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A Bot That Drives Robocallers Insane
Trailrunner7 writes: Robocalls are among the more annoying modern inventions, and consumers and businesses have tried just about every strategy for defeating them over the years, with little success. But one man has come up with a bot of his own that sends robocallers into a maddening hall of mirrors designed to frustrate them into surrender. The bot is called the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, and it's the work of Roger Anderson, a veteran of the phone industry himself who had grown tired of the repeated harassment from telemarketers and robocallers. Anderson started out by building a system that sat in front of his home landlines and would tell human callers to press a key to ring through to his actual phone line; robocallers were routed directly to an answering system. He would then white-list the numbers of humans who got through. Sometimes the Jolly Roger bot will press buttons to be transferred to a human agent and other times it will just talk back if a human is on the other end of the line to begin with.
You can buy one of these for $50.00 from Amazon, and they have been around for a few years. Not so amazing...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
You can't drive robocallers insane... they're already there!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Why hasn't the Do Not Call list worked? Seems there was too many loop holes and ways around the law I guess.
I see he has a Kickstarter going for a commercial version. Problem is that as soon as more than one person has it, the callers will learn to recognize the voice in the first few seconds. In fact they will train their computers to recognize the voice and not even put it through to a human being, so really it's no better than just hanging up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I love listening to the itslenny calls.... https://www.reddit.com/r/itsle...
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
To really piss off telemarketers, the robot should give itself away after a few minutes by saying "this has been a recording. Have a nice day." In this sample call, the telemarketer just eventually hung up, thinking he was talking to a person who just had too much time on their hands. I think the reaction would have been better had he known he had been duped by a machine.
In those rare instances that one such call gets through my filters, I simply hang up immediately on noticing the nature of the call. I do not care whether it is a bot or a human. Without a word. Apologies and politeness are not due, and losing one's marbles is useless.
I fuck with telemarketers mercilessly, waste their time, and generally ruin their day until they hang up. :)
I also have a list of test questions that I make them answer before I let them proceed. Some are legit questions (how deep is the Mariana Trench?) and some are trick questions.
Question: If I have 10 apples and you take 5, what do you have?
They always say "5"....
My answer: No, you have two broken arms, because NO ONE takes my fucking apples!
I love running them ragged and by the time they hang up in frustration (or if they fail 3 questions) they realize that they suck and should seek honest employment.
Sometimes I make an "appointment" with them, but I give them a bogus address. Sometimes I give them my actual address and just play dumb when they show up a day or two later. It quickly becomes a lose-lose situation for companies to hire these telemarketers and they don't re-hire them, lol. :)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Wouldn't take much to have the bot also submit a complaint to here:
https://complaints.donotcall.g...
Who knows if the government checks the list but couldn't hurt.
When I was unemployed for two years (2009-2010), and getting ready to file for chapter seven bankruptcy in 2011, the credit card companies sold my debts to the debt collecting agencies. Most debt collectors were disappointed to find a note in the file that I was filing for bankruptcy and left it at that. A few weren't so polite. One debt collector kept hanging up on me when I demanded that he acknowledged the note in the file. I called five times in five minutes, tying up his phone during that time, before he gave me what I wanted.
I haven't had a landline in about 10 years, but I hand out my last landline phone number to anyone who asks for a phone number - let them waste time calling a dead line. Only real people that I know and trust get my cell number, and the are entered as contacts. Any call from someone in my address book pops up with their name, so I know it's safe to answer. If it is a call with no address in my phone, I don't answer. If they leave a message, I see if it is junk or if it is a legit communication. If legit, I add it as a contact and respond.
I very occasionally will get a robocall from a random dialer, but the above procedure kills the problem in the nest.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Simply switching off the ringer on my landline has had the same effect; after tailing off over the first 6 months or so, I rarely get telemarketing calls anymore (as in, not even once a month). Anyone who really wants to reach me will leave me voicemail. Messages from those few telemarketers who don't hang up get deleted on recognition within the first couple of seconds of playback. And anyone who really needs to reach me directly will have been given my cell number to do so. Works admirably.
licet differant, aequabitur
I wonder how this deals with a landline when the homeowner wants to dial out. I setup an Asterisk system that just dumps callers not on my list to a menu and immediately gives them a challenge/response in a slightly confusing way so there's little time to connect their agent with my line. If they don't answer, the system hangs up on them and that's the end of it. As a result I haven't had a telemarketing/robo call in over 7 years and I still have the ability to dial out through my landline any time I like. I'd rather they move on than to waste their time with my system and on my phone line when I could be getting or making far more important calls. The only way around the system is to already have the agent connected to the line as the call is being placed and have them aware that the challenge/response is happening. No muss, no fuss. Sure, my system doesn't make headlines but I don't have telemarketers tying up my lines either.
