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Fighting Back Against Ghost Calls
An anonymous reader writes "You're doing something interesting. The phone rings. You get up, pick up the phone, and hear only silence. It could be a slasher waiting outside your house, but it's probably an errant computer at a telemarketer. This article describes how some are fighting back by setting up websites to track the worst telemarketers by their caller ids. The article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen), 800notes.com and numberzoom.com . One intrepid guy is even writing a program to check these sites when the call comes in before ringing the phone."
They're compiling a list of numbers that they're going to provide to others... of companies or individuals... who they're targeting... for... You know this sounds a lot like what they're complaining about, to me.
Nothing more fun than answering the phone during your favourite tv show or whatever just to hear the silence.
I want all phones to have that program to block the ghost calls.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
This is assuming that the caller id is not faked and is correct. Nothing like getting the call from the Caribean with a local area code.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Next up, a phone that connects to the internet, checks the number, than picks up without ringing and starts playing a tape of you acting interrested in what the telemarketeer says only to hang up after an hour. Either that or pick up and hang up immediately so the line stays clear. Whatever costs the telemarketeer most. All without the phone ever bothering you ofcourse.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
forgot to lock the keys on my cell phone and my phone called my friend 14 times!
Doh!
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
came up with an idea where if a telemarketer called, we would connect them to an automated system that tried to make them think they were talking to a person. The idea being that whenever the guy stopped talking, the computer would play prerecorded messages like 'Tell me more' to see how long it could keep him on the line. Never actually tried it though.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
I'd rather have somebody do something about that slasher outside...
I'd rather hear silence than a telemarketer anyways, or even worse, recorded telemarketing calls!
If Casper and friends are up to no good, call the Ghostbusters. Nothing to see here, move along.
People still have landlines? Pathetic.
For about half the ghost calls I get, CallerID shows some variation of anonymous, unknown, etc.
;-)
Since I have VOIP, and some VOIP providers are nefarious for not buying _all_ the CallerID lists that are available, I can't take the chance that it could my one of my children somewhere.
Of course when CallerID does show a name and/or a number then I can tell whether or not I need to pick up.
And how am I supposed to get Frost Pist if I keep getting a 404 error on the article link?
Kevin Smith on Prince
Most of these ghost calls arrive because the automated dial systems telemarketers use dial several calls at once, and the first one that answers gets patched to the telemarketing stooge, while others that answer a few seconds later give that spooky silence for 5-10 seconds before they are hung up. The system logs the fact that you answered. Don't worry -- they'll call back to give you some love later.
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
If Microsoft or whomever could come up with an Asterisk like appliance, with full feature set - call blocking, forwarding to mailbox etc., and easy to use, they would make a mint.
I really don't see the application of this information. If you get a call with an ID that you don't recognize, do you really want to run to your computer first to decide whether or not to answer?
And to make it even less useful, I checked two of the sites listed: whocalled.us and numberzoom.com. The first one was painfully slow (slashdotted perhaps?) and the second one was mostly a wiki with lots of numbers that have no information. You can look up a number, and then find that nobody has added any information on it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I just check the called ID and only answer if I recognize the number. Could I miss an important call? That's why I have voice mail.
As for stopping what I'm doing, getting up, going over to the phone, etc? Cordless phone is usually within arm's reach. If there's no phone near by or I can't get away from what I'm doing? That's why I have voice mail.
I've heard a good way to confuse the computers doing the calls is to randomly press the numbers on your phone. Can anyone verify?
The PR rep makes it sound like the dropped call is a favor in compliance with some regulation.
However, another, more self serving and therefore likely reason, is that the person on the dropped line cannot utter the words, "Please take me off your list." The scum also have to comply with that one.
I've used it several times to quickly get some background on incoming calls. Those of you who don't pay your bills or work with people who don't pay their bills will love whocalled.us :)
Shunting every incoming call automatically to a lookup service is a recipe for disaster/abuse. Ususally people have a pretty good idea which is which.
We're at the point where we only pick up the phone if we recognize the caller ID. Otherwise, they can talk to the answering machine.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
I always presumed it was telemarketers who, in order to act more efficiently, would call multiple targets at once, then only connect to the first who picked up the phone, dumping the rest. This avoids the statistically costly tedium of reaching answering machines after x rings, or just waiting for 5 rings to hang up. After all, if you're in a state of existence where telemarketing or managing telemarketers is your main concern in life, a little extra inconvenience for random phone users would not be a key concern compared to profit ratio over time.
Ryan Fenton
I would MUCH rather have a slasher outside than these @#$%^&* telemarketers or ghost calls.
g0t b33r?
Obviously never seen www.gotahoe.com
And powergenitalia (PowerGen Italia) was a myth.
