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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.
Junkbusters has an excellent page on stopping telemarketters. Before I read the Junkbusters script I always got annoyed at how telemarketters would keep pitching their product to me after I had politely said no and the only way I could get them to stop was to be less polite and just hang up on them. After reading the Junkbusters site and trying their script I discovered that the magic words "Can you please put this number on your do-not-call list?" almost always gets the telemarketter to immediately stop pitching to you (and it has the nice side effect that some might actually put you on their do-not-call list at some point). They are legally required to maintain a do-not-call list, so they pretty much have to stop bothering you when you ask - check out the Junkbuster site for more info.
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"Please put me on your No Call List."
Cuts right through their spiel. They have to honor your request: it's the law.
I cut my telemarketing calls down from four daily to once every two months. It worked a hell of a lot better than "So, what are you wearing?".
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
It's a "SIT" tone. "Special Information Tone" or something similar. If you put it as the first thing on your answering machine, the telemarker's auto-calling devices will log your number as "out-of-service" and won't call you anymore. You can get the SIT tone here.
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
1) Simply using an answering machine cuts down enormously on phone solicitations. Some sleaze outfits do have equipment that will leave messages but most are only interested in victimizing a live caller.
2) I use an answering machine with a "voice mailbox" capability--mine was made by GE and cost $40. We don't assign anyone to Mailbox 1. Intro message says "Press 2 for Dan, 3 for [my wife]." Those few outfits that use automated equipment to leave message end up in mailbox 1. (But some real messages from baffled people end up there, too, so I still do need to listen to it).
3) On EVERY call I do get, my first words are "I don't want to be called, take me off your list." I believe this really does have some effect.
I currently get less than one solicitation per week.
4) If, for some reason, you're like me and have trouble being rude, a technique that it quite effective with phone solicitors and door-to-door salespeople is to say, politely, but firmly, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." The person who gave me this tip said that many salespeople are specifically trained NOT to break off the conversation or go away until they have heard "no" seven times. Give them their seven noes and they'll break off gracefully. I don't know if that's the explanation, but it does work.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I worked in a soliciting house back in high school. That kind of response generally got a number flagged as "no answer, call back." Seemed to be pretty standard procedure; best way to get back at someone who cursed at you and hung up was to call back.
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Rather than baffle all your legitimate callers, you should first register with the Direct Market Association. The marketers don't want to waste time calling hostile people. Use this to register as a hostile customer. In a bizarre twist, if you register online it is $5. If you register by snail mail it is free. Use snail mail.
I registered quite some time ago and almost all of my sales calls went away. Just the little local people an newspapers were still calling.
You might also check with your state. In Missouri you can sign up here and it becomes illegal for people to call you (with some exceptions for people with powerful lobbies.) I am on this list as well and can't remember the last time I got a sales call.
I work for a company that (among other things) sells predictive dialer systems to telemarketing services. As such, I have found out a couple things about telemarketing that I'd like to pass on:
1. If you get a telemarketer on the phone, all you need to say is "Please put me on your do not call list." Thats all, nothing more. If the telemarketer says anything else to try to get you to buy, ask to talk to their supervisor. After a few months you won't receive any more calls. Telemarketing houses buy lists of names from distributors and are required by law to keep you on a permanent do not call list of you ask for it, and are also required to pass that list back to the distributor.
2. Be careful when you sign up for Magazines, credit cards, etc. Businesses will sell their subscriber's info to telemarketing houses.
3. Look up your state's Public Service Comission. In some states, it's illegal to contact a person that has been put on the state's do not call list. In some cases you can sign up over the Internet.
4. If the phone rings and you get dead air, it's probably a telemarketer. Don't hang up!!! Wait for them to come on the line and follow #1
Summary, when 'someone' answers the phone, the Telezapper sends out a tone that makes the telemarketers auto-dialer think it's out of service, and then the telezapper hangs up.
This is all well and good, execpt that my answermachine is pretty smart. It can sense when an extenion picks up the phone, and the the answering machine will stop and hang up it's extension.
So, follow along:
1) Telemarketer auto-dialer dials a number
2) No one is home, so the answering machine picks up.
3) The telezapper, seeing an extension pick up, also picks up, and plays it's little tones.
4) The answering machine, realizing that 'someone' picked up an extension, stops the playback of the outgoing message, and hangs up.
5) The telezapper, having played it's tones, also hangs up.
Now... in that process, when was an ACTUAL caller allowed to leave a voice message?
That's right. Never.
Pretty severe logic flaw, IMHO.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
From Junkbusters:
"No person may
-- Initiate any telephone call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party)...To the telephone line of any guest room or patient room of a hospital, health care facility, elderly home, or similar establishment; or
To any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
It looks like you can also receive up to $500 in damages if they do call your cell phone (though I don't know if they can be held liable if you claim it is your home phone number.)