I do this on my voice mail, since robo calls will hang up. Just answer "Hello, Hi" wait 3-4 seconds, repeat, Takes about 5-6 seconds for the robocall to transfer to a human when it thinks its not voicemail. Really pisses them off when they transfer and they hear "Yup, its really not hear, you got the machine"
I suspect they dont get paid for voicemails, so they get really really mad. I've heard some swearing and cussing, love it.
No but this is effectively a tar pit for their bot.
While it's busy, it can't harm other people.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Simply set your answering machine to pick up in one ring.
Set the answer to: "Hello..." Pause for about 7 seconds then "I'm sorry we're not interested, please remove us from your call list."
We went from about 8 calls a day between 8am and 10pm to roughly 2 calls a week (most IRS scammers)
They are just trying to make a living.
So do burglars. Doesn't mean I have to support it. Actually, any second of their lifetime wasted by a machine without them being able to make the life of another person miserable or waste another person's time is a second won.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sure, most people really despise the robocalls, but wasting the caller's time doesn't really help much, either. Just like with spammers, the robo-callers are being paid to do a job - and believe it or not annoying you is not what they are paid for.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Jennifer was SO TIRED of harassing telemarketing calls until she learned this one old telephone trick! Now Shes making them wish they never called!
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
The Telecrapper 2000 is my favorite example of how to torture telemarketers.
I use a voip line which give me acces to an IVR (a menu) For the phone to actually ring, they need to dial the right number or it simply hang after 6 seconds. Final twist (might be why it actually work) The message in the menu greeting that that mention the number is in another language than english. sucess after 5 years is 100%
Sounds like a reimplementation of the telecrapper.
tho the telecrapper is over 10 years old now I can understand how people would forget..
http://www.engadget.com/2005/0...
http://myplace.frontier.com/~p...
http://soundbytes.org/forums/t...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
How the hell is robocalling still a viable business when we are proving more and more every day that humans do not speak to other humans on phones anymore?
Seriously, I can't believe we're not sitting here talking about what a pain in the ass robotexting is...
I guess we're NOT interested.
file:
If you like to do it yourself: http://www.amazon.com/Fun-Phon...
Listened to some of the recordings, very cool. I can just imagine when the logic in this gets better. Like when they ask 'Who....?' 'Which....?' 'What....?'
The bot doesn't do any answers for that, just go 'mm-mmm' 'right' 'ok'. Same with 'How are you'.
But these are fantastic, I'd love to enter voice into this.
The point is to get through to a person though, and then waste their time. Listen to the video in TFA. The bot will ask the caller if they are a person, and if the caller does not stop to consider the question then the bot will press 1 a few times to get through to a person, and then proceeds to waste that person's time. In other words, the bot does exactly what a robocall bot does, tries to reach a person then wastes their time.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The people who end up in these jobs generally need them.
They are just trying to make a living.
Actual robocalls on the other hand...
The goal isn't to "take it out" on the human caller. The goal is to make it unprofitable for the telemarketing company to continue. Most of my "telemarketing" calls these days tend to be complete scams too in which case when they are trying to install a virus on your computer and/or steal your money then they deserve it but even if they are an honest employee working for an honest telemarketing company (assuming that exists), the only way to reduce the amount of calls is to make it unprofitable which is what a system like this is designed to do.
I've been thinking about running my own in-home PBX to deal with this, too.
Whitelisted numbers, friends, family, and businesses I want to talk to: Rings right through.
Numbers not on the whitelist: straight to voicemail, my phone does not ring, not even once. The voicemail says, "Hello?" a few times to see if anyone answers, then says "This is a recording, please leave a message" in order to (presumably) get the robo-calls routed to an actual agent.
Numbers on the blacklist: Forwarded to Lenny, or something very special I program myself. (I don't like that "Lenny" says "Yeah" and similar positive type words from time to time; those crooks might claim that was an agreement to get a subscription to The Wisdum of L. Ron Hubbard crammed onto my phone bill.) My ideal would be to sound perfectly normal, do some interpretation of what they're saying to actually address things they say, and do a "curious about the product but not agreeing to anything" act for as long as they stay on the phone.
On the top of the blacklist are those evil <redacted> who call six times simultaneously, so the phone rings a whole lot longer than normal before going to voicemail, and the Caller-ID announces their name six times. Bastards. This is the sort of thing that makes me yearn for the "Scanners" power to reach down the phone line telekinetically and set their computer on fire.
Bonus, custom voicemail messages for appropriate callers, white/non/blacklisted. Like "Hi, Mom, we're not home, call my cell."
Except that there are all kinds of ways for robocalls to not be illegal.
