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Foiling 'Backdoor' Voicemail Spam?
Cheffo Jeffo asks: "After receiving a number of (repeated and irritating) voicemail spams in the past week, I starting investigating what my options were for blocking these pre-recorded messages that are eating up my mailbox and costing me money when I check my messages using a cellphone. While it appears that I can do nothing at this point in time (I am Canadian and the CRTC hasn't had the wisdom to make this stupidity illegal yet), I was wondering if there is a technical measure that I can use to stop the insanity (other than reverting to a regular answering machine).
In my particular case, the telemousketeer autodialer dials into the telco's voicemail backdoor (xxx-210-0yyy) and punches in the phone number xxx-yyy-zzzz. If they find that there is no mailbox, then they hang up and remove the number from the call list. Otherwise, they leave their obnoxious solicitation.How do they determine whether a mailbox exists (as you can tell, I am no expert)?" Might there be some tone that you can record at the start of the outgoing message that will fool the autodialer into marking the number as "disconnected"?
"If I were to record the 'I'm sorry, <some-phony-number> is not a valid mailbox, please try again' message as my mailbox identifier, would that work?
Any other ideas (other than the providing Slashdot with the URLs for the offending companies to punish their web servers)?"
My girlfriend did just that when the voicemail spam got out of hand. Their message now says "If you are going to leave an advertisement of any kind, hang up now because we will not respond. However if you are trying to reach..." and so on.
They haven't a single ad since.
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
But since I have not lived in Canada long enough and recent enough to say any word about how their telephone spammers works, but in the US, people who use telezapper thang-a-magic, swear by it, telling that it reduced 90% of their telemarketing calls. Me ? I am a die-hard freebie fan, use a regular answering machine to screen calls and erase them when I get an ocassional one or two every week.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
No idea about in Canada, but in the UK under Statutory Instrument 2000 No. 2334, The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 you have the right to cancel an order at any time up to dispatch and up to 7 days from receipt of goods in which to return them and obtain a refund (which must be paid within 30 days). There are exemptions to the law - unsealed computer software, magazines, perishable goods, lottery or gambling services or if the good is personalised to the consumer.
Check out this help wanted ad from Boxpilot (one of the companies in this business) to see how this is done. A live person calls your company and asks the receptionist to be transfered to your voicemail box, and then s/he presses play on the message. There's no automated/technological solution to block that, and I don't know if you want the receptionist to question the intentions of anyone who wants to be transferred to your voicemail.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Yes, if you set your voice mail message to use the triple tone indicating that the number has been disconnected then it will take you off their list.
I've gone one better and found an entire WAV of the "We're sorry" message online, and have that for my voice mail message. Now, not only do telemarketers not have me on any lists, but only the people I know and want to have call me leave me messages.
If you'd like the WAV or can't find just the three tone WAV (you can have just the three tones then put in your real voice mail message; the telemarketing systems won't notice), post a reply here and I'll work out a way to get it to you.
Define cheap.
You can get a basic stamp cpu for anywhere between $30 and $60, with maybe $10 more in parts (speaker, battery, a board to put them all together on, etc) and maybe an hour learning to code its DTMF commands, and you can build one yourself.
I dunno if close to $100 is cheap or not for ya though.
Here's the deal on Tom...
I, too, was spammed by him, and called his campaign office to complain. They informed me that some kid (likely the same one sending me 48 minute rap and hate filled messages) hijacked an actual campaign they DID do ONCE and spammed random phone numbers across the city. The people involved in the original compaign, and Bell Canada were apparently "working together" to figure out who did this and how. I haven't received one in a month.
http://www.hainsworth.com