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(And yes, I do know the T stands for tones. And YES, I know the title says Standard Interrupt Tones Tones. So what?)

You could always put SIT (Standard Interrupt Tones) as the first thing on your voicemail. Any kind of decent predictive dialer will register you as not-in-service.

A quick Google turns up this site: http://privatecitizen.com/sit.html

Basically, you can either use standard technical or social means for screening out telemarketing calls or you may have to resort to a legal approach. For standard methods, consult Junkbusters as a start. In this case, you may have to resort to a legal approach. Private Citzen has one book you might find useful if you care enough about this to go that route.

How many have used the SIT-tones to deter autmated/prerecorded phone-spam? I am seriously considering recording those three tones first on my answering machine. I know that's all those tele-zappers are - a device that generates those three tones at specific frequencies.

The three well-known tones have the frequencies 985.2 Hz, 1370.6 Hz, and 1776.7 Hz.

The three well-known tones have the frequencies 985.2 Hz, 1370.6 Hz, and 1776.7 Hz.

If you really, really can't find a vendor other than one who has junk-marketed you, then at least you should try to hide that.

If a junk call gives you the idea to get a service, then spend a week or two calling around to make sure you've found the best deal. Then call them and order. This bends their stats to make junk marketing look less effective.

And to get them to stop bothering you, consider signing up with Private Citizen and something like Privacy Manager. Between the two of them, I get one junk call about every three months now.

Here are the tones-> s.i.t. tones from Private Citizen, Inc.

Here are the tones-> s.i.t. tones from Private Citizen, Inc.

There's an outfit called "Private Citizen that helps you receive less (snail) junk mail and fewer telemarketing calls. The sell a book called So You Want To Sue A Telemarketer. I sure hope that they come out with the "Sue A Spammer" edition of this book soon. Even though I think too many people are quick to sue in this country, I can't think of anybody who deserves a lawsuit more than the spreaders of spam.

People too cheap (ok, "frugal") to spend money at Private Citizen can try following the advice at Junkbusters, and they even have a page concerning spam.

There's an outfit called "Private Citizen that helps you receive less (snail) junk mail and fewer telemarketing calls. The sell a book called So You Want To Sue A Telemarketer. I sure hope that they come out with the "Sue A Spammer" edition of this book soon. Even though I think too many people are quick to sue in this country, I can't think of anybody who deserves a lawsuit more than the spreaders of spam.

People too cheap (ok, "frugal") to spend money at Private Citizen can try following the advice at Junkbusters, and they even have a page concerning spam.

There is a group of activists and tagalongs (I fall in the latter category, as I haven't actually sued anyone myself yet) who have combined into an organization called Private Citizen .

If you join they will, on your behalf, send cease and desist letters to several hundred direct marketing companies, including telemarketers. The cost for both the telemarketing and junk mail service was, I think, $30.00 US. That was the best $30.00 I ever spent: my junk phone calls went to zero and my junk mail to just a trickle.

In addition, they have extensive information on how to combat telemarketers, how to go about suing them in small claims court (and winning), and other guarilla tactics individuals can use to get some of their privacy back.

I am a very satisfied, paying member of that group, and highly recommend it to anyone who seriously wants this shit to end, now. They were highly effective in ending it for me (I had been getting harassed multiple times/week, now I haven't been bothered in months).

Good Luck!

In previous slashdot spam discussions www.privatecitizen.com has been recommended as an excellent guard against unwanted phone and snail mail advertisements. I don't use it ( I see using the court system to go after these people as only slightly less objectionable than using the legislature), but perhaps someone who does can comment on it's effectiveness and whether it would guard against cell phone mail spam ? It seems that privatecitizen depends on being able to distribute a list to known advertisers, and I think that many spammers ( wireless and regular ) are much more fly-by-night types.

