TeleZapper - A Way to Avoid Telemarketers?

VeniDormi asks: "While watching TV on my TiVo, I actually stopped to see an ad for a device called 'The TeleZapper', which claims to foil tele-marketers by convincing their auto-dialers that your number has been disconnected. The FAQ is light on technical details, only mentioning that the device 'emits [a] tone briefly when the line is answered'. I'm hoping Slashdotters with more telecommunications expertise can enlighten me as to: how/if this might work and whether or not it is something I could reproduce with a sound card, say for recording at the beginning of my voicemail message. Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?" Ah, the telephone equivalent to SPAM. Too bad phones don't have the equivalent of procmail filters.

Comments

Better Idea

[InfinityWpi]

I don't care about the telemarketers. They dont' call me. I wanna device that'll tell people that the reason some strange guy picked up the phone at their daughter's place WAS BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T DIAL THE RIGHT NUMBER! Geeze, people... I should start saying she's tied up to the bed... you'd think after the third wrong number they'd get the hint.

Re:Better Idea

[CmdrPinkTaco]

I am a 24 year old male (don't worry, there is a reason that Im telling this). At the time that this occured, I still lived with my parents. One morning after a long night of heavy binge drinking I was awakend at the gawd awful hour of 11:00 to my phone ringing. Since I was the only one home at the time, I picked up. On the other end of the line was a telemarketer who was far too perky for my likings that was inquiring about the availiblilty of my sister.

"Yes, this is so-and-so from such-and-such a company, may I speak with Jessica?"

To which I replied in my gravely, gruff, I-smoke-2-packs-a-day-and-you-just-woke-me-up voice, "Yeah, this is her."

The part that really cracked me up was when the perky telemarketer went on to give me the sales pitch.

I just hung up. I have found that to be a very effective method in ridding myself of telespammers.

Why waste it?!

[clinko]

I love when they call. Mess with their heads. I once told the guy "i'm on the can, but go ahead" Then strained and grunted while he was talking. It was fun, but I laughed too hard then hung up.

Re:Why waste it?!

[Telecommando]

A friend of mine loves to mess with them as well. For years he'd listen to their pitch, then start breathing heavily, "Hehhh, Henh" and ask "What kind of underwear are you wearing? Is it soiled? Can you send me a pair?" They'd usually hang up right away. Once one of them called the police and reported him for making an obscene call. He explained to the cops that the telemarketer had called HIM and told them what he had done. I guess the cops were still laughing as they drove away.

Now his favorite routine is to try to "convert" them.

"Have you taken our Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior? Have you welcomed him into your heart? For LO! He is coming. Coming to cast all vile sinners into the firey pits of..." And that's about as far as he's ever gotten before they hang up. Pity, he's got about a 10 minute routine worked up. Funniest thing about it is when he receives one of these calls on his cell phone in a restaraunt. You should see all the other diners shut up and listen in, then nervously go back to their conversations.

Re:Shrill tones

[The God Soldier]

No, they're copyrighted by those guys from Australia...

Just hang up...

[sterno]

How about just hanging up on every person who calls you? If it's important they'll call you back, even if they are a bit confused. Telemarketers never call back.

Advantages:

1) FREE
2) Causes confusion (always a plus)

Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[MadCow42]

Well, if you're bored, anyways:

1: "I'd like to ask you a few questions for a survey..."
you: "Sure, hold on a second, I'll be right back" (put phone next to stereo playing Cindi Lauper, for about an hour).

2: "May I speak to the man of the house?"
you: "Define 'man'..." (rant and rave about sexual discrimination until they hang up)

3: "I'd like to offer you a free..."
you: "Where is it made? Does it contain asbestos? Is it compatible with Linux? Were any animals harmed during it's manufacture? How much does it cost anyways? What do you mean free? Oh, sorry, I can't afford free."

4: "Hi, is this Mr. _____?"
you: "Sorry, he died this morning.... (boo hoo...)"

5: "We're going to be in your neighborhood..."
you: "Can you help me with something first... I gotta finish this math homework before I do anything else... What's the cube root of 42? How do you calculate the inverse tangent for triangle A?"

