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Homemade Cell Phone Call Blocker?
G)-(ostly asks: "Recently, I've been plagued by a number of calls that were mis-dialed to my cell phone. They're particularly annoying because, being on a cell phone, the wrong number calls follow me everywhere as opposed to just being ignored in an empty house during the day. Verizon, of course, has scripted their drones to claim they can't do anything about it except change the number (or we can turn off the phone), which of course probably wouldn't change anything since we'd just get different mis-dials. However, since it's in my possession, would it be possible to build a software package that could be used to 'screen' unwanted numbers right on the phone? If so, how would one even begin to find APIs for phones, or load the software, once built, onto it?" How long do you figure it will take phone makers to recognize the need for this feature?
A cheap and dirty way to do this would be to add the numbers you wish to block to your phone's contact list and give them a silent ring. However, you then waste the phones memory with a phone-book entry (which can be hundreds of bytes), when all you really need is a list consisting of 10-12 digit numbers (depending on locality). The other drawback to this method is that you might need to use those contact slots, so it isn't a solution for everyone. Still, this sounds like a useful feature, but there is still the issue of how much control the cell phone's OS will give you over its basic operations (blocking messages sent from a specific number, for example). Has anyone tried doing this on their phone? What kind of luck did you have?
They'll never try to voluntarily assist their customers in limiting the number of air minutes used by their customers.
My phone has caller ID, so I can see who the number is and if it matches a number in my phone book. I think every cell phone made in the past five years has this. What more do you want?
You can do this with Microsofts Smartphones because they have an open API and freely available tookits to develop with. Just go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile for more information. Who knows about other phones, like Symbian. They are pretty much closed so you can forget about them.
The one feature I really wish my phone had was time based ringers (during class silent, after school on loud, and soft at night).
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
When I get a wrong number, I suggest they practice dialing their telephone-machine.
My old as crap sony ericsson t237 from cingular has a call management feature that lets me select groups to accept calls from. I can select to accept calls from the list, from all, or from none. Why cant you just put all the people you are most commonly expecting calls from in the "whitelist" and select to accept calls only from the list? Any other calls are directed to voicemail, where you can choose to ignore or reply at your leisure. Another benefit of this is that your voicemail message will convey who you are to the caller, and simple misdials will realize and most likely hangup. I do not see what the big deal is? What am I missing?
I'm a little tea pot.
But you don't pay to receive calls, only to send them. So it's the same as setting up a blacklist on a mail server, in effect. The phone checks the number, realises it's on the blacklist and sends back the "not interested" signal. The person dialling gets "number not recognised" or similar, to put them off.
It seems like a grand idea. Are there any open source phone operating systems that this could be implemented on, or are we at the mercy of the telcos and manufacturers?
the layman's guide to computer science
555-filk.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
If wrong numbers are troubling you so much, consider investing in a O2-type smartphone which comes with features to screen/block numbers.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
"A cheap and dirty way to do this would be to add the numbers you wish to block to your phone's contact list and give them a silent ring. However, you then waste the phones memory with a phone-book entry (which can be hundreds of bytes),..."
Hundreds of bytes? Spare me the drama. If you're the type of person with the wherewithal to even think about developing a number-blocking app for your phone, then you probably have the type of phone where hundreds of bytes isn't going to matter. What you call a "cheap and dirty" solution I'd call "cheap and simple." My "cheap" referring to less use of my time thinking about the problem.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I have a similar problem, but it's on a scale that probably much worse. I get a SHIT-TON of calls from one number, some from another, and more recently, many from unavailable numbers. If someone wants to write this, I'll test it on my phone in a second.
As for if it can be done, I would imagine it would require some firmware hacking and/or rewriting. It would be easier from the customer standpoint on the provider end. I know that my land-line phone company offers (or is working on offering) a service which does exactly that, so it's not out of the realm of possibility, but I do agree that providers probably wouldn't do it because it would cut into their profits. But I bet that once one does it, people will start switching to them for various reasons, and soon everyone will have it.
Peace, Chris
I used to have someone doing this all the time and so added them to my phone book as 'wrong number #1' and just not answering it. Do you really have more than the 250 or so numbers that your sim card can hold ( or more if you're using phone memory? ) An alternative would be to have caller groups and only having it ring if it was a known number, but then you have to know everyone who calls you. If they're calling from a Private Number then you're really screwed.
I once had a cell phone where I would get at least four wrong numbers per day. I'd never had that much trouble before, and never again after I changed numbers. Everyone calling was asking for a different person, so it wasn't because I had a number similar to a popular business (though that happened to me once before too).
Eventually I figured out the reason for the many wrong numbers: my exchange matched a nearby area code, and the first three digits of the rest of my number were an exchange within that area code. So, for example, let's say my number was 555 1234, there were a thousand valid numbers in the format 1 (555) 123 4###. What that meant was that anytime someone in my area code forgot to dial 1 when dialing one of those 1000 numbers, it resulted in a wrong number to me.
Once I figured that out, I got my number changed and things got much better. Don't know if that's what's happening to you, but I thought I'd mention it. If you think it is something like this, be sure to change exchanges too, not just the last four digits. Make sure the exchange does not match a nearby area code.
Cheers.