Never mind. There's always whorepresents, expertsexchange, and Australia's molestationnursery, now renamed.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
Since the domain name is .us I'm guessing that most of the users of that site are in the USA. If only the government would make a registry of numbers that telemarketers weren't allowed to call. Some sort of not calling registry. They might put it at donotcall.gov or something...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I wonder if it's time for phones to say like 'please type the following numbers before your call is forwarded: 34856'. That way automated calls can be screened so you only get actual humans.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
You can use https://www.donotcall.gov/ to help block the numbers. If they call after you sign up, report them.
I've set up an Asterisk box on my phone line, and a nifty CGI script that lists incoming calls from the call detail record database. With one click, it can do a whocalled.us lookup on the number, and with another click, I can blacklist it. Once it's in the blacklist, when they call again, I get blessed silence, while the junk caller gets SIT tones (boop-bap-BEEP!) and a recorded message not to call again.
I can also blacklist the last caller by picking up the phone and dialing *60, if I'm not at a computer.
I've noticed that certain blocks of numbers are rather spammy, so I'll go ahead and blacklist blocks of ten or 100 numbers when I start noticing a pattern. I'm not interrupted nearly as much as I used to be.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
iPhone here. Set up a contact called "Blocked Caller," with its own 'no' symbol for the picture, also set to a custom ringtone called Silent (guess what it sounds like). I google all unknown 800 and out of area numbers. Its surprising, but for every number that I didn't know and googled there were 3 or 4 reports. So, I add them to my "Blocked Caller" contact.
There's already some web-->phone funtionality, but it'd be nice to have (voip, and) an option to google unknown numbers, at least if they're in the missed calls list if not immediately as they're calling (available w/ wifi only if EDGE doesn't work simultaneously).
You answer the phone and then hear people talking and keyboards clicking in the background. Then 4 seconds later some stupid rep finally comes on as says Hello Mr. whomever.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I've been getting these calls on my cell phone, often every day. There is never anyone on the other end, just silence. Some of the calls are coming from numbers associated with Allied Interstate, a sleazy debt collection agency that would pimp their own children on a street corner if there was a nickel to be made.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
At least one telemarketing operation is jacking up the volume of their calls to near deafing levels (granted I'm in my 20s...) despite the fact that the volume on the phone is at "1". I feel sorry for people who can't turn it down any lower on analog phones. This practice should be made illegal. Commercial and telemarketing operations should not be able to make changes to the default volume on the receiving line. For the next a***ole who tries this, they should sincerely hope I never meet them face to face with an air horn.
Luckily the company I work for saw the light and never used the thing. They did it all correctly though. They were only going to call leads they already had a business relationship with. No need to DNC scrub the lists. The software on this one had a slider where you could define the call drop rate. Now the law states that you cannot call and then drop more then 3% of calls for the life of the campaign. The algorithm is supposed to make less calls per logged in agent based on previous drop rates experienced. The dumb thing is the program gave you a slider so you could put that number as high as you wanted. If you wanted your agent to always be on the phone and you had enough T-1 lines you could have it make 100 calls per agent and only connect the first one that answers. The software also had an algorithm to determine if an answering machine picked up. So for you people playing a message back to the telemarketers; they aren't getting the message. The system was pretty slick and useful if you used it right. Problem is call center managers just can't resist bumping up the drop rate and call per agent number to see increased "productivity". Oh ya, and if you don't answer or they drop the call the software remembers so the list can be reworked. So you might get called back three or four times by the same predictive dialer depending on how much of a dolt the call center manager is.
1. SYN SYN
2. Who's there?
3. Slashdot!
4. Slashdot who?
5. Slashdot slashslashslash slashdotdotdot slashslashslash slashdotdot slashdotslashslash.
Yeah, lame.
I have a couple of solutions I use when telemarketers call. Now if more people used these methods ...
.............. and set the phone down, and wait. I had one guy hang on for 1/2 hour for me to get back ... SUCKER
..... (maybe considered a variant of 2)
1) Answer the phone, tell the person on the other end you're right in the middle of something, but if they hold on
2) Act Crazy. Talk about Aliens, UFOs, Bigfoot, whatever. Paranoidism also works. "Why do you keep calling me, what do you want"
3) Start Preaching about Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Moses, Vishnu
4) Ask if the other person is into "phone sex" and start talking dirty.
5) Try to sign them up for MLM (Amway)
6) Pretend to be abusing/being abused by your SO, while on the phone. "Stop it you bitch or I'll beat your ass again"
In fact, mix and match all you want and come up with some new ideas. ie combine 6 and 4, hilarious.
The point is, if you're having fun with it, and it wastes their time, and enough people do it, it becomes unprofitable waste of the actual human's time on the other end. The bonus is, since I've started doing this, the number of telemarketing calls has dropped to almost nothing.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Believe me these calls do not help a paranoid person like me. What is worse i get no caller id !!
