

II plagued with spammers selling me electric/ gas and now I getting calls selling me phone and broadband because PSTN lines are coming to end. They have the feel of originating from India.
Mostly I try and get them to send me an email to my honeypot address. Usually they are using a gmail address but have a regular company logo and details.
When I register a compain with TPS a get the same response
"Although you have supplied contact details for this company, from previous investigations with this particular company (Who’s details you have supplied) TPS has ascertained that they are not responsible for unsolicited direct marketing calls made.

It would appear that they are misrepresented by a company using the same or similar trading name and/or spoofed their telephone number. However, we have not been able to positively identify the offending company. Please note that TPS does not have the facility to track or trace telephone calls that you have received."
Which is possible stricly true but I believe are a conbtracted out sales force to get around the prime supplier being responsible for breach of the rules.

How can I find out if a number is genuine and who the owner of the line so I can complain to Ofcom and possibly start small claims proceedings?
Any other suggestions to provoke a response from ICO, OFCOM, OFGEM or any bodies?

You are going to waste a lot of time and get nowhere. Just tell phone scammers to Foxtrot Oscar, cut off the call and block the number.

Who are you using? Many phone companies have services that block spammers or send them to junk voicemail. May be worth seeing if you have this available and activated

You are wasting your time trying to find numbers. They will be different every time.
You can put Caller ID on the line and a caller ID box, or a phone with caller ID built in, and set ignore any calls with numbers unknown or withheld.

"small claims proceedings?"

Are you out of pocket, if not then what are you claiming for?

Thanks for the replies. I thought Ofcom were going to stop numbers be given out to spurious companies.
I have just signed up to a BT Business Sogea line for 5 years £43.95 increasing by £4 every year by a company call Uptel.
I think i have case for fraud against them. They gave me a proposal for £43.95 with no term stated. The pressurised me to sign up to 5 year term or it would be £72.95 a month for 36 months before they would send me a contract.
Got all calls recorded and emails that certified by Google to SPK and DKIM.
I am retired and can spend 4 hours wasted their time and who knows what I might shake up.

Will be interesting to see BT trying to install sogea on my alt-net fibre line

Just get a call blocker and find another hobby. Unless of course you take some pleasure from going through these shenanigans. In which case knock yourself out.

It sounds like you’re being inundated with spam calls as you interact with them.

You’re making it worse by not simply hanging up.

Are you getting spam calls on mobile or landline? For mobiles, here's my solution:

1) Activate Voicemail
2) Get an iPhone and turn on 'Silence Unknown Callers' so all calls from numbers not on your contact list goes straight to voicemail
3) Use Hide my Email so each recipient gets a different Email address. This way when one of your 100s or Email addresses are compromised or used to spam, you can just deactivate and delete it.

In reply to a post by ColinOfRame2:

I thought Ofcom were going to stop numbers be given out to spurious companies.

Ofcom aren't giving out numbers to spurious companies. What appear to be the originating numbers have been invented by the spammers.

You can never fight against the spam callers whether in on landline or mobile once your number is spoofed!

Once upon a time I had a 3 Network Pay as you Go SIM from 2007. There were no spam calls at all ever until several years later after graduating Uni in 2012 and searching for jobs. I had my CV and Portfolio with my phone number in public and somewhere in 2014 I started getting spam calls for the first time ever and it just never stopped!

They were leaving voicemails and checking them just made me lose credit. Often leaving blank calls with no voice. I knew this was all related to job search and CV being in public. My Graphic Design Portfolio online had my number. It was a big mistake but something I've learned from it.

I had 500 numbers blocked but it made no difference as they kept coming back with new numbers. Spoofed numbers are often in the spammers database, the same goes with emails. My Outlook email was also getting spams and this was related to spammers discovering my number and email through my CV.

In 2022 I changed my phone number and went with an RWG Now Network SIM and my spams were gone ever since. I now removed my CV and Portfolio from public and the spammers don't know my new number.

My old 3 number has just finally been canceled recently due to inactivity! It took around 2 years for that even though it's supposed to happen in 6 months. I also changed my email and have never had spams since.
Prevention is always better than cure. Never give out your email or phone number randomly to anyone on the web. If they don't know your email or phone number you won't get spammed. They aren't guessing your number, they've acquired it!

There are also some forum members here who put their email address publicly in their profile. I'd personally refrain from doing that just in case some spammers gain these details and use it for malicious purposes.

I am on VOIP and normally use a call blocker. I seem to get about 2 spam calls a day. Recently, as an experiment, I re-registered with TPS. Since then I have not had any spam calls. It’s still early days, but it looks like the large fines offcom have been handing out are working.

Hmm, I didn't know about the TPS Service, I'll consider this in future. I also have VOIP Digital Voice with my BT landline. There I get spam as well from the very beginning when I signed up, but quite rare (once or twice in 2-3 months).

On a few occasions in the space of 9 months I received a missed call from a Girls High School. It seems to me that I inherited that number from another customer who previously had this number. But I never bothered to call them to let them know we have nothing to do with that school.

This is another thing to bear in mind. My mum once also bought a Pay As you Go 3 SIM from Sainsbury's a few years ago for her new Xiaomi Phone because her old SIM card was only a standard SIM and the new phones often accept only Nano SIM slot.

To avoid the hassle of cutting the old one we bought a new one. And more or a less after a couple of days we started receiving spam on a brand new SIM! This suggests that we inherited the old number from a previous customer onto the new SIM just as we did with the landline number. So, this is another problem you can face. If you receive spams from the very beginning then the phone number could be recycled and then given to you.

However, in the same way when my mum also took an RWG £2 a month teaser bundle contract with a new number the spam now stopped!

From my experience both with phone calls and email spams, usually the spammers acquire those details and they don't randomly just guess and call. Because by this logic I should've received at least one spam call or email in almost 3 years of having this new number. But never had a single spam call on my new number and the mobile phone is on 24/7. I also have Yandex email and never had a single spam there in 6 years of having this email account.

In 2017 My Gmail address was getting lots of spam and I blame myself for this as I was completing surveys to win Steam game keys and that's how I was getting spam. I then deleted the Gmail address and assigned my Google account with GMX and later with Yandex email address. That way you could delete your Gmail but not your entire Google account. Now if the spammers try to spam they will get a failure message as this address no longer exists. Never tried reopening it though. Gmail gives you the option to upgrade to Gmail within your existing Google account but only with the same old Gmail address and make it primary again.

However, I do not know if the spammers will have given up from the last 8 years since removing it. I'm curious if the spammers will have removed it from their database knowing they can no longer successfully send emails to that address. But I never bothered to make this experiment and reopen it again as I am fine having Yandex email assigned for my Google account.

I now use separate email accounts for different purposes. Yahoo and GMX for Games and Forums. Yandex for employment/job related and Outlook only for Xbox Live/Games for Windows and Microsoft Teams. That way if I ever get spam, I'll know how it happened! Better that way then use a single email account for all activities.