I used to work for VZW, both as customer service and Tier 1/2 tech support. It was my experience that VZW doesnt care that you get misdials or the inconvenience you might experience from them. VZW is a company that has its entire business process focused entirely upon their profit motive and nothing else, customer service really is secondary to everything else. A perfect example of this would be a cell tower "upgrade" that removes or severely inhibits the ability for analog phones to get a signal, thereby forcing all the residents nearby with older phones to get new ones and 9 times out of 10 get them back on contract again. To specifically answer your question about blocking incoming calls: /. effect wont help any :)
a) This would be seen as tampering with the equipment and void warranties of any kind
b) Almost every phone supported by VZW has been altered in some way by the manufacturer to accomodate VZW's business goals. This includes locking phones so you cant change the software in any way. If the system sees that your phone is not operating within the specifications that it expects it to, your service is liable to be "interrupted".
c) The few phones that are not completely locked up by the manufacturer for VZW only allow very minor edits to the software. http://www.howardforums.com/ HowardForums is a nice place to visit. Lots and lots of useful information is posted there. You may be able to find something useful to your particular phone. Be advised the site loads very slowly due to a large amount of traffic and a
I need a button on my phone to send a goatse picture to the last caller when someone misdials me at 1am and then hits redial and calls me right back after I tell them they have the wrong number.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
But you don't pay to receive calls
I certainly pay to receive calls. I get a certain number of 'minutes' every month. These minutes are spent by sending or receiving calls.
My cell phone lets me:
- set a custom riner for each person in my address book.
- set a DIFFERENT ringer for numbers that are *Unavailable*
- set another ringer for numbers that aren't in my Phonebook.
That way I can ignore it based on the ringer.
If someone I know calls, but I didn't know they called, then they can leave a voicemail, and I can add them to my Address Book. Hunt around. Play with phones before you buy them. Some have options like this, some dont.
Reeses
What you really need is a "magic number" (a simple password, basically) that callers have to enter to get access to your line, after they've reached you. This would block out everyone except the people you want to talk to (who you've told your magic number). A little unfriendly maybe, but not much different than having an extension that people need to remember.
Coincidentally, I used to work on the email-to-phone interface for a major cell carrier. Since their numbers were assigned in blocks, the system was trivial to spam. This wasn't considered to be a problem until the executives of the company started receiving it. ;-). Anyway, I suggested a magic word solution similar to the above for that case. Instead they spent megabucks on some antispam solution. No idea if it works--I have text messaging for my phone permanently disabled...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
My favorite feature is the ability to assign any number that I don't want to answer again a permanent busy signal. That, BTW, includes *any* call with a blocked caller ID. I get a little kick out of seeing in my log some low-life telemarketing company trying unsuccessfully to reach me hundreds of times. I can also set timers to go directly to voicemail during certain hours (like when I want to sleep), and I can selectively filter important callers (like my family) to ring through anyway.
Costs about $15/month. Oh, yes, I can also use the VOIP phone as originally intended, too.
Nowadays, with local number portability, the 'captive' part is less of a problem, but the other features make keeping a VOIP service worthwhile.
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It would have been very helpful to know what type of phone the submitter had, as there are now several different types of phones, and the different phone OSs will typically require different solutions. A J2ME based solution for a Blackberry probably won't work on a Symbian phone, for example. Also, a number of phones have features to do this built in already, so it may be a moot point...
One checksum digit would eliminate *every* one-digit-wrong misdialed number. Why why why don't phone numbers have checksum digits?
Part of your problem is that phone companies, and cel providers in particular are re-assigning numbers faster than before.
In days of yore when you surrendered a phone number it would sit dormant for enough time that callers would stop using it.
These days your "new" number may have belonged to someone else only a few weeks ago. Consequently you get calls from people that they knew. Usually at 3 AM.
I had one phone that got calls every few hours from one particular phone number, but from different people. Near as I can tell it had been written on a washroom wall, right by the pay phone...
Three Squirrels
The phone# of a friend of mine is one digit different from the one for Ticket Master.
After walking with him for a while, you'd start to think his name is "wrong number".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You pay to receive normal calls? Not video or anything special? Where are you, the US?!
Set all (whitelisted) phone numbers in the phone's phonebook to 'custom' ringtone (any you want, normal default is fine) then set the phone's 'default' ringtone (the one used on all calls with no ringtone defined) to one consisting of silence. This way you'll hear only calls from people on your contact list.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
there is software for symbian phones that allow you to decide, by a set of rules the behaviour of your phone asnwering status, it can even tell the caller the line is busy
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
How many wrong numbers do you get? I get about two a month it seems, so I really don't care. I understand if your phone number is one digit of the local Pizza King, or is in fact the same number with one digit different in the prefix (556-1234, instead of 555-1234) and you're getting dozens of calls you don't want. I guess what I'm saying is if you really get so many wrong numbers it's a big problem then probably the underlying root cause here is something that could be addressed more easily than by inventing call block software.
I've noticed that numbers with repeated digits, like XXX-X77X, get more misdialed calls.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
How long will it take you to figure out that 1 mis-dialed call that is answered means 1 more minute that you loose from your calling plan. That's 1 more minute closer to being able to charge you outrageous fees for exceeding your minutes for the month. Besides, even if the phone makers add such a feature, how much will the phone corp. charge you to use it ;)
- You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
A misdial looks exactly like an intentional dial to the phone company. There is no way that you or the phone company can prevent someone from dialing your number.
Your phone already supports basic white list or blacklist functionality. If the same people keep misdialing your number, then you'll want to blacklist them using the method sugested in the editorial portion of this article.
If, however, you get misdials from different phone numbers then you'll need to add everyone to your phone book that you want to know about immediately, and set the general ring to silent. In this way you'll still get voicemail if the caller left a message (typically misdials won't leave voice mail if you set up your outgoing message well) so you won't be completely out of the loop with a real caller from an unfamiliar phone number.