You would think the telemarketers would realize that answering the phone and hearing nothing is a dead giveaway that it's a telemarketer, and change their tactics. If they hit my answering machine they get dead air, because the (fairly brief) outgoing message has long since finished by the time they pick up. This results in recordings of confused telemarketers saying "Hello...hello...hello...". Serves the dumb f**ks right.
I'm in the phone book as "L. Halliday", and the cold calls always ask for Mr. or Mrs. Halliday, to which my answer is "No!". It doesn't seem to occur to them that the head of the household might be single and female.
Then there are the folks who keep phoning and leaving messages on my answering machine about my free security consultation, free vacation, or whatever. They block their caller ID, so I have no idea where they are phoning from. Nor do they ever call when I'm home, so I can't "Press 1 to hear more details". Grrr...
...laura
I usually just hang up if there's no answer. But sometimes, I'll play their game. They invade my privacy, I figure I'm within my rights to ask a few questions:
Now, understand that these people are paid by the hour. I'm not wasting their time, I'm wasting their employers time.
Telemarketing is profitable because most of the people who don't want to buy will just hang up the phone. If everyone they called insisted on having a nice, cordial, and polite conversation about political topics, the business model would fail entirely. So, if you hate telemarketing, use the calls as a nice way of promoting your favorite political party, religious position, human rights advocacy, etc... You might even explain to them such topics as:
Remember, it's a captive audience. Don't be afraid to speak your mind - people need to know!. Don't be intimidated by them. Rather, use the opportunity for political activism!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
- and I don't think much has changed with this.
At the start of each shift you set up the calling list with a bunch of factors depending upon the type of script you are selling but basically it boils down to how many many numbers you are going to try for each free agent (the human who reads from the script). Say you are going to try 5 numbers for each free agent and you have 3 free agents. The auto dialer then gets grabs 15 numbers which it calls and waits for a reply. Each reply it gets routed to a free agent who then starts babbling incessantly so you can't say "STOP !!". However, if you are the 4th / 5th / 6th person to pick up then you'll get a few seconds of hold as the system scurries around looking for an agent to become free. Eventually it will time out and hang up - but don't worry, the whole event is recorded and you'll probably be called at roughly the same time another evening as you are now tagged as being a real person home at that time - lucky you !
The whole process just loops around and repeats, calls are initiated as soon as an agent becomes free etc. Though normally no-one gets called more than once per cycle, each cycle taking several days (And as soon as you actually talk to an agent you are checked off that particular list)
I have a Speakeasy VoIP and that makes it easy to list logs and block numbers. The problem is after I blocked them, I've been receiving these calls from private numbers.
How are we supposed to deal with that? I tried blocking private numbers, but many of my friends (unfortunately) also hide their numbers.
Another thing, what benefit to them is this... other than MAYBE marking active phone numbers?
A Dutch invention, from 1994. And then to think that in The Netherlands the problem has never been that bad! The counter-script it's called, and it's here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html
From the website:
The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.
Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.
I'm not affiliated with the site, I just happen to know about it. I never even tried it, when a telemarketer calls I usually just hang up.
Dude, get yourself a couple of beers and stop wasting your time. 90% of ghost calls you receive are VoIP. Spoofing caller ID is trivial in VoIP environment. You don't have to be a telemarketer to do it. There are services like http://www.grandcentral.com/ (where google will collects samples of your voice) or http://www.xebba.com/ where you can get free 800 or local number and call anywhere anonymously for a couple of cents per minute.
Unless you're whitelisting your calls (which comes with a risk of losing an important one), your application, whocalled.us, or anything else that relies on caller id is not going to stop telemarketers. Oh, and by the way, they have a fleet of programmers with substantially better telephony skills that yours.
...with the new generation. My son and all his friends will absolutely not leave a message no matter what. At home, when my son's friends call and I ignore them because he is not home, they will not leave a message. They simply call back every so often until someone answers. if it is of an urgent nature, they call more frequently. My son once called me five times in the space of four minutes when I was in a meeting and couldn't answer. He never once left a message, which I could have listened to during the meeting to determine if it was actually important. You can try explaining this stuff to the new generation, but they don't get it.
Pardon me, there seem to be some teenagers on my lawn.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Somebody once told me that those calls were the government calling. When you answer and hang up the phone it would eavesdrop on you... Can you say paranoid?
I treat every telemarketing call I get like a ghost call:
(phone rings) me: Hello?
caller: Hi, this is so-and-so from somewhere and we're conducting a research...
me: Hello? Is anywhere there?
caller: Hello? Can you hear me?
me: Hello? (pause) Hello?
caller: Can you hear...
me (yelling away from phone): I don't know who it is honey, I can't hear anything.
caller: Hello?