Several times in this thread Europeans have jumped in saying that they have to pay to download spam because of non-free local calls. But it is technically possible to make a good spam defense even without having to download the entire spam:

• Get a shell account and read your mail on the server, downloading only what is displayed to you. Of course, you pay for the connection while you stare at messages and compose them, so you might look into something more sophisticated, such as . . .
• Get a shell account and split the spam with procmail or the equivalent (on the server), and set up something like fetchmail to only get the important stuff, plus a log file of all the headers/subjects of the spam, just in case an important one slipped through the filter and you want to actually look at it. Or . . .
• Have a program that talks directly to a POP server once you are connected, that downloads just the headers and subjects, starts downloading everything obviously not spam in the background while presenting you with a list of of everything so you can select things to download and read and things to delete unread.

I suspect it is because annoyance at spam is not as widespread as a vocal minority would have us believe. It is just not that big a problem in the larger scheme of things. Otherwise someone would have already written the program I listed last above and they would be making money going to ISPs and integrating it with the little custom windows dialers and email clients.

Web banner ads are more annoying and take up time right when you are trying to actually do something (look at a web page), so fairly effective filters came out quickly. But I suspect that most people also stay on longer than necessary just to download their mail, because they briefly check the slashdot headlines for example, and their mail can download in the unused bandwidth while they browse.

I am afraid that we will let government regulation do it's usual heavy-handed solution that will only stop 50% of the problem anyway, rather than picking a technical solution which involves less emotionally gratifying yelling (and slashdot posts) and would solve 80% or 90% of the problem. If non-download filters were common and the default on ISP services, response rates to spam would drop.

But is junkmail illegal? I personally have more of a problem with getting paper junkmail which takes more time to dispose of as I attempt to be a good recycler...all I have to do is hit the delete key in my inbox

I applaud your efforts and determination to recycle the paper wasted by junk mailers, but you miss the point entirely. Unlike junk mail (and the far more irritating junk phone calls), with email and usenet SPAM the cost of delivery is borne by the recipient, either directly (as in Europe, with their per minutes line and ISP charges) or indirectly as an ISP charges slightly more for internet access to offset the cost of the bandwidth which the SPAM has taken (and SPAM takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth).

Junk faxes are illegal, and have been for years, because the cost of toner and paper are borne by the recipient, and each junk fax costs the recipient real dollars. The same is true of SPAM.

Recycling paper may be more of a hassle than deleting unwanted mail, but multiply the bandwidth and disk usage of your unread mail by several million and the cost to the consumer for unsolicited SPAM is appalling. And while we could stop deforestation and meet our paper needs next growing season by planting hemp and producing paper from it rather than trees, there is no similar way to reclaim the bandwidth, diskspace, and people's time (also a considerable expense) which SPAMmers routinely steal from their victims.

The judge's decision is a farce, both logically in terms of the legalities themselves and in terms of their real-world effects. Not only should the state of Washington appeal the decision, but someone should take a very hard look at his portfolio and bank accounts. And everyone should forward their morning's SPAM to the idiot as well -- let him share in the consiquences of his ill-considered decision.

Finally, I recommend you take a gander at

http://www.privatecitizen.com/

$30 will go a very long way toward helping you avoid those long treks to the recycling center, and help you win back a big chunk of your valuable time. I have used this service and it does stop junk phonecalls altogethre, and junk mail slows to a tiny trickle. Highly recommended!

If you have a credit card, own a home, rent an apartment, have a drivers liscense[sic], or even a social security number, you've given up your privacy. It's just a matter of time until someone wants to take advantage of that fact.

I haven't "given up" jack. Had take from me, through deception, coercion, or force perhaps, but I in no way "willingly and knowingly" gave anyone permission to poke around in my private affairs, much less give or sell that information to others. But, living in the US of A, my privacy was sold against my will to every mass mailer and spammer on the planet long ago. (Indeed, I was getting junk mail years before I was an adult, and therefor too young by law to enter into any agreement allowing anything of the kind. Not that that stopped them, mind you.)

If you think I'm going to take such invasions of my privacy lying down, you have a rather nasty surprise in store.

See Private Citizen on how to at least curb one particular invasion of privacy which is all too common. (My only affiliation with them is as a very satisfied, paying "member"). It was the best $30.00 I ever spent, eliminating all of my junk mail and junk phone calls in one fell swoop.