I don't see how custom software will solve this any better than the phone book will. You have four different scenarios:
1) Someone who does want to talk to you dials correctly and reaches you
2) Someone who does NOT want to talk to you dials correctly and doesn't reach you
3) Someone who does want to talk to you misdials and doesn't reach you
4) Someone who does NOT want to talk to you misdials and reaches you
Only calls from #1 and #4 reach you. There are two further possibilities:
A) The person calls from a number in your phone book
B) The person calls from a number not in your phone book (or is blocked)
A person who does want to talk to you and is not in your phone book (payphone, friend's phone, etc) looks exactly like a person who does not want to talk to you and is not in your phone book. Therefore, as far as the phone company, your phone, and any possible software you could invent knows, 1B == 4B.
Therefore the problem cannot be solved any better than it is right now with the built in phone's whitelist and blacklist. Either you will only accept calls from those you've programmed, shoving everyone else to voice mail, or you will accept calls from anyone who does not match a set of frequent misdiallers.
In the old days before caller ID one could purchase an answering machine that would not allow the home phones to ring unless the caller pressed a sequence of touchtone keys. You may be able to make software do that, but generally those devices failed in the marketplace because it was too much hassle.
Of course, this doesn't answer your question. I suppose what I'm trying to accomplish here is to ask you a question:
What does your proposed software do that your phone and/or phone company cannot already do? Are you simply suggesting an easier to maintain or more explicit blacklist/whitelist, or do you have a novel method that actually does what I suggest is impossible given the information the phone is provided? If so, getting the software onto the phone is trivial once you've convinced a few key people that what you've invented actually works.
-Adam
My free Nokia from Verizon can change profiles on a delay. It's not what you're asking for because it doesn't have a schedule, but it will let me set it silent for two hours until the movie is over, or noisy for eight hours until work in the morning.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Every Nokia phone I had (I had ten to twelve of them) had a "profiles" option, and inside each profile "rings for" where you can select which of your caller groups your phone rings for.
Simple.
Already exists.
It works.
For instance, I have a profile called "in class", that is absolutely silent... except if my (39 weeks pregnant) wife calls -- and if she does, it vibrates. If anyone else calls, too bad...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I have a P910i with a program called Magic Profiles Pro.
It will change profiles based on what cell tower you're connected to. So when I drive to work, the 3 towers near my work are all programmed and in the phone switches to Work mode.
You can also change profiles based on time and keyworks in the calender app (such as meeting, dinner etc)
You can also screen numbers using it, blacklist, whitelist, or just reject calls that don't give you any caller ID info.
It's very handy, I think you can also get it for some Symbian based Nokia's.
Well, actually it's already there. It's called the "off" button :-)
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Actually, in some countries, like Belgium, you don't pay to receive calls, only the caller pays to talk on the phone and you also don't pay to receive text messages...
In other countries, like the US, you pay for calling and for receiving calls, and for sending and receiving text messages...
Just FYI
Its too bad you didnt say what phone you have.
I havent used it myself but Ive heard good things about CallShield, a utility I came across when I had a Treo about two years ago. It sounds precisely what youre looking for.
They'll never try to voluntarily assist their customers in limiting the number of air minutes used by their customers.
I don't know how wide-spread this is, but on USCellular, so long as you are on their network, incoming calls are free (as in they don't use ANY of your minutes). 24/7/365.
So what would their incentive be for *not* offering a feature like this? For that matter, why would *any* carrier not offer a feature like this? It's a "feature" they could charge their subscribers monthly to have!
bork bork bork!
Actually, in some countries, like Belgium, you don't pay to receive calls, only the caller pays to talk on the phone and you also don't pay to receive text messages...
In other countries, like the US, you pay for calling and for receiving calls, and for sending and receiving text messages...
Just FYI
In addition to not paying for incoming calls (USCellular), I also do not pay to receive text messages.
uscc.com even has a tool that lets you send text messages to their customers for free (no one pays for the text messages in this way!)
Not all US carriers do this. This, in addition to the fact that the ONLY major provider in my area is Sprint (and they only have towers near the highway) is why I have USCellular.
I guess Alltel could be considered "major", but they suck big floppy donkey ears compared to USCellular.
bork bork bork!
You know - the dumb movie with Danny DaVito and the Governator.
I still laugh when I see Danny's handling of a wrong phone call - it's a classic and probably a better way to handle these people than trying a techno-fix
You pay to answer calls, not receive them. You can let your phone ring and not pay for the incoming minutes, unless your plan sucks. That's what caller ID / contact lists are for
IF (big if) you have a WinCE Smartphone, Microsoft TAPI (Telephony API) is your answer. It can process incoming and outgoing calls in amazing ways. A good place to start may be here.
I put on my robe and asbestos hat, preparing for the flames...
I understand the occasional wrong number; someone misdials and honestly doesn't realize it, phones broken and hitting a 9 actually dials a 6 (you laugh, my old landline phone did this and since there was no screen to see what you entered, it took me a little while to realize what the problem was, I feel bad for the people I called wrongly), and so on. But if the same number calls you 30 times a day, well, then that's something else entirely.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
24/7/365
Sweet! Where are you living that has 365 weeks in a year?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
365 days silly.
But the problem with a program in the phone screening the calls is that when it refuses a call, it will get kicked into voicemail. You will pay (use your minutes) when checking voicemail. Weeding though 20 wrong number calls is about as bad as talking for 20 minutes.
Come to think of it, why do I put up with this...