I can keep them on for maybe a minute sometimes. They don't usually call back.
setup.us/thebomb
Well 10 years ago It worked a bit like this: Phone dialling software will ring more numbers that it has customer service reps available at once, once customer picks up it will determine if there is a customer services rep to speak to the customer, if not, it will disconnect aka Ghost Call. So call centre with 50 people, will usually have 2-3 people just finished a call at any time. System rings ahead 10(or some defined amount) numbers to make sure that the call centre staff are not hanging around. The Cust Service Rep does not know who is dialled until the call is patched through to them, along with the customers details popped up on screen "Hello Mr , we are calling you about your outstanding balance of " etc.
Many years ago, I used to just tell phone spammers "sorry, not interested", and hang up. After e-mail spam took off, I considered the matter a little more thoroughly, and now I when I get a phone spam, my first statement is "put me on your do-not-call list for all clients", and then I let loose with a blue streak of the most vile verbal abuse I can improvise on the spot. The idea is to make the job of being a phone spammer as unpleasant as I possibly can, so as to increase attrition in the phone-spamming business.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
My land line is always on an answering machine. I never pick it up and neither does any of my frriends. Basically the phone service has turned into a voice messaging service decades ago already - no interactive yakking.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
That's my number, you insensitive clod!
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
626442#25*20834##*3820019483834721
Today I was browsing normally through Slashdot and was given a link that sent me to a blank website. I'm terrified that it might actually be a slasher or - worse - a telemarketer.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
When the victim's phone is answered, the dialer has to rapidly determine if the voice on the other side is human or machine. To do this, they try to analyze the greeting. The dialer wants to hear the word "Hello", followed by silence. Actually, it wants to hear ANY sound for about half a second, with a few seconds of silence.
To waste more of the telemarketer's time, consider changing your outgoing message:
OLD: "You have reached the Smith residence. We are not available at the moment, but leave your name and number so we can get back to you."
NEW: "Hello [3 second pause] You have reached..."
This should cause the dialer to connect the call to a telemarketer, who will miss about 5 seconds of your message, but they will hear the rest. Obviously, the telemarketer will hang up in a few seconds, but not before wasting a little more time. I think of it as redirecting the annoyance back to the source.
I had something similar happen the other day and then the telemarketing person came on the line and started in which his pitch. Perhaps someone here on /. can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was federal law that if I request it, the telemarketer has to provide me with their name, the name of their employer, and the street address of the company so that I can have the first clue who is calling me (and so I know who the complaint with the FTC will be about). But what if the person hangs up when you start asking questions and the number from which they are calling appears to be overseas -- even after the marketing person confirmed they were in the US to begin with. What recourse is there in such a case?
With the advent of new technology, comes new social norms. For the kids that have grown up with the internet, instant messaging, and cell phones, instant access is the norm for them. As far as their experience shows them, they don't have to wait for anything. Everything is available to them now. The idea of leaving a message and awaiting a reply seems as antiquated as contacting you by courier pigeon.
On second thought, that would actually be quite effective. They can let you out of the meeting early, or let your courier pigeon crap all over the table.
Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationary available. -D. Parker
Yes, Ryan, you are correct. I'm in the industry, and many of the call centers use predictive dialers, which anticipate how many concurrent outbound calls the machine should be making in order to maximize efficiency of the employees while not pissing off too many people. Actually, the regulated hard number is 3% - you can't have more than 3% of your outbound customers pick up phones filled with silence!
Does everyone stay below that number? No.
-R
This has to be one of the funniest clips involving a telemarketer that I have heard in a long time.
http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/2006/Telemarketer.mp3
Rejoice in your insanity, there really is no other way
I like to give them the Jerry Seinfeld treatment. (phone rings - Jerry answers) Jerry - "Hello?" caller - "Hello Mr. Seinfeld...." (Jerry Interrupts) Jerry - "...Excuse me I am getting ready to eat dinner, give me your home phone number and I will call you back!" (you don't hear the caller talking to Jerry) Jerry - "...really? You don't like people calling you at home? Now you know how I feel" HANG UP! Seriously though, keep an airhorn by the phone. When they call, get the human to start talking to you, then Air Horn them. A few of these deafening calls and they willleave you alone!
Stop by and watch a Christmas movie, commercial or cartoon! -->http://www.XmasDVD.com
You wanna play a tape!? What is the world coming to? Any real geek would slap together a program that passes the Turing test, hook it to a speech synthesizer, and have it chat away with the telemarketer. And he'd do it in Perl or LISP!
Shame on you! You should turn in your pocket protector.
Damn kids. Stay off my lawn!
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I mean given recent evidence, could they not be ..... Zombie calls? Lets face it, zombies are much more of a threat than ghosts for crying out loud.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
Caller ID.
As much as I hate the Telemarketer calls, I understand it's a money thing.
