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

I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[crispy]

I haven't had a single phone solicitation since I signed up for the service a few months ago. It's well worth the $3/month.

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)

What's the point?

[aliebrah]

Wouldn't it just be a lot easier if, for example, when you hear a telemarketer on the phone just say "get bent" and then hang up on them?

Seems like a much less troublesome and a much more effortless solution to me! :)

Re:What's the point?

[xinit]

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.

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!

How it works

[.@.]

It emits three rising tones, identical to those that precede "invalid number" errors. Automated telemarketing tools recognize these control tones and disconnect the call, AND remove the number from their dialing pool, since they think it's now an invalid number. After the three tones, the phone rings as normal. Two drawbacks: This won't work with telemarketers that don't use automated tools, and it may confuse people who call you, since their brain may also think "it's an error message, I'm going to hang up now." After all, who listens to the phone errors? When you hear the tones, you know you're not getting through, so you disconnect.

Re:How it works

[Cap'n Crax]

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.

Re:How it works

[dachshund]

See this page for a table of frequencies and durations of "SIT" tones.

Good luck.

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.

My solution to telemarketers

[atrowe]

I haven't gotten a call from a telemarketer for years.

My solution: I don't have a home phone. Whenever I am forced to give out my telephone number, I give the number to my cell phone. In my locality (Virginia, US), it is illegal for a solicitor to call a cell phone. This is because if a solicitor were to call my cell phone, *I* would be the one paying for their call.

I'm not sure if this is a nationwide law, or just a local one, but it's certainly worth looking into. Many cellular service providers are now offering unlimited local plans for around $50 US, so the cost is close to that of a regular land line.

Even easier

[Tim Macinta]

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.

Re:Shrill tones

[The God Soldier]

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

A polite but firm...

[ktakki]

"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.

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 should ask them not to call

[victim]

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.

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?

Re:Related question

[Rackemup]

One or two times a day I receive calls with nobody on the other end. I usually say "Hello..... Hello??? Anybody there?" for a while and then hang up.
I have been told that this is a telemarketing system seeing if my number is "good". Is there any truth to this?

Most likely... they program their computers to try a number several times. If someone answers it gets flagged as "active" and you go into the caller databse.

The same thing happened to my parents last month. Every day for a week they get ghost calls (no one on the other end), then a week later someone calls to ofer them a credit card, carpet cleaning, etc.

disappointed

[Dr. Awktagon]

TeleZapper

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

...and why it DOESN'T work....

[iceT]

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.

Looks to be a national law...

[corky6921]

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.)

OH CRAP

[Drunken_Jackass]

Ok, Ok, I admit it - i work for a telemarketing company. There, you happy?! I do it begrudgingly to support my "habit". Anyway, we use a number of methods, one of which being a predictive dialer running on SCO.

Our dialer has the ability to detect tritones - the "doo dee dii, the number you have reached...". There are several different tritones, and our dialer can distinguish between a "Changed Number" tritone, and a "Bad Number" tritone. I suppose that if this device sends out a tritone that matches the "Bad Number" tritone, our dialer wouldn't call it. You can, however, set your dialer to do whatever you like with those "dispositions". An unscrupulous company may set their dailer to pass those calls to the reps instead of dropping the line (We don't do that).

However, i happened to catch that commercial too, and it also says that it "...will automatically delete your name from their database". Of course, that's horse shit. It'll just dispo your record as bad number, what the company does with those is up to them.

Naturally i encourage everyone to check out their states' Do Not Call registry and add your name if you don't want to be disturbed (BTW, the laws about DNC'ing don't apply to things like election polling and charitable organizations - funny huh?)

So that's that!

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:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[Russ Steffen]

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've found that this is the single most effective way to cut down on telemarketeing calls (aside from hunting telemarketers for sport, of course). I started doing this about a year and a half ago. At the time I was getting 2 to 3 calls per night (and about a dozen during the day judging by the caller-id box). Now I get one call maybe every six weeks or so. That I can handle.