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
And here I thought my plan was average in that it didn't charge me for voicemail calls. Well it turns out it is awesome!. Of course my plan really is awesome: unlimited incoming calls! (Fido here in canada for anyone who's interested)
beer + typing never mix
I saw the Sign, and it opened up my eyes
There is a nifty app for the Treo that will let you create rulesets for calls and how to respond to them. You can have it immediately drop the call to voicemail, hang up on them, ignore, etc. It will do the same for SMS messages too. It's pretty neat if you have the time to set up.
http://www.velocityware.com/callfilter/cfinfo.htm
Basically they have a call forwarding service where you can port your number (landline or celluar) to their system. Once it's ported, you can configure options like blocking based on incoming callerid. Great service, ugly webpage: http://www.callpass.net/
Jenny? Is that you?
Yeah, if you were looking for a quick solution on any verizon locked-down phone, you're probably not in luck. Firstly, there's no J2ME on most (if any) verizon phones, because they use a wonderfully propriatary programming system (BREW), which requires all applications to be signed by Qualcomm (a fairly expensive process).
There are get-arounds for this on certain phones using a data cable and PC, but you'll have to find out how that works for your specific phone. And even with that, finding information on how to actually program anything for it is a rather difficult venture. My info may be a little out of date, its been a year or two since I looked into it, but I have a feeling its just as nasty.
My favorite feature is the ability to assign any number that I don't want to answer again a permanent busy signal. That, BTW, includes *any* call with a blocked caller ID. I get a little kick out of seeing in my log some low-life telemarketing company trying unsuccessfully to reach me hundreds of times.
I went for Disney's "It's a Small World After All" with the gain set high on a continuous loop.
I've only put two telemarketer numbers on that. One took two calls to stop. The other only took one. (This was after them calling at least 6 times in the previous two weeks.)
Looking at the logs of those calls gave me a nice warm feeling.
you can't have any exchanges that start with
411 or 911 or I think 611 for example.
There, I've just taken 30 thousand from your 10 million.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Are you simply suggesting an easier to maintain or more explicit blacklist/whitelist, or do you have a novel method that actually does what I suggest is impossible given the information the phone is provided?
The ideal solution to this is for the software to have limited telepathic abilities. It should query the caller to find out who they are, then poke in your head to find out if you want to talk to that person. Then the phone only rings if it's a person you want to talk to. If it is someone you don't want to talk to, but want something from, they get dropped to voicemail. Otherwise, they are simply disconnected.
See?
Solves all the poster's problems.
Now there's just the little issue of implementing the limited telepathic abilities in the software. And, of course, preventing it from reading your mind enough to find out how petty and self-centered you are that it decides to stop working for you.
Generally, a question where the only good answer is a telepathic interface indicates one of two things... insufficiently advanced technology, or a questioner who does not understand what he is asking for. Personally, I'm not really sure which this is. I remember reading about "intelligent agents" on the internet that would know everything about you, and go find the things you were interested in. This seems a perfect application for those (also never implemented) pieces of technology.
You could of course also argue that part of the problem is that Caller ID does not identify the calling person, but instead the calling phone number. An obvious design flaw. See? I'm back to "insufficiently advanced technology" again.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Sounds like one of those things "Smartphones" don't do!
There are some replies that will point you to shareware applications (which may or may not be for your kind of "Smartphone") that claim to address the issue for a low, one-time (per phone) fee!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If I don't recognize a phone number (what cell phone plan doesn't have CallerID now?), I press "ignore" and let it go to voicemail.
Taking it one step further, set all rings to silent, and wait for the legit callers to leave a voicemail - then call them back.
I really wish my phone let me set ringers for each group of contacts so I didn't have to do it for each person on a one-by-one basis.
Don't forget all the phones at credit card terminals.
ISPs.
yadda yadda yadda.
At least here in Ohio use-specific overlays are illegal and therefore those lines are in the same area codes and exchanges as voice lines.
I once had the phone book misprint the phone number to a 24hour pet hospital and printed mine instead. Loads of fun getting called at three in the morning by some one with a sick dog. I did resist the urge to give them a good recipe for cooking said dog. The worst part was it was a business line and I couldn't change it without risking loosing work.
I use Asterisk. Don't ever give out your actual cell phone number -- just give out your Asterisk server's number. If Asterisk accepts the caller (password, IVR option, whatever) then Asterisk can forward the caller to your cell phone, announcing the calling phone number / name with Festival text-to-speech. It costs extra and requires some technical work, but nothing the Slashdot crowd can't handle. Right?
Where I am, we already have this service available from the phone company: it's called privacy filter and it basically means you pay 1.99$ per month per number you want to block, which means your ex-wife, psycho cousin, and all those crazy old ladies who are unqualified to dial a friggin touch-tone phone.
A computer store where I once worked had almost the same number as an assisted transit service (free bus for the elderly and/or mentally challenged). I'd answer with the store's name, which includes "cyber" and "PC" and not much else, and these people would ask for a ride. Then I'd give them the correct number. Sure enough, they called right back, sometimes 3-4 times calling me all sorts of nasty things. In the end I was taking their information and calling the REAL company for them. Boo old and/or retarded people!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Some phones don't care how much free space you have, they still limit the number of phonebook entries. Mine for example has several megs of free space, but limits the phone book to 200 entries. Why the OP is concerned about bytes is beyond me, but I can understand wasting phone book entries when you have a limited hard-coded amount.
A java app would work better for me if I had that problem, because I have loads of free space for apps, but not for the addressbook.
What the hell? Who the hell wants to pay to recieve calls? Couldn't someone with a lot more money just call you and cost you heaps of money?
I suppose, as long as they also arranged for someone to hold a gun to your head, thereby forcing you to answer the phone and talk for hours and hours.
You don't have to answer it just because it rings ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Not only this, but on most calling plans in the US, it is free (included in the monthly cost) to make unlimited local calls from a land line. That means you could dial a cell number on a fax machine or modem, set it for unlimited retries, and at no cost to you, the victim's cell phone would just keep ringing, and ringing, and ringing...