** READ THIS ** --> Call if you have to but when I tell you NO THANKS and DO NOT EVER CALL AGAIN - do it! DO NOT CALL ME EVER AGAIN. That was my Opt Out.
If you would follow this rule for EVERYONE you called, eventually you would make a ton of money because you would only call people who WANTED you to call.
I am NEVER going to answer the phone for you so why waste YOUR time? No sale!
Stop by and watch a Christmas movie, commercial or cartoon! -->http://www.XmasDVD.com
Anyone know what this number is? It has called my cell phone over 100 times and there is never anyone there when I bother to answer it.
If you live in St. Paul, MN, sometimes you get automated phone calls declaring a snow emergency.
The call itself I don't mind(time to move the car), but their choice of caller ID string is the worst one possible. It's 911-000-0000.
Just imagine old folks clogging up 911 call centers trying desperately to call back after the resulting confusion. Ramsey county can't afford a phone number that just plays back the same message when you call back? It just HAS to be 911, huh?
I know it's the caliber of telemarketers, but it's still stupid.
Reading through this thread I see that many have suggested technical solutions or humorous responses to "ghost" type telemarketing calls. I simply don't have the time or the patience to waste on such "solutions" and simply hang up, even if the phone droid is droning on.
The next time you receive one of these calls, just hang up. Don't waste your time, don't install some advanced phone system, don't engage in conversation, don't get angry and don't try and be funny (unless you are). Just hang up the fucking phone and get on with your life.
You were in a meeting with your mobile switched on? You could have muted its bell or are you the boss?
In either case, here at Microsoft, we feel standards are important. And we have fun, too. Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
There are lots and lots of telemarketers out there that want to talk to people. There are also lots and lots of people who don't get out much - elderly, live a long way from town, whatever. Shouldn't we be putting one group of people in touch with the other? Even better, people with anger management issues or those who are just having a bad day could sign up for the service, called something like "ripthepissoutofatelemarketer.com" (I haven't checked - maybe it's still available?) and get all of their issues off their chest with someone who actually wants to talk to them!
Tell him to text you. Geez...
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Most 800-number trunks allow you to put whatever you want in the caller-ID, so most of the phony calls have phony (or no) info in the caller ID.
You can block un-IDed calls, which is free and easy in most states. And you can ask legit callers, like your bank, to stop, and they will. Friends who call you will then have to dial *82 and opt-in to sending their caller ID on a call by call basis.
We put that three-tone, dee-dee-dii thing you get when you call a disconnected number on our answering machine message. Some automated dialers will strike your number off their list of they get that tone.
Nothing you can do about the callers with bogus caller-IDs, except go to their office with a an AK-47, if you can find out who they are. Not that I am advocating anything illegal or anything.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Having worked (briefly) for a telemarketer, the "dialer" is a server with telcom hardware attached (ours was a SCO Unix box, ironically) and you feed it numbers to dial. Makes sense, right?
Long story short, to up your sales numbers you tell it to dial more numbers in advance. If the setting is too high, nobody's there on your end to take the call because they're all already talking to someone. The more numbers you dial the better chance someone's going to answer. There's a pacing algorithm too which takes into account the number of reps available and average call times and many other variables - but since upping the number typically gets you better sales figures... yeah you'll never guess what people do - they up the number.
There are federal regulations in place, however, specifically to limit this practice. Hard to enforce. These calls are probably not coming from a big and established telemarketer, but rather a small startup shop.
I'm a 2000 man.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
You were in a meeting with your mobile switched on? You could have muted its bell or are you the boss?
Of course the ringer was off.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Good heavens, now we know what comes before "Main screen turn on!"
Texting is hideously inefficient and costs more money AND more time than calling. If he called and left a message, he would have been able to get 50 words in the same time he could have gotten one sentence. And it wouldn't have cost extra.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Does this kind of thing, sort of. For calls that are "UNAVAILABLE" or "ANONYMOUS", callers get a voice prompt telling them that I don't accept telemarketing calls and then has them enter their 10 digit phone number.
It'd be much, much cooler if there was a web page I could go to to whitelist some numbers and have the others all get the captcha you mention, with added language that I don't accept telemarketing calls and I want to be taken off their list.
the cost structure is artificial - I got a text package so I don't have to care about texting charges. I also dispute the inefficiency - a single sentence or maybe two takes about a minute to type or less, and that should be enough for anything important. It's not a generational thing - your son just doesn't know how to use a phone.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Is there anything out there that will block phone call from coming in at all, without going through the phone company? If I have caller ID can I block calls that show up as anonymous or with a phone number that I want to block?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
ats jus cuz ur slo at it. speed up n get a plan wit free txt
I wish I still had Mod points. The Telecrapper 2000 http://www.pagerealm.com/tc2k/. This is exactly what I want.
Caution: don't /. the site to oblivion.
in the mood.