You get the point... it's amazing fun actually, you don't have to make any sense either! Annoy them enough, waste their time, they'll never call again, and be less apt to annoy your neighbors! If everyone used up their time, telemarketing would cease to be profitable, and would then stop happening!

MadCow.

You people are getting it all wrong... try

[Lostman]

something like an EULA. Why just let them call or pay money in order for you not to get their calls, when them calling you can be a source of income?

Use caller-id and whenever you see a number that does not appear, answer the phone with "Thanks for calling the (whatever) residence. Because of the increasingly large amount of time taken up on the phone I am having to start charging a fee for those who wish to speak to me. By staying on the phone you acknowledge and aquiesce to the fact that you will be held responsible for a 5 doller/minute cost to speak to me. If you do not agree to this, please hang up now" -- since most telemarketers are under strict policies that they can not hang up on customers.. well, it worked for the software industry, right?

disappointed

[Dr. Awktagon]

TeleZapper

Aww, shucks, I saw this and I thought it would be some clever system that involved high voltage.

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[Thagg]

My brother lives with his boyfriend in Berkeley. This is his favorite script, from when he worked at home:

ring ring

Hello, this is ABC company. Is Mr. Caner in?

[imagine his deep voice] No, Mr. Caner is not in.

Oh, then can I speak to Mrs. Caner?


Speaking

[caller gets perplexed, always hangs up]

thad

Re:What's the point?

[S.Lemmon]

Here's my favorite telemarketer trick: when they first ask for someone say something like "hold on, I get them..." then just leave the phone off the hook. Check back 15 minutes later or so. If by some miracle they're still on the line, repeat.
Hey, let 'em call back if they like - see how much of their time you can waste!

Fun telemarketers story

[Nagash]

I might as well chime in with my super-fun-time story about telemarkets calling my place once.

Now, I must admit I don't get that many calls. However, they still get to me. At any rate, a friend of mine was over at my place and my roommate was home when I got the call...

Drone: Hello, I'm calling from etc. you know the drill

Me: Well, I can't say I'm terribly interested...

Drone: pitch continues

(At this point, my friends realize I'm on the phone with a telemarketer. They decide it's time for fun.)

Roommate: (bellowing) Junior! Get back in that box!

Friend: (timidly, in child-like voice) No daddy! No! I don't want to go back in there!

Roommate: I told you to get in that box! Do as you're told or you got a beating coming!

Friend: (crying sounds)

(All this time, I remain pretty silent, although trying very hard not to laugh.)

Drone: Uh, is everything OK?

Me: (flatly) Yes. Everything is fine. It's the TV.

Drone: (slight pause) Well, I'll be going now.

(hangs up)

--
Woz

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[well_jung]

I actually quite enjoy telling the marketers off. It's a great way to vent the frustrations of 13 hours in the server room. And it's a lot better than kicking the dog (well, for the dog, anyway)

Oddly enough

[jayed_99]

I watched this happen last Saturday. I'm over at a guy's home office setting up a FreeBSD web & mail server for him.

His phone rings. I watch him pick it up and say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Moreland passed away yesterday."

Then he says, "No, Mrs. Moreland is in custody as the prime suspect."

I nearly pissed myself.

My favorite tactic.

[trilucid]

Back in the day when I still lived with my parents, there was a 6 month period where we were receiving an average of 3 telemarketing calls per night from long distance phone service carriers.

Smile. My father's an engineer with AT&T.

I think the record for the longest I kept 'em on the phone was something like 45 minutes. They'd give me the standard pitch about how much money they could save us over AT&T, and I'd politely insist that there was NO WAY that was possible...

Of course, I had to be nice to them, so I always asked them to go into detail on every plan they offered. This takes quite a while, needless to say, but I didn't care (watching TV, using the bathroom, whatever while they yapped).

You see, their call success averages depend on their ability to sign up a certain number of customers within a given period of time. I was *bad* for their numbers.

They just loved it when I finally got around to giving them a boarding pass to the Clue Train, inscribed with the message "Our long distance is free... my dad works for AT&T... he might quit soon though." I suppose my sense of humour is a bit sick, but they deserved every ounce of it. :).