:)
Not that I've ever done this to that dumb son of a bitch who thought it would be funny to prank call me on a Saturday night... Oops... I've said too much.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Most likely. Of all the countries in the world, very few others charge cellphone users to receive a call. Crazy, I know... and what's even more weird is that users will try to explain to you that this is nothing to complain about... next thing you know, they'll be paying to receive commercial-ridden satellite TV channels. Oh, wait...
I was getting really obscene wrong number calls with people leaving messages on my machine.
They were german, and calling from overseas, via collect call, which cost me money - How did they get my answering machine to accept a collect call? Simple - they had another person on the extension (of [hreaked into the connection somehow) pose as me and say yes to accepting the call. So they would leave messages on my machine about raping and killing women, discussing where they buried the body, etc...
And it turns out they were after a certain person with these crank calls - they said his name, I looked it up and he was a nearby Lutheran minister. They had inverted a couple numbers.
Once I managed to be home and picked up the call just after I had heard my answering machine "accept" the collect call, and just before the operatior hung up I told her no, told her what had been happening - to which she repeatedly denied that it was possible... then the two Germans came on and started swearing at me, thinking I was that minister.
With the operator still listening I shouted at them to stop calling, and they loved that, started up with death threats, etc... at which point I just laughed and said "you fucking morons, you've got the WRONG FUCKING NUMBER." and said "so-and-so's at 12, not 21!"
Maybe I shouldn't have done that.... but they shut up instantly and never called back.
I wonder what that Lutheran minister did to get some german phone phreaks pissed at him?
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Remember the good ol' days when we didn't have these little boxes tied to our hip all day, when no one could get ahold of you when you weren't home or at work? Ah life was good then. Now people just get mad when I don't answer the phone because they neglected to call from a number I know, or expect like I have nothing better to do than take their call. Phones suck.
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
Maybe a good way to do it would be to have the program kick in when someone calls who's not in your address book, and have it make a special beep or vibration pattern, then if you don't hit a certain button to acknowledge you recognize the number it'll drop the call. . .
www.linuxpenguin.net
*mouth agape*
In other countries, like the US, you pay for calling and for receiving calls, and for sending and receiving text messages...
I'm absolutely staggered. I had no idea the mobile phone situation in the States was that screwed up. So if you're on a $10/month texting plan you can find someone you don't like, send him as many messages as you can, and he racks up a huge bill? *shakes head*
I can confirm that in NZ at least you don't pay to receive any calls or messages of any type.
Still, the yanks have much better broadband service than us so I can't exactly gloat (Telecom has a stranglehold on the local loop).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Actually, some cell phone makers (such as Samsung) already have a call-blocking feature on their phones. I have one that I bought in January that can hold 10 or 20 numbers to block. Very nice.
My Nextel i830 can be restricted to only answer calls from numbers stored in my contacts list, but I'd never enable that feature because I often have people that I know call me from other numbers. I personally don't see a need to call block anyone, but if the same few numbers are calling over and over the silent ring would probably be best. Most phones allow you to store a few numbers for each contact so you could save space by combining the numbers that you wanted to have a silent ring into one contact.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
If you get one of the great phones running Symbian OS, you can buy/download several programs that will do the job (such as BlackBaller). Unlike other phone operating systems, you also have the opportunity to write your own software that has access to the telephony features of the phone.
If you're trying to weed out frequent misdialers, then add them to your phonebook, create a group "misdialers" and set the ring volume to 0 for the caller group. If you can't set a ring volume but have got a shiny phone, upload an empty.mp3 as a ringtone. Works on my old Nokia 6210 just nicely.
jh
I'm using the free (as in beer) program CallFilter on my Windows Mobile phone.
No, phones are very tightly locked down. PDAs with phone capability have some possibilities (although even then I suspect you won't be able to get at the lower layers), but you won't get into a mobile phone.
There's two main reasons. Firstly it gives them better security if they know the phones on their network have their software locked down tight; and secondly it lets them charge extra for downloading add-on programs.
Grab.
But I can answer the other question. Phone makers have recognized the need for this feature years ago. All the Sony-Ericssons I've used in the last few years, including my present K700i allow restricting the incoming calls to numbers in your contact list. A few if not all of the Siemens phone do that too, and some allow you to restrict it even further to the VIP list.
My bottom of the range Nokia phone cost me £20 sterling, I bought it because it was the cheapest I could find. It has number blocking - I thought they all did! Writing your own number blocking software just seems like insane overkill.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Actually as far as i know, in the whole of Europe only the caller pays, not the receiver.
The only situation in which the receiver pays something is when he's "roaming" (i.e. in a different country from the one were he has his mobile phone contract), altough some trans-national mobile phone companies (Vodafone) now offer no extra costs for "roaming" as long as the country where the reciever is in also has a network from that company.
That's right, but Isn't there any cell phones with some kind of answering machines, that could record voice messages directly in the phone, ignoring your phone provider voicemail service?
You don't have to answer it just because it rings ;)
As obvious as you and I think that statement was, I think there aren't many people who can make that logical leap. If it was an important call, they'll leave a message. Otherwise, just ignore it. It's usually a 1-button tap during the ring to ignore a call... don't be a slave to your phone.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
If you were just incredibly offensive to whoever dialled you up, I'm sure the message would get back to whoever it was who was giving out the wrong number
The US is the glaring exception to this rule. I think it comes from the old days of Ma' Bell. On a land line local calls in the US are unlimited (send and recieve) for a monthly tariff that includes the phone line, and long distance is charged to the caller. As a regulated monopoly AT&T had to provide universal service (at one point there were more households with a phone than indoor plumbing). So almost all American's are used to having a monthly fee cover the majority of all calls. This wasn't as cheap to do in the early days of cell phones, but a fixed bloc of minutes became the normal market standard. Normally this block is essentally unlimited in evenings and weekends (not unlimited to teenage girls and cell phone using lovebirds, but pretty much everyone else falls well under their off time allocations), and the limits are on calls during business hours. These are probably the main reason that the US has lagged foreign cellular penetration rates so substantially.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I wasn't concerned, they rewrote my article to include a large amount of content I never mentioned.