You get one on the phone and as soon as you are able, ask them:
"Is this a sales call?"
If they say, "yes", then reply with "no money", or "would you be interested in donating to my church", etc... essentially your list! One particularly vile one is, "I only buy from bitches, are you in fact a bitch?" hehe...
If they say, "no", then the fun begins!
Let them know that if they are not on a sales call, then they cannot use any of the sales words. Sales words are "introduce", "tell you about", etc...
Bottom line is when they then attempt to start their pitch, just pick the key word, declare it to be a sales word, remind them about not using sales words and take control of the conversation back.
Sometimes they will just blurt out, "but it's free!"
This one is great because you then talk about free. Is breathing free? Talking on the phone free? Really free? Doesn't it take food to exist to have the conversation? Have fun with that, it will chap their ass and they will eventually hang up, or accept it's not really free.
This puts you back to the sales call bit.
Most of them get pissed and after being asked, "are you sure this isn't a sales call?" a few times, will step up and admit it's a sales call.
Congratulate them! Thanks man. I just knew this was a sales call!
Then nail them. "If you had been honest about the sales call, I might have considered the offer. Now it's really tough because nobody wants to buy anything from a liar! Would you buy from a liar?"
Let them down easy, but be condecending. In the future, you might consider just admitting you are on a sales call. You will sleep better, trust me, have a nice day, etc...
When I can, I'll do this on speaker phone. I've also played some really great sessions for use with some of our staff that does have to make sales calls. It's instructive.
Blogging because I can...
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I';ve been thinking about getting an Asterix, but can't find anything decent for cheap. Any ideas?
Back before the Do Not Call list, I left the default electronic greeting on my answering machine. It was quite short, only lasting a second or so. When I would get home from work, I would invariably have messages which included two or three telemarketers talking to my machine. It would end with 30 seconds or so of: "Hello... Is anybody there..."
It always brightened my day.
These days, I'm on the national and state "Do Not Call" lists, so I only get a call every couple of weeks.
Thanks for the correction. And may I also add ClassicalBums and RingtoneShits to the mix?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
Or they could use owls with the same effect.
Well, every couple of days I receive a call on my work cell from 847-557-1100, Arrow Financial. A quick Google search turns up how they are calling lots of other people too.
So, I appreciate the work anyone does to help stop these folks!
... if that's your best, your best won't do... - Twisted Sister
Evil must be opposed.
Always do your little bit, no matter how small. Drop a nickel in a Salvation Army kettle. Tie up a telemarketer for a minute or two. Sell your SUV and get a 4 cylinder.
There are over 300,000,000 people in the US. Small things spread across a group that large add up to gigantic results. All you have to do is NOT do what you suggest, and just care about something. Even if it's just for a single minute.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Whenever I got a ghost call I got a telemarketer call a few hours later. Or a day later. Without fail.
So I think maybe they're checking if a human answers the phone. Possibly? I don't know.
"Sorry, this phone line is not very good. Would you mind calling me at 1-900-? I've got like an hour free and am VERY interested in hearing what you have to say." ;-)
My solution was to have the telephone company come out and disconnect their wires from my home entirely. It is very effective in preventing calls from coming in, besides - why should I pay for both a land line and a cell phone?
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I used different solution - I programmed my linux box to answer the call by sending "discontinued line" signal, then, after couple of seconds play automatic answering message ...
I got a huge drop in telemarketing calls after some time ...
They're actually fairly intelligent. Since most people answer their phones with "Hello", and then wait for a response, the dialers have software which can choose between a 1-2 second voice activity, and the more typical 10-30 seconds for an answering machine. If the system thinks it detects a human voice, it immediately looks for an available agent to transfer the call to (and often downloads a file with information to the agent's screen at the same time).
The problems occur when some overzealous manager - who is probably under a lot of pressure to make his numbers, as most of these telemarketing agencies are working under contract to other firms - changes the dialer parameters. Those other firms hire 3-6 telemarketing agencies at a time, and compare the sales results on a daily basis. One or two bad days a month is probably OK, but if you're having one or two bad days a week, your contract probably won't be renewed. At third party telemarketers, this is considered a "bad thing". So, they up the dials to, say, 4 per agent. This gets them the desired high occupancy rates for their agents, but it also results in a lot of situations where a person answers the phone, and there are no agents available. Those are your "ghost calls".
It's actually quite short-sighted as a strategy, as the contracting firms normally only supply a certain amount of numbers to the telemarketing firm for a given campaign, and this burns through them quickly. You're typically limited to a certain number of calls to any specific number; the contracting firms aren't completely stupid, and they know that a bunch of ghost calls showing up on your caller ID will make it that much more difficult to close the sale when they do get through. But when your job is on the line, some people will take those chances.
