Every call I’ve ever had that was a wrong number, misdailed number, pocket dial or whatever that wasn’t supposed to be for me turned out to be a spam call or marketing call for something. Most of the time, it was a way for me to confirm my number to some dumb marketer.
For the past year or two, I answer all mysterious calls I don’t recognize and put it immediately on ‘mute’. If the person calling doesn’t identify themselves … I let them hang up first and then I just block the number. If they identify themselves with some weird marketing message … I let them hang up and then block the number.
I’ve posted this story in various guises before, but back in the '90s a friend of mine had a dedicated phone line for his modem (yes, this was before residential broadband of any stripe was readily accessible) which was the inverse of the local Dominos Pizza. Like, ###-###-0101 vs ###-###-1010.
Tons of calls from a wide cross section confused, stupid, angry, and belligerent would-be pizza seekers arrived at the telephone he had plugged into that line, and many many more must have gone into the black hole of the perpetual busy signal.