From now on, I buy only Intel.
Get a series 60 phone. It's powered by Symbian, and you get a full C++ development kit (and cross compilers etc), as well as a fairly full featured Python library. You can hook into all sorts of places with your own code.
There are a few programs out there for series 60 that block/filter calls, and it's not that hard to write your own if you don't fancy any of them.
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
He wants to block one number, you noob, not all of them.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
- Get a phone with assignable caller ID ringtones
- Add caller ID to you cell phone plan
- When wrong number rings, save number to phonebook, assign silent ringtone, or block caller if possible
Whitelist version:I have several entries in my contact list for "Wrong Number" (I save them anytime I get a call that's a wrong number). I also have several entries for "Wong Number" because "Wrong" has a home phone, cell, fax, pager, and other phone number...
In my case, I had a friend with an unlimited around-town plan http://www.unicel.com/shop/plans/ (put in a zip code of 55811) and only paid $32.95/mo who would call me all the time during the day, when I only had 200 minutes (on a national plan so I could use it at school and home), as opposed to 9pm and later, when it was unlimited. I guess I should have stopped being such a nice guy and answering all the time because he caused me to go way over my minutes fairly often.
Hey, can I bum a sig?
That's why the voice mail menu takes forever to navigate through if you haven't memorized the pattern.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
That's right, but Isn't there any cell phones with some kind of answering machines, that could record voice messages directly in the phone, ignoring your phone provider voicemail service?
Not only would this be incredibly stupid (in my opinion), but no. The providers would never allow for something like this because they can't control it. They can't charge you for the service (yes, it may seem "free", but did you ever wonder why your cell phone cost the same, if not more, than a landline phone with the same features?)
bork bork bork!
The reason phone numbering is so poor, is it was engineered to be implementable using mechanical exchange systems operated via gears and rotors. This meant you had to have a fixed width for area codes and for numbers within an exchange. It also meant you had to be able to start decoding the number as soon as you got the first digit.
You're quite right that a rational system designed now would have a checksum digit, like credit card numbers do.
A rational system designed for modern equipment would also do away with fixed-width phone numbers. That way when a given area code ran out of 4-digit numbers, you'd just keep going to 5 digit numbers, then 6 digit. Nobody would ever have to have their telephone number reassigned.
It would be trivial to do. We already use 1 as a special escape for "I'm about to start dialling an area code". Similarly, you could pick a digit to mark the break between components of the number (country, area, exchange, local, end of number) just like we use . in IP addresses. You could even use * or #, which are currently unused except for voicemail systems, and not have to change existing numbers.
So 555 1212 would become 555*1212*, and then there would be no problem issuing 555*12345* or even 555*1234567* without having to reassign any numbers.
(I should mention that this is the kind of addressing system developed by Ted Nelson and crew for the Xanadu system Tumbler Line, hence there's plenty of prior art.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
My roommate and I were much more cruel about a guy that kept prank calling us in college. The idiot kept calling us at all times (several times at 3am or later on school nights) saying all sorts of deragatory crap (not the normally funny phrank call stuff. Mostly just profanity and name calling). After requesting (at first nicely, then not so nicely) that they stop with no luck, we first got caller ID and were gonna look up his name/number and suggest he quit calling or we'd turn him in. Apprarently he'd had the number listed as private.
:).
So, since we didn't really have an alternate course of action, we went all out. We contacted the campus police department who setup a trace on the phone. Each time they called, I picked up, and said hello. They'd respond. I kept a notepad file on my computer desktop and would record the date/time of the call, along with an exact transcript of what they said. I'd think hang up and dial a number combo which would trace the call back. Then they'd call back again after I hung up. I'd repeat. After 2 or 3 they'd often reply "You stupid fucker! Why do you keep picking up the phone?". I'd slying smile (not saying another word), and hang up again. Rinse, repeat.
After recording/tracing a little over a hundred of these calls in 2 weeks, we were called into court as witnesses (though we didn't have to do anything as he plead guilty. Charge was "Criminal Misuse of a Telephone" IIRC). I was quite happy to see the guy almost cry when hit with a little over a $1,000 fine
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That is, it works if the wrong number they dial is the VOIP number, but it doesn't work if the wrong number they dial is the actual cell phone number, and this latter case is the one at hand.
Still, it is a pretty cool solution for the slightly different problem of people calling your listed number :-).
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
but you don't need it via voip
look into the IOBI offerings at verizon..
kinda very cool...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Can you get a 900 number for your cell phone ? Make them pay pay pay for bugging you ;-)
Not only this, but on most calling plans in the US, it is free (included in the monthly cost) to make unlimited local calls from a land line. That means you could dial a cell number on a fax machine or modem, set it for unlimited retries, and at no cost to you, the victim's cell phone would just keep ringing, and ringing, and ringing...
This actualy is even more stupid than the Creditcard principle where you can also easily lose money without actualy wanting to spend it. Use PIN! PIN! Just as easy, it works like a bank withdrawel, it is free, it is more secure,
and disables other peoples ability to pretend that you (intended to) pay them, as with creditcard is perfectly doable..