I'm not sure if this is a nationwide law, or just a local one, but it's certainly worth looking into.
It is a nationwide law, and THANK GOD FOR THAT!
I am not sure about other states, but here in Missouri there is now a No Call Law. Basically you go to http://www.ago.state.mo.us/nocalllaw.htm and enter your name and info and phone number. Once you do that (there is a small delay) it is illegal for a telemarketer to call you. As of September 26, 2001 the state has collected from telemarketers $102,500 in fines.
Seems to me like more states need these laws, write your state legislator. I know I am on the list, and my parents and we never get any telemarketer calls.
What good is a used up world, and how could it be worth having? --Sting
Telemarketers don't dial the phone at all. They are repeatedly presented with calls that a computerized system has made. The system is tracking calls and knows "how long an average call takes", "how long it takes on average for a called-party to answer", etc.
So telemarketer is talking on the phone to you for 30 seconds. The system knows that "60 seconds is an average call" and it takes 15 seconds for a called-party to answer. So, when you reach 45 seconds, it dials the next number, figuring that "on average" you [or one of your cow-orkers] will be ready for the call when they answer the phone.
What you're seeing is that the calls in the call center are taking longer than average (which is actually sorta unusual because the more calls they make, the better the sample-rate is, and from the experience I had deploying two of these systems, they're REALLY good at it). So, because there's no telemarketer "Ready for your call", you're getting silence... the dialer is "hoping and praying" (so to speak) that one of the marketers gets off the phone quickly so it can hand you over to them.
Believe it or not, this is exactly how simple it is. For your enjoyment here is a list of the four SIT's, with the frequencies and the length of each tone, and their meaning:
Not being a phone company myself, I cannot guarantee that the above tone sequences will always work, but they are the published values.
In case anybody's interested, a recent issue of Poptronics Magazine had an article about SIT's and how they could be used to defeat telemarketers. Sorry, I don't recall the month, but it was quite recent... a perusal in the library through this year's issues should turn it up, if you are curious.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You need to take advantage of the TCPA and extract $500 damages from them. Some people have extracted more than $40,000 from these people. To learn more, visit:
:)
Junk Busters
Use Enigma to log the calls
See if the FCC is already after them
I have already been offered $250 from one telemarketing firm - but I want to go to trial. Also, since I have used the JunkBuster anti-telemarketing script, I am lucky to get any calls at all. The last call was from Qwest on last month - a month after I was sent a letter from one of their lawyers explaining I was on their "do not call list". That call will make me $500 to $1500 when we go to court
If you're in Canada (like me), the CRTC has some good information on telemarketing regulations here: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/ENG/INFO_SHT/T22.HTM
My girlfriend works for Sprint Canda, and we have talked about this Telezaper deal it may work, however the call center is using a calling list that has been purchased from an outside agency usually. The Zaper only removes your number from the current list. So if you want your name removed for good STOP signing up for everything in the free world. In canada you can actually contact the CRTC (canadian radio and telecommunications comission and have your infromation perminatly removed from contact lists that means no more phone calls or junk mail
Error tone:
0 330ms 950Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
1 330ms 1400Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
2 330ms 1800Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
3 5000ms Silence
(source: 'show call progress tone usa' on a Cisco 5340)
Second, a story from about 5 years back about telemarketers:
My mom received a call from a telemarketer (well, looking back, probably someone involved in a telemarketing scam) to which my mom politely replied "Sorry, I don't buy things through telephone solicitations." At this point, the telemarkter got really indignant and my mom simply hung up.
Several times during the nights following this, we started receiving several "ghost" calls with nobody on the other end (this was rare happening for us) which my mom deduced to be the evil caller from a few nights before. What I especially love was her response to this: At the time, the local telco switch was rather broken (don't ask me how, exactly, I don't know much about telco switches) in that if anyone in our town didn't hang up the phone, the other caller *could not* hang up their phone. One night, my mom received one of these calls again and simply left the phone off-hook for about an hour, which basically made it impossible for the offending party to hang up their phone (probably running up a nice charge for whoever was calling.)
We never received another ghost call.
Even more annoying than the predictive dialers are the latest dialers - they deliberately dial 4 or so numbers at once, then disconnect everybody they're calling, with the exception of the person that was first to the phone.
In the event that you pick up the phone after 3 or so rings, and hear nothing on the other end, you'll typically have your number placed right back into the queue. Expect another phone call within 5 minutes or so.
I consulted for a company that used these in their AR department (read: collections), and they apparently saved the company an incredible amount of money.
...at your time/expense, of course.
The pomposity of the professor is inversely proportional to the difficulty and importance of the subject being taught.