Ultimate Caller ID Screeners?

omasse asks: "I'm sick of telemarketing. Really sick. And since I'm in Canada, the new U.S. telemarketing law won't change a thing for me. The only easy solution is a technological one, and it ought to be fully transparent: No phone in my house should ring at all if it's an undesired call, and friends and family should not have to enter a 5-digit code to make them ring. To my knowledge, the only gadget that could do this is a sharp filter based on caller ID that I plug in my main phone drop. But Digitone's Caller ID Screener has been announced some time ago, there are no guarantees they'll meet their fall 2003 deadline, and I would prefer having a few products to chose from. There's been a discussion here once on a DIY home PBX system but that's way, way overkill for me. Could anyone tell me what are the ultimate Caller ID Screeners?"

Comments

Asterisk

[tzanger]

Asterisk can solve that for you. I am playing with it now. It can do different things based on the received CID and even do things like play the "disconnected line" tone sequence before passing the call to you if the CID is unknown.

Just a word of advise: Don't use Quicknet's cards -- the cards work fine but the asterisk developers seem to have something against them, almost forcing you to use Digium's FXO/FXS cards instead. The PhoneJack/LineJacks will work fine for a little while and then you'll get weird problems like oddball rings, CID not being passed through, DTMF not being passed through, all kinds of little issues that you'll have to restart asterisk or reload the modules to fix. The standard answer on #asterisk is "Use Digium cards instead." Right.

Try this:

[Dark Nexus]

http://www.the-cma.org/consumer/donotcall/dnc_serv ice.cfm

Certainly not legally binding, nor as extensive as the US Do-Not-Call list. I think this is what an earlier poster was referring to (though I could be wrong).

Alternately, just fake your death!

Re:Try this:

[Quikah]

you beat me to it. There is a similar list for every country the Direct Marketing Association operates in (I think, hard to tell where I don't speak the language, but UK, Australia, Canada and US all have lists).

You can find your country specific weblinks at http://www.the-dma.org/affiliates/dmintl.shtml.

SCUD

[Van Halen]

Perhaps SCUD will work for you. I've never used it, but a quick search in /usr/ports/comms turned it up.

A few years ago I had a whole answering machine system running on my Linux box using this voice modem package and a heavily modified version of the included script. I rewrote the script in perl and modified to, among other things, answer unknown or private calls after the first ring. It was hacked together, but not half bad in the end.

Then about 3 years ago I switched to FreeBSD and never quite got the voice modem control program working. I gave up and got privacy manager from the phone company, which does a fairly good job. Besides, the voice modem was ISA, in a machine that was getting pretty old. I probably still have all that stuff on some backup CD somewhere, but who knows exactly where...

VoicePulse VoIP works here in the U.S.

[Rescate]

I use the features of voice-over-IP provider VoicePulse to accomplish what you are talking about. I know that you can't get VoicePulse in Canada, but maybe there are other VoIP providers there that I don't know about, who offer similar features. You sign up with them, and they send you a preconfigured Cisco ATA-186 to hook up to your broadband connection. You plug a telephone into the Cisco ATA to use it.

You can then set up anonymous call blocking so that callers without caller ID don't get through. You can optionally set it up to allow anonymous callers if they enter their phone number after prompted, which then gets sent to your caller ID as ??1234567890?? to indicate that the call was originally anonymous.

They also have "Telemarketer Block", which I assume is the same kind of thing the Telezapper does. I should probably turn it on, but I thought it might be annoying to callers.

You can also use their Do Not Disturb feature in combination with their Filter feature to send most callers immediately to voice mail, but allow your family to ring through. You do this by activating the Do Not Disturb feature, and then setting a filter for each family member's telephone number with the filter action set to "Always Ring" (the filter overrides the Do Not Disturb).

The filters are cool, you can set them up for individual callers with actions of "Always Forward", "Always Ring", "Always Voicemail", "Always Busy", or for the truly annoying, "Not In Service", which plays a "not in service" message. One final option they don't list in their promo materials, but appears on the Filter setup page when I am logged in to my account, is "Rejection Hotline". It supposedly plays a "humorous message provided by the Rejection Hotline." I haven't tried this option yet, so I don't know how lame it is, but I can guess...

CID-Smart Answering Machine

[bill_mcgonigle]

I got an AT&T answering machine that can play different messages for different CID matches. The important feature is support for unique messages for blocked/unknown CID data - telemarketers always block this.

So, you setup a message like "Hi... [pause to let the auto-transfer gidgit connect you to a drone] ... if this is a telemarketer, please put us on your do not call list, otherwise please leave a message." A friendlier message goes on the unblocked caller ID calls.

This has reduced my calls to fewer than 1 per week. I think taking advantage of laws instead of technical quirks is the better strategy, more immune from arms races.

Of course, I'm assuming Canada at least has per-company DNC list legislation.

Re:Or...

[Blkdeath]

...you could call up Information and harass them f or the 1-800 number for the Direct Marketing Association, or whatever they call themselves up here, and then get your name put on a do-not-call list.

That's correct, however we already have legislation in effect that functions similar to the Do Not Call list. The CRTC, bless their hearts, some time ago drafted a regulation that states that upon request, a telemarketting firm must (I'll reiterate; MUST) remove your number from their call list within seven (7) days. If a telemarketer refuses or acts confused on the phone when you make the (simple) request, inform them that it is a CRTC regulation and if they're in doubt, you'll have the CRTC contact them and clarify the situation.

No need to be rude, just a few words always worked for me. "Please remove my number from your list. Thank-you." Generally they apologized for my inconvenience and assured me it would be done. Within days my calls dropped in half, within a few weeks I forgot what a telemarketting call sounded like.

Another tacts that always works well; "This is a cell phone." {click!}

(It's also highly illegal to place telemarketting calls to cellular phones.)

check with your phone company

[Tumbleweed]

They may already have the service you want. Qwest (formerly U.S. West) has it - can't remember the name, but here's what it does.

You get the service, and anyone calling you gets a message saying press '1' to proceed as long as you're not a solicitor, etc.

The message only plays if the caller is calling during legally-approved telemarketing hours.

The message will not play for people you've programmed into the system to bypass it - so put your friends and family members phone numbers into the system, and they'll never get the message. And if they do, all they have to do is press 1 right away, anyway.

Very nice, very simple, about $7 per month if I remember correctly.

So, check with your phone company - they may already have the solution you're seeking (assuming we're not talking about a cellphone company - I haven't seen this solution from them, yet).

The secondary defense is Caller ID, of course. That way you can avoid those calls from Mom when you're just not in the goddamned mood to put up with nonsense. :)