The best advice I ever got was from my state DNC investigator when I had a ton of repeats from the same offender. He recommended that I not pick up the phone on numbers that I do not recognize and are unidentified or suspicious IDs. I took his advice and receive many fewer calls than before. I never get the repeats I see complained about.
Your advice to others is good, but a call blocker is not necessary if they'd just NOT answer calls from numbers they don't know. Answering these calls puts you on the list to call you more often.
Actually, I find this interesting since I recently had to contact Microsoft when their Windows 10 upgrade fubarred my laptop. But I contacted THEM. So I knew I had the real company. But that call made me think of this scam which I have seen go around before from other bogus phone numbers.
Received a call at 10:18 p.m. Woman with thick Indian accent said she was calling from Microsoft regarding my Windows operating system. When I asked her if she knew what time it was, she hung up.
Played the game...had the guy telling me several times to press the CTRL button and the letter r button....not sure what that. Was supposed to do but I just kept telling him my computer was broke after that first Ray...he finally gave up. Said he would call back in two hours.....