Hello? Is anyone there? Click. Click.
For the second year in a row, New Jersey's complaints about robocalls -- those annoying recorded calls telling you to renew your mortgage, save money on your electric bill or "You've won a Caribbean cruise!" -- have hit a new high, according to federal data.
But an even more irritating trend has emerged.
Complaints about abandoned calls -- usually the result of an automatic dialer program hanging up -- rose dramatically to 1,400 complaints so far in 2017, up from nearly zero by the same time in 2015, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
The statistics show spam callers are still getting through to people despite numerous efforts to block junk calls, most notably the 'Do Not Call List', which was established in 2003. Abandoned calls, in particular, are supposed to be subject to strict restrictions by the FCC.
New technology has made large-scale robocalling faster and cheaper, said Henning Schulzrinne, a Columbia University professor and former technology officer at the Federal Trade Commission. Scammers will even hang out in the same dive bars in Florida and Montreal, swapping tips, Schulzrinne said.
"You used to have to buy hardware, have some technical expertise and take time to set it up," he said. "Now you can just download some open-source software and get started very quickly."
One such technology is Caller ID spoofing, which is now often used to change the Caller ID number to match a target's area code. The FCC complaints included a few reports of robocalls from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities number, but they were most likely spoofs.
Schulzrinne said spoofing was also tied to the number of abandoned calls.
"If you're going to fake a number, if the person doesn't pick up right away, you just hang up because there's no point to leaving a voicemail, they can't call you back anyway," he said.
In some cases, the abandoned call is really a scam from the local telephone company in another country to upcharge you for an international call.
Abandoned calls aside, complaints about robocalls in New Jersey increased 22 percent for the period of January through August from 2015 to 2017, while complaints about live voice calls decreased by about the same amount.
Complaints only represent a small subset of total spam calls Garden State residents receive, but they offer a snapshot into how telemarketers are using technology to reach their target audience.
In July, the FCC launched an initiative pairing industry and government officials to work on technical solutions to slowing the rate of robocalls and preventing spoofing. There is are also a range of robocall blocking services, like Nomorobo.
Erin Petenko may be reached at epetenko@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @EPetenko. Find NJ.com on Facebook.