What was once true, is no longer so
I love having somewhere to find out who these bozos are, though. I get calls from NCO Financial to my cellphone all the time for some guy named Sven. NCO changes phone numbers constantly. Personally, I'm more kosher to CallFerret, though it is not as old as whocalled.
A rate of 3% or less has been quoted in regards to the maximum number of silent calls (per day? per week?) that these boiler-room call centre operations are supposed to legally adhere to.
Sorry to point out the obvious, but:
(1) Telejunkers routinely forge or block their caller ID.
(2) If you get 5 silent calls in one day, is that 5 calls from the same telejunker? Who knows? Other than *57, which carries a charge (and doesn't release the ANI number to you, only the telco who in turn only releases it to the authorities) there's no way of telling.
(3) Since there's no realistic way of knowing, it absolutely makes sense - to a telejunker, at least - to abuse the anonymity of forged/blocked CID to determine the best time to call someone back with a different CID: this time with a real, in-service phone number.
Using GrandCentral.com, this all taken care of. From GrandCentral settings:
<quote>
GrandCentral helps you fight telemarketers and other unsolicited callers. Our advanced PhoneSPAM filters, combined with the power of thousands of users like you helps you get rid of unsolicited calls.
Here are your options:
[x] Apply GrandCentral Phone SPAM filters
[x] Block suspected SPAM callers completely and play "Number not in Service message" (Your phones won't ring and suspected SPAM callers won't be able to leave a message)
[ ] Send suspected SPAM callers to SPAM voicemail (Your phones won't ring but suspected SPAM callers will be able to leave a message. You will be able to access those messages from your SPAM folder.)
[ ] Do not apply GrandCentral Phone SPAM filters (Suspected SPAM callers will be treated like all other callers.)
</quote>
and with Call Screening:
<quote>
Do you want us to ask your callers for their name the first time they call? Call screening options:
[ ] Screen all unknown callers (Screen every call where the name does not appear on Caller ID (or in your GrandCentral address book).
[x] Screen only blocked callers (Screen every call with a blocked caller ID.)
[ ] Turn screening OFF (Off means off. If you choose this option, we'll never ask your unknown callers for their name and they will simply be announced as "unknown caller.")
</quote>
In addition to that, GrandCentral allows you to forward different caller IDs to different phone numbers.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
That's incredible!!!! I almost wish I still had a landline so I could build one just for the sheer entertainment value of messing with telemarketers' heads.
I get lots of ghost calls from numbers like 000-000-0000 or 41234 or another four digit number that I can't recall. They never leave a message and sometimes (when I pick up) there is no one there. Usually, when I do get through it is a call center (I subscribe to several 'free' trade rags that have started collecting info from me every 6 months so they can sell to advertisers -- really annoying). -Sean
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
I hate leaving messages on answering machines. I always have to call twice, the first to find out that I have to leave a message, then I mentally script what I want to say, then I call back and leave a message. Or I'll send an email isntead.
Some people develop their thoughts internally and don't speak until the though is fully formed. I, on the other hand, am one of those people that thinks as I speak, so what I am saying initially may not necessarily be my final conclusion. Without this externalisation proces, I find it very hard to fully develop my thoughts. When talking to people I can get away with it, because I can easily clarify myself and nobody thinks any worse of me for it. On an answering machine that isn't possible, because all of the early detritus is recorded. This sort of recording makes me sound like a dingbat, and I don't much like sounding like a dingbat. Therefore I hate answering machines (I rather hypocritically like having one on my phone though).
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
I have two ISDN phones, one PSTN phone, a number of cellphones, and VoIP. Naturally they are all targeted by marketers.
My problem with marketers is that they waste my time and therefore my money. To counter this, I have devised a very simple method:
The basic principle of my method is that people who work with me or have a legitimate reason to contact me usually know more than one of my phone numbers, and almost surely know my email. Actually my business card has two phone numbers on it as well as my email, so everyone who I met fits this description. My method is actually akin to graylisting for email.
So what is my greylisting method? It's very simple: No call is answered, unless the same caller-id calls at least two of my phone numbers. A whitelist and a blacklist assist me in filtering known numbers. Everyone who is not on the whitelist and fails to call at least two of my phones gets ignored no matter how many times they call.
The system is based on usual human behaviour, which is that if a person knows two or three of your phone numbers, they will call one of them and if they get no response they will usually prefer to call the other rather than call again the same number. I have noticed, however, that some people prefer to call only specific numbers (maybe because of cost issues or maybe because they have saved them on their device memory, I believe), and so I try to deal with them with the whitelist (or, in some cases, the blacklist!).
My system, however, sometimes causes legitimate calls to go unanswered if they aren't on the whitelist. This happens with people who have no caller-id, as all of them are ignored by default. This problem is very easily solved by my email: If they have a serious reason to contact me, they should send an email. If someone has no caller-id and does not send email, it means that they just want to waste my time and have nothing of interest to discuss.
