How Do I Filter Phone Calls on a Land Line?

An anonymous reader asks: "I have a telephone on a plain old land-line, with the option of subscribing to caller-id. I would like to filter incoming phone calls, diverting them to either the handset or answering machine, based on whether the caller-id matches a list of trusted phone numbers. Considering that many of today's land-line telephone handsets can display caller-id and store a list of favourite phone numbers, I don't think this is technologically difficult. AI am not interested in: subscribing to a service provided by my telephone company. I would prefer the filtering occurred on my side of the phone line, or implementing a software solution on my PC. Frankly, that is overkill, and I don't want my PC turned on permanently. I would prefer something like a small, solid-state hardware device. Is there any such thing available?"

Comments

You want one of these.

[Trialpha]

http://www.privacycorps.com/products/?id=20

Build your own!

[ResQuad]

Well the obvious answer (at least to me) is Asterisk. If you don't want a "computer running all the time" build a small box, well.... tuff. Think Mini-ITX. You can put a small HD in in, and put it in a small case. If its only "diverting" calls it doesn't need much power or storage space at all and wouldn't draw much power (also, if you do it right - it could be all passive cooled).

Also - I'm sure no one wants to spend _that much time_ setting up Asterisk, so use TrixBox (Formely Asterisk@Home) instead.