It's funny how we went from using phone as a medium of joyful communication to it being a vector of utter dross. But then, any service today where someone can send you anything unsolicited falls under the same category, unfortunately. Mrk
Even before A.I. was a thing - answering an unknown number - came with its risks. That being said - unless you know the number/caller - i'd avoid it. Tho i get it: easier said than done - especially when you have a delivery on the way. But at least avoid - numbers which don't belong to local networks. Has an incident on a new phone - where i didn't check the number and just answer it - and nobody seems to be on the line. While the caller/number was part of an Indian network. Didn't put much thought into it - but latter that day... one of the apps icon was renamed to "**** U" I presume... my phone was hacked - and didn't find anything useful (had no credit card logins - not even active social media accounts or some interesting photo - so he got pissed and renamed that icon. If he didn't do that - wouldn't even know it happen. Not really sure - how he did it either... I know WhatsApp was linked - so maybe there was some vulnerability he could exploit. The Phone is a Xiaomi using MIUI - so that too could have some vulnerability. Not to mention - the Phone/SIM app is managed by Google. The only shocking part about it... "was that simple" - just answering a phone call and already became a random target.
There is no way to know. They can spoof any number they want to. It was really common for a while to get calls where only the last 4 digits were different from my own.
I digress. Checking the Spam & Blocked numbers from past 5 years - more than half are local, so... you are correct.
On iPhone I just use silence unknown caller(s), can check them later amazing thou what get identified as spam