Stupid Americans (nothing personal, just the wideworld opinion here considering a country's reputation and moreoften stupid praktises and idea's)
(yes, there is a complete world outside the USA, with less stupid thoughts)
While at this rant, i wanted to say that you should Forget the 'Democrat' VS 'Repulican' thought, there is a lot more, not in between, but in every direction. Politics isn't A vs B, its not that black and white.
Sorry for this flamebait, but its my own opinion.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
(Disclaimer: I work for CallWave. Normally I wouldn't shamelessly plug the company I work for, but this is exactly the kind of needs we try to meet.)
Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
[Rings]
... Agent Zero? If that's correct, press one.
... Brown-Eyed Girl? If this is correct,
KRAMER: Hewwo and welcome to Movie phone. If you know the name of the
movie you'd like to see, press one.
GEORGE: Come on. Come on.
KRAMER: Using your touch-tone keypad, please enter the first three
letters of the movie title, now.
(George presses 3 keys)
KRAMER: You've selected
GEORGE: What?
KRAMER: Ah, you've selected
press one.
(George looks baffled)
KRAMER: Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you've
selected.
GEORGE: Chunnel?
KRAMER: To find the theater nearest you, please enter your five digit
zip-code, now.
(George enters his zip-code)
KRAMER: Why don't you just tell me where you want to see the movie?
GEORGE: Lowes Paragon, 84th and Broadway.
KRAMER: (picks up paper) Chunnel, is playing at the Paragon 84th Street
cinema in the main theater at 9:30 PM.
GEORGE: Yeah, now I gotcha! (hangs up the phone and rushes out the
door)
KRAMER: It's also playing in theater number two at 9:00.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
But 10-15 of those wrong number calls won't leave you a message if your voicemail message doesn't suck (ie, just say your name in the message). If they hang up before the recording part starts, every voicemail system I've used simply doesn't record anything - so I'm not notified.
I set my phone up to only ring for people in my contact list, and just vibrate otherwise. Makes it relatively easy to ignore calls unless I'm expecting a call from someone off my list...
Why couldn't they charge you for it? What's the difference between the voice data going to your phone and playing out a speaker, or voice data going to your phone and being recorded? The same data goes over the network either way - and since I don't pay for voice mail calls, it'd actually make my provider *more* money...
The voicemail maybe free in your package but I bet the time you take to dial out and check it goes against your minutes. Every phoner i have seen that has voicemail chares you to check it acording to thier regularly scheduled plans. Of course if your plan gives you unlimited nights and weekends you could wait until then and check it without charge.
I check my voicemail whenever I get a message. I don't have the luxury of placing everyone on a contact list and going from there. Most if not all the companies I do business with have multiple lines and it would be near impossible to program all 25 or more lines into the phone for each and every customer. Something like a screener that goes off caller ID might work for me but i think i have only recieved about 5 wrong numbers in the last two years or so. It isn't too much of an issue to me. I did have some telemarketer calling at 3:00 am and leaving a 5 minute voicemail about how great thier product was(phone is set to default to voice after midnight). But a call to the phone company and some "regulators" took care of that quickly.
This actualy is even more stupid than the Creditcard principle where you can also easily lose money without actualy wanting to spend it. Use PIN! PIN! Just as easy, it works like a bank withdrawel, it is free, it is more secure,
and disables other peoples ability to pretend that you (intended to) pay them, as with creditcard is perfectly doable..
Stupid Americans
So let me get this straight. I'm stupid for taking advantage of a federal law that limits my liability to $50 if anyone scams me and charges things to my account, and stupid for not using the card linked to my actual bank account that, if anyone gets ahold of it, actually results in money being drained from my actual account? No thank you, and furthermore, I think you need to do some research into why these days identity theft is more than enough reason to not use a debit card.
You'll sing a different tune when your checking account gets drained and you can't just wait for your bank to issue a chargeback, cancel the fraudulent charges, and hit the scamming companies with a fee in addition to yanking the money back out of their merchant account.
i am a soviet space shuttle
So if you're on a $10/month texting plan you can find someone you don't like, send him as many messages as you can, and he racks up a huge bill?
We also have this thing called small claims court in which you sue to recover the money you paid and also demand punitive damages on top of that, and if you don't pay up when a court orders you to, there's a world of trouble awaiting you.
Or one could always have their number blocked. Or one could always use a plan (as I do) where you don't get charged per message.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Which makes calling a cellphone very expensive. Its a lot harder to get competitive pressure bringing prices down when the only negotiation happening is at the carrier interchange level.
SSL Certificate
Of course it's even better than that... cell text services are often linked to virtual email addresses provided by the cell company. Suppose someone email bombs your cell email address or just signs it up for spam. You could always contest the charges, but I wouldn't want to try.
So if you're on a $10/month texting plan you can find someone you don't like, send him as many messages as you can, and he racks up a huge bill? *shakes head*
No, you find out his phone number and send 1000 text messages from a hotmail account through his phone's email-sms gateway.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
We also have this thing called small claims court in which you sue to recover the money you paid and also demand punitive damages on top of that, and if you don't pay up when a court orders you to, there's a world of trouble awaiting you.
Yeah, but then you have to go to court, possibly involve lawyers... etc
No sig for the moment.
Get an extra landline to your house. Have Asterisk or some other PBX software answer the phone for you, announce who incoming callers have reached, flip off telemarketers, etc. Use a particular extension for your cell phone, and when someone dials the extension, have the PBX forward the call. If your cell phone rings and the caller ID doesn't show it was forwarded, ignore it.
Cute.
