Showtalk said:

I heard that we did stop it and closed down their money sources.

If we really were able to take tens of millions of dollars from them just like that - poof - that hits them where it really hurts - the wallet.

They claim they were shut down, but experts say that could be a ploy.

New York Post

Colonial Pipeline hackers DarkSide have lost control of money, will shut down

Cybercrime group DarkSide, the gang was behind the attack on Colonial Pipeline, said it has lost control of its web servers and some of the money it's made off of ransom payments.

Read more from New York Post

Showtalk said:

They claim they were shut down, but experts say that could be a ploy.

Hopefully they were shut down and stripped of a lot of their assets.

Now if we could hunt them down wherever they hide in the world, and do something to them in a manner that sends a message. Sort of like how Vladimir the Impaler made examples of his enemies.

It would need to be a big example and it would need to stick. It’s kind of like telemarketers in India. The Indian government hates them but they have no other means. Of making good money and it works enough of the time to make it pay.  We’ve talked about that here.

Showtalk said:

It’s kind of like telemarketers in India. The Indian government hates them but they have no other means.

Taunting those telemarketers is a sport in my house.  If they're going to waste my time, I will waste theirs, giving them less time to harass other people.  They are desperate to sell so they will swallow THE most ridiculous comments from me before they finally realize they are wasting their time and hang up on me.

If only that got rid of them.  I stopped answering the phones. I screen calls.

If you get these kind of calls on your cellphone, I recommend an app called "Robokiller".  It has an enormous database of spammers and block those numbers from calling you.  If there are any new numbers used by spammers, the app plays a prerecorded message that sound like a live person fooling the spammer into interacting with it and also records the conversation.  Some of the conversations are hilarious.  I was getting 5 or more spam calls a day on my cell and now it is down to almost nothing.

I will try that.  I usually just delete the record.

I think spammers pass your phone number on to other spammers so blocking the number doesn't stop the spam.  They also know how to spoof numbers so the number you see as the origin of the call is not the real number and blocking it will do no good.

Yes that is true. The phone companies should do something about it. They can ban all robocalls.