This system works for me because it is usually me who initiates calls with clients or associates, and I do most of my work through email or chat anyway, so I don't really rely on the phones for important work.
I do have, however, one emergency unlisted phone number that grants immediate access to every incoming call no matter what. This number is usually given to important clients for large projects etc... but naturally marketers have found it. So, what I do when I get a stupid call from a marketer on this phone? After I answer it and I understand what they are, I just say very kindly "please wait" and I don't hang up. I then carry on with my usual business, "forgetting" the call :)
I get calls like this all the time.
Answer the phone, say "hello" so that the computer on the other end knows someone is home, wait for the operator to go into his/her spiel about whatever product it is, then simply put the phone down on the benchtop and walk away, while the operator is still talking to themselves. They will usually spend a good minute or two talking away before they catch on.
At least this way the company will incur higher costs than they would have had if I simply ignored them; the charge for the call and time that has been consumed by the operator. I also found that some organisations have not called back.
My other favourite is to say "hang on I'll get mum/dad/whoever" to talk to them, put the phone on the bench, and walk away. They ususlly stay on the line longer with this tactic.
I lost me sig.
I just had a flash back to my Uni days, where we would sit an unsuspecting victim down in front of an Eliza program.
Hook this into a speech recognition and speech synthesizer, and you'll probably have the average telemarketer babbling their life story to it for hours on end.
I put this in front of my answering machine's message and most of my ghost and robot calls went away:
http://artofhacking.com/cgi-bin/wwfs/wwfs.cgi?AREA=20006&FILE=SIT-IC.WAV
also: http://www.yourhomenow.com/sound/sit-tone.wav
See http://www.yourhomenow.com/sit.html for particulars about the tones (985.2 Hz, 1428.5 Hz, and 1776.7 Hz).
Then I bought one of these http://www.digitone.com/ and things got even better.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
They have their call ratios set too high. A predictive dialler is a box which dials multiple numbers and then tries to detect the presence of a real person on the end of the line. It plays the numbers and will dial a certain number of lines over the total number of telemarketers you have taking calls. Some numbers will be disconnected, engaged, fax machines etc. But when the dialler finds a warm body it pipes it through to an agent to talk. The ghost calls are when there are too many outbound dials for the number of agents available, so the predictive dialler drops the call. That silence you hear when you pick up the phone and say "hello?" is the predictive dialler figuring out what you are. Some detect answering machines based on the quality of the speech, however if you have a high quality recording on your answering machine it'll still think it's a person and patch it through to an agent.
and with T9, I can text as fast as you and not look like an idjit.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Am I missing something? If there's no caller ID and the caller did not leave a message, exactly what number do I type in the box... mine???
My Freakin Blog
Some comments and two ideas on these calls. First, I get these calls all the time in Austin, TX. But I just spent a week in the Washington, DC area, where NONE of my friends get these calls. So it seems as if the callers follow the old Mafia rule- operate everywhere but in DC, because that might lead to a reaction by the only people who count- legislators, thier staff members and thier neighbors. Don't mess with the big boys. Second, more people have voted for the Do Not Call list with thier fingertips than have ever voted for a Presidential candidate, so the public is on our side. But the law is weak, has no enforcement mechanism to speak of, and was intended that way- the bill's opponents were the "non-profits" (and now everyone is a non-profit), the financial institutions (the previous-business-relationship exception), and all the usual suspects, who hire a company in India, have them do the automated calling, then switch the call back to the U.S. when you "press 1"- and of course the U.S. company hangs up when you ask "who are you?". So this is the usual "We really are doing something" legislation aimed at shutting up the one-hundred million folks who want to be left alone at dinner time, so that Congress and the contributors can make a buck- and, of course, be left alone at dinner in the DC area. In Europe, where they have real privacy laws, people get arrested for this stuff. Not here. So what is to be done? First, lobby your legislature, but don't hold your breath. Money talks. Second, spread the pain to DC. Anyone who comes up with an easy way to redirect these calls to the White House and Congressional switchboards will hear squeals of pain immediately. Then there is the question of what happens when someone with a knowledge of Skype et. al. comes up with a "Washington Area Autodialer For the Rest of Us". If it is legal to do this stuff for money it is legal to do it for political purposes. For example an automated message to phones in those Congressman-laden prefixes in McLean, VA saying "Send money to our new PAC aimed at getting Congress to pass a bill giving us REAL opt-out phone privacy and a private right of action against ANY U.S. company using using these subcontract cut-outs" will get the right people up from dinner. If you make our leaders get up from thier own dinner table often enough they will listen. Make DC share our pain; lab rats can learn and so do legislators. Deeply annoyed Dave
I know of a consignment shop call at http://kidsexchange.net/