But how is repaying evil with evil going to get your money back?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I think that in many places, small claims court requires you to represent yourself. Also given that small claims court is aimed at individuals to be able to make claims rather than being oriented toward huge cases being fought by teams of lawyers like many "regular" cases are, it might not be as bad as you think.
The aviation geek in me likes your sig, too.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Repay? I'm just looking at ways to abuse people.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I think it was the movie "Ruthless People" where he picked up a phone and said something like "She can't come to the phone right now because she is sucking..." then hung up and said something like "God, I love wrong numbers."
Hi there
I'm from New Zealand, our phone networks here works differently to US and other countries
My home number is 64 07 # # # # # # #
However the cell phone numbers start with 027, 021, 029 or 025 depending on which carrier you're with. The home numbers are always shorter then the cell numbers
I almost never get wrong numbers to my cell phone, and it's usually an innocent mistake from a member of the public
In this country it's free to receive a call or sms (text) message, but costs a little more to send (or dial) them. This means the person who initiates the communication pays the bill, which seems far more logical
Our local calls (i.e. to some one in the same city) are free
As a result we have quite a few telemarketers
Which is a little annoying but I only get one call a week if that.
And chances are some one else will pick it up
It costs businesses around 1 cent to make each call, which is a bit of a deterrent to telemarketers or spammers
So that's just a different view point, I like the way it works here.
There's some food for thought
- Jeremy
www.liquiddesign.co.nz
in pretty much ALL countries bar the US, you don't pay to receive calls or text messages (bar premium text messages that offer commercial services you've signed up for).
there's this nifty bit of software that whitelists calls and SMS: http://treo.pdablast.com/articles/2006/3/2006321-B lock-Unwanted-Calls-with.html
In Soviet Britain they pay YOU to receive calls...
http://www.three.co.uk/priceplans/PAYGwepay.omp
They'll never try to voluntarily assist their customers in limiting the number of air minutes used by their customers.
I have call waiting, which AFAIK, is a standard feature on all mobile phones on my mobile phone. On my land line, I refuse to pay extra for caller ID.
I get suckered into answering the phone much more on the land line vs my cell.
If I see a number that I don't want to talk to at the time, I hit ignore and see if voicemail finds anything relevant.
I recall that my bill is around $35/month. That includes all taxes and other fees, for two VOIP lines (my wife liked the features so much that she got a 2nd line).
I got a $400+ phone bill one month for all local calls.
If you got a $400+ bill in one month for all local calls, you really need a new phone company. I think the unlimited calling plan on my cellphone would be substantially less than that. FWIW, I get 1000 minutes/month shared on 2 cellphones with rollover (Cingular family plan) for about $85 per month. In-network calls (and a lot of my cellphone time is spent talking to my wife) don't count towards the 1000 minute monthly allotment. I've been with Cingular since before they split off from AT&T, and I seem to get a better deal every two years (I threaten to shop around at the end of every contract period, since I'm not 100% happy with Cingular, but I kinda wonder if anybody else is really better...).
My FiOS landline with internet service, my DirectTV, my VOIP lines, my efax line, plus my two cellphones (6 different phone numbers!) run substantially less than $400/month, total.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Don't they offer call block?
I have never needed it so I havn't checked.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Ok , here is an attempt to actually answer the question asked as I did not see one on the board yet.
Most modern cell phones have a native JAVA interface.
If you want to write a program for your cell phone you can usually buy a developer kit from the manufacturer. Most of them I've seen run somewhere between 50 and 150 bucks. you will probably ( most likely) need a data cable to upload the program into your phone.
I have not actually done this I am in the process of researching it in my *cough* copious *cough* spare time.
personally I'd love to see a lot more open source java apps out there compiled to run on cell phones. What a great way to promote open source to the masses and the teeny crowd and get them interested in the issues. It certainly has a 'cool' factor to it.
As to which API you would need to use there are usually phone specific API's and there is some kind of java phone standard, but I have not dug into it beyond that.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
First of all, I believe it's spelled n00b, with zeroes instead of O's... and second of all, I am fully aware that it was entirely missing the point. I just hate cell phones.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Anyone who wants to pay less for using the telephone.
In the US, Singapore, and China (and maybe a few others), the cost for both placing and receiving a call is borne by the mobile phone user. This has had the effect of bringing down the total cost of using mobile phones, which is good for consumers.
The reason for this is obvious if you consider what happens in the caller-pays system as found in Europe: If I want to call your mobile from my phone, I have to pay a surcharge levied by your mobile operator. If I don't like that surcharge, I have no option except to stop calling you. I cannot switch you to another carrier that offers a lower charge. And calling a specific person tends to be price-inelastic. So there is no downward competitive pressure on the inbound call rate to mobile phones.
As a consequence, the inbound rate is huge in Europe, whereas in the USA, people will switch to a different provider (also aided by number portability) if their current provider tries to be too greedy on incoming calls. Look at wholesale termination rates (given below in US$).
Country Landline MobileUSA 0.0080 0.0080
Singapore 0.0102 0.0113
China 0.0155 0.0175
France 0.0140 0.1700
Germany 0.0115 0.2625
UK 0.0128 0.1838
Uruguay 0.0790 0.2444
Australia 0.0168 0.2122
Zambia 0.0750 0.1449
As you can see, the mobile termination rates in caller-pays countries are often more than ten times higher than landline termination rates (this is more pronounced in rich countries). At the same time, mobile origination rates in receiver-pays countries are nowhere near that high. So it's the Europeans getting screwed, smug as they are about how great it is to have free incoming calls. It really only works for people who always receive and never place calls, which obviously isn't that many people or else there'd be no point in having the phones.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
... is a standard feature on all mobile phones on my mobile phone...
... you have many mobile phones on your mobile phone?
So