The Weekly Breach Breakdown: Silent Call Scams – Why Scammers Call and Say Nothing

Summary

• Silent calls from unknown numbers are often a trick to see if your phone line is active and if a real person will answer. 
• Identity criminals call this “automated reconnaissance”. It’s a way for them to verify your number before they waste time on a human-led scam. 
• If you answer and hear a short delay before someone speaks, it’s usually an automated system “handing off” the call to a live person once it hears your voice. 
• Once your number is confirmed as active, it can be sold to other scammers or used for more serious attacks like trying to take over your accounts or your phone service. 
• While AI voice cloning is a concern, saying a quick “hello” is usually not enough for a scammer to steal your voice. To stay safe, the best move is to hang up on silent calls and use spam-blocking tools from your phone provider. 
• If you think you’ve been targeted by a scam, contact an ITRC advisor for free help at 888.400.5530 or live chat on our company website. 

Full Transcript

Welcome to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s (ITRC) Weekly Breach Breakdown for March 20, 2026. I’m Tim Walden. Thanks to Sentilink for their support of the podcast and the ITRC.  

Each week, we look at the latest news and trends in data security and privacy. Today, we’re talking about something almost all of us have dealt with: those weird, silent phone calls from numbers you don’t recognize. 

You pick up, say “hello,” and… nothing. Just silence. It’s tempting to think it’s a wrong number or a bad connection, but there may be a very specific reason for that silence on the other end. 

Think of these silent calls as a scammer’s version of a “roll call”. According to reporting from ZDNET, these calls are rarely accidental. Identity criminals run their operations like a business, and they don’t want to waste time on a phone number that’s disconnected or belongs to a machine. By picking up, you’ve just confirmed that your number is active and that a real human is on the other end. 

In the world of cybercrime, a “verified” phone number is worth money. It gets added to lists that are bought and sold among different criminal groups. 

Have you ever noticed a short pause before someone finally says something? That’s the “handoff.” An automated system is dialing thousands of numbers at once, and the moment it hears your voice, it connects the call to a live person. 

While silent calls are creepy to think about, answering doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve phished or attacked you. Some people worry about “voice cloning,” where AI mimics your voice, but experts say a simple “hello” isn’t enough to pull that off. The real risk is that once they know you’ll answer, they’ll target you with more convincing scams later, like fake “there’s a problem with your account” calls or even attempts to take over your mobile phone’s SIM card. 

So, what can you do to keep your information safe? 

• Don’t be afraid to hang up: If you answer and hear silence, just hang up immediately. If it were a real person or a business with something important to say, they would leave a voicemail. 
• Play the “Quiet Game”: If you really feel like you need to pick up an unknown number, try not saying anything at all. If the computer on the other end doesn’t hear a voice, it might think your number is dead and take you off the list. 
• Use your phone’s “Shields”: Most major carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have free tools to block spam calls. You can also look into well-known apps like Hiya or RoboKiller to do the heavy lifting for you. 

One side note – not all auto-dialed calls are scams. Many legitimate businesses also use pre-programmed dialers to contact customers, but you can bet that criminals are the one’s most likely to stay quiet when you answer. 

While these tips help stop the annoying silent calls, the most important thing you can do for your overall security is to freeze your credit. It’s the single best way to make sure a criminal can’t open new accounts in your name, even if they have your number. 

Also, make sure you’re using passkeys when you can, or at least long, unique passphrases with multi-factor authentication—that’s the extra code sent to your phone or verification app—to keep your accounts locked down. 

Contact the ITRC 

If you want to learn more about protecting your personal information from silent call scams or if you think you’ve been the victim of a scam, you can talk to an expert ITRC advisor. You can call us, text us, or chat with us live on our website during our normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time. Just visit our website to get started. 

Thanks again to Sentilink for their support of the ITRC and this podcast. Don’t forget to hit the like button and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back next week with another episode of the Weekly Breach Breakdown. I’m Tim Walden. Until next time, thanks for listening.