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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.
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/
I'd rather have somebody do something about that slasher outside...
Kevin Smith on Prince
If I'm in a snarky mood that's exactly what I do, pick up the phone and tell them I'm interested, tell them to hold on for just a sec and put the receiver down and put on some awful Wurlitzer music or go back to whatever I was doing (dishes is my favourite) and see how long it takes them to hang up.
I had one guy on the line for over an hour, at one point he said "hello" loud enough for me to hear and I told him to "uhh... hang on just a bit more" and returned to whatever I was doing.
I've actually just recently used some of the sites in question to figure out what lame person was trying to ring my number at dinner time. I did a Google search with the number and it came right up with it on 800notes.com. Impressive I thought, now if only I could block numbers for free...
crazy dynamite monkey
Telemarketers aren't fooled by that. Acting interested is the wrong way to go. You need to record yourself saying things like "I'm right in the middle of dinner" or "this isn't a good time". Then they'll be on line forever.
I can't remember if it was the local radio show or a syndicated one that I listen to that had a guy on it who recorded his own pranking of telemarketer calls. He had one where he started off asking the telemarketer how he knew $IntendedRecipient and kept the guy on for about five minutes during which it evolved that there had been a murder, and that the telemarketer was now a suspect. They actually got the guy to admit where he was calling from and indicated that they were calling his local sheriff, and that he was not to move from his desk until the sheriff arrived. It was priceless.
I think it is disgusting when people prank call innocent Chinese takeout places, people's stay-at-home wives, and so forth, but a telemarketer is open game in my opinion.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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...
I'm keeping a landline until we come up with another way to leave the Matrix.
Ye I do, ecause I do't ike he crappy overcmpressd audo uality tha ireless hones ave.
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.
We need to use audio capthas: 'If you are a robot please press 0, if you are a human being please press 792168387231962887613'
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.
Playback the old modem attempting to connect carrier waves. Instant hillarity and doubles your score.
here we go: radio on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8
I would, but Getafix ran away with all my potion.
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.
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."
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!
There is also the third kind - the type I ofter experience because my name is quite difficult to pronounce. When I pick up the phone all I can hear is - struggle to pronounce the name, then sigh, and then they hang up. Who knew having a name like Zilstrassgoulfmahnsen would have such benefits...
ats jus cuz ur slo at it. speed up n get a plan wit free txt