When I do get a call, I just interrupt them as soon as it's clear that they are a telemarketer. I always use the phrase "place me on your do-not-call list". If you just say "take me off your list", they will - but as soon as they buy some more numbers that happen to include yours your're back on the list. The "Do Not Call List" is different, as once you are on it, you should never get an unsolicited call from that organization again (and all telemarketers are required by law to have such a list).

junkbusters.com has lots of good info on the subject.

Re:Related question

[Dredd13]

Telephone marketers use what are called "predictive dialers", which (if you examine the problem from their end) is a nifty solution to the problem of "maximising the time a telemarketer is on the phone".

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.

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:simple solutions also work

[mdpowell]

A simple solution for me is to have an *extremely* short answering machine message: "Please leave a message at the tone" said very quickly. My answering machine message is so short that the tele-spamming autodialiers don't recognize it as a machine and go ahead and connect to the telemarketer instead of disconnecting.

For a few months the result was a lot of messages saying "Hello . . . Hello . . . Are you there?" But the telemarketers then think it is a "broken" line, take the number off the list, and soon there are fewer telemarketers.

Simple and free.

Some details on this sort of thing are at http://www.scn.org/~bk269/bug.html

--mdp

The short answer is yes.

[mark-t]

Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?"

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:

• NC - No Circuit Found: 985.2 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1428.5 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms
• IC - Operator Intercept: 913.8 Hz, 274.0 ms; 1370.6 Hz, 274.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms
• VC - Vacant Circuit: 985.2 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1370.6 Hz, 274.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms
• RO - Reorder (system busy): 913.8 Hz, 274.0 ms;1428.5 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms

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.

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.

"Get bent" does not work

[iconnor]

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 :)

FYI: Canadian regulations

[spanielrage]

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 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. :).

Re:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[coyote-san]

They may be required to identify themselves (both company and individual) upon demand, pursuit to the "DNC order" since you must be able to document who you told not to call you again (d'uh), but about half the time I demand this information they "accidently" disconnect me before providing this information..

By some amazing coincidence this almost always happens with blocked caller ID information. I could probably call Qworst and ask them to trace it, but I know that it's a dead end.

I only happened once, years ago, with valid caller ID information. For a long distance carrier. I couldn't reach the same department, but I reached another department and had a chat with the supervisor about the consequences of hanging up on people exercising their legal rights to stop solicitations - something that was especially pointless in this case since they were trying to sell me business services for "distinctive ringing" on my home phone number, not a separate business line! She couldn't give me the name and numbers I requested, but did promise to forward my demand (not request, demand) that a senior manager contact me on the following Monday about their violation of federal law. They never called me back, of course, but they never called me back *at all* so I let it slide.

The other scam some have tried is to claim that it could take "up to 90 days" for the DNC order to be processed. I tell them I didn't care, if they call me again they can tell it to the judge. They try to insist that the federal law permits this, I repeat that I don't care - if they call me again they'll be explaining it to the judge.

I'm sure that the law *does* allow a "reasonable" time for the DNC order to be processed, but that should be a few weeks at most with a manual system that depends on paper forms physically mailed to a central site, then physically mailed to each site in an update list. With a computerized system, the DNC order should go live either immediately or some time during the middle of the night.

Privacy Manger is extortion

[PD]

1) You get phone service from phone company
2) Phone company sells your information to other companies.
3) You tell phone company to make your number unlisted.
4) Phone company sells your information anyway.
5) Telemarketers start calling you.
6) You get "unknown caller blocking" and caller ID to stop telemarketers.
7) The phone company sells a service to the telemarketers that allows them to get around the unknown caller blocking.
8) You're getting telemarketing calls again, so PacBell says to you: pay us some money and we'll protect you from those telemarketers.
9) You send them their $3 a month and you're safe again, until the next time PacBell sells the telemarketers a service to let them get around the privacy manager.

It's a fucking extortion racket.