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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."
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?
Very easy solution.. just install asterix and make your own voice menues people have to navigate to get to the actual phone... no more automated messages or other annoyinaces..
You can even make diffent paths for telemarketeers.. and if they select the "I am family or friend" then they have actually allready lied once.. hmm.. starts to sound like a solution I have to implement..
Should only take a couple of hours..
I did. Perhaps mine sounded a bit *too* prerecorded, because they wouldn't stay on very long. A generic one that just looped through "Yes"...."Uh-huh"..."okay"...."muted grunt." seemed to work much better. Especially if there were longer pauses. Sad part - is how bored was I one weekend to do such a project is another discussion.
I donno, I mean the Telecrapper 2000 works astonishingly well. Keep in mind that most telemarketers aren't paid much and check their brain in at the door. The sheer repetition of reading off their prompts probably makes them less adept at figuring out that ti's a computer right away.
you should point it back to your own number, that way it'll remind you on the first message that you forgot to lock your keys.
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
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.
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.
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.