Also, for you to equate a call center peon to a burglar is pretty disingenuous.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I am not from USA, so I really don't know how it goes with robocalls. What's the point? You are supposed to listen to the recorded advertising message? I'd expect that 99% of people immediately hang up.
No sig today.
I get a ton of robo and scams on my work cell phone for some reason, happens a ton.
I get they guys that call and ask me if I am in front of my PC all the time and I mess with them when I feel like it.
But honestly what I want to know is why law enforcement does nothing about these calls, some are total scams and should be 100% illegal.
How hard would it be to setup a phone number that has no real use outside of a honeypot for call spam? so if someone is calling it they are more than likely not legit. then record and take them down ASAP.
Why is this not a issue, they are trying to scam money for innocent people all the time, I would hope they would be prosecuted, are they all outside the US or something so it makes it impossible? Most of the calls look like they are come from a local number when they are trying to scam out I found.
I use Ooma for my home phone service. It has a blacklist feature (both personal and a "community" shared list). You can choose whether to send them to voicemail, play them a message or what have you. It's worked perfectly for me for years, zero robocalls (other than legit ones like schools which I can always block if I need to).
I imagine it may not work forever (I remember the rise and fall of spam blacklists) but right now it's great.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Years ago, I had problems with a FAX spammer who would send junk every night. We had to leave it on overnight because it was a transport company and we would receive bills of lading at all hours. This also meant, however, that we had a separate phone line for voice calls, which did *not* need to be left free all night.
Anyhow, all of these faxes had a removal number to call, which made you jump through all sorts of hoops. I noticed shortly after attempting it that it actually *increased* the volume of spam to TWO a night. The "removal" number was, however, toll-free. This gave me an idea.
I listened and noted the timing of prompts, and the associated menu options, for the "removal" service. I brought in an old modem from home, and set it up to autodial their number (on their dime) and start "removal" processes. This I did in two different ways:
(1) First my modem would call them and demand removal of a number. They were so helpful and asked if I wished to remove another, so of course my modem would say YES, and proceed to "remove" the next number in sequence. It would cycle through all 1000 numbers in a block before disconnecting, and each time it did this, it incremented the number of the block being removed (except for invalid ones like 555). This took about four hours, all of which they had to pay the charges for. Not long after (and possibly as a direct consequence), they started limiting the calls to three numbers before hanging up.
(2) My second iteration of the program would select a random number, go through the "removal" steps, but then when asked "are you sure?" it would hit the button for "NO", at which point the process would start again. It would pick a new random number and do this again and again. If the call was terminated, it waited five minutes and called again. Since it never completed the process, the three-number limit did not apply. I think this worked for three or four days before they implemented a fifteen minute cutoff regardless of what you were doing at the time. I didn't re-program for this at all, I just tolerated the 25% loss of efficiency at driving up heir phone bill and let it call back five minutes after being disconnected.
Finally I got an angry call, during business hours, demanding that I stop doing this. I flat out said "sue me." The person at the other end finally said "why would you want me to do that?", to which I responded "because then I'll know exactly who you are, and can sue you for each of the hundreds of faxes you have sent, which I have been keeping as evidence." He coughed and said "Look, just stop calling us, eh? Nobody else can call when you're doing this." (Did I mention they were in Vancouver?) I just said "I will cease the calls as long as you do."
We got another one two weeks later, but I could only run the auto-dialer at night, so I couldn't do anything right at that moment. I got a VOICE call fifteen minutes later telling me to please disregard and not start the remove-bot again. That was the last time I heard from them.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Ok, then compare them to Jehova's Witnesses or the bum trying to sell you some ancient newspaper he found. Not illegal. But annoying as all hell.
And of those three, the ONLY one actually worthy of a nanosecond of my time is the bum, for he alone has the chance to not be responsible for the situation he is in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've thought of building one of those for a long time, but never quite enough to actually do it.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Don't allow phone calls without a pre-negotiated secret. Here, have my phone and a PIN just for you. I will add that PIN to my access list. If you abuse it, I will revoke it. Same for email.
Queued communication is all the rage. Down with instant communication.
I've been having lots of fun with the "Windows Technical Department" scammers lately.
One time I wasted well over an hour of their time, with 4-5 different people total. They even called me back a couple times. First, when they wanted me to turn on the computer, I just told them "hang on, it's a bit slow" and used that to string them out for more than 5 minutes before it finally booted... to the DOS prompt.
> Yes, now go to the Start Menu and... ... ... (ramble off more HTML mixed with parts of the actual site text).
I don't have a Start Menu, it's just a command line.
> Type in eventvwr.msc and...
It says that eventvwr.msc is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
> What OS do you have? Microsoft?
Yes, Microsoft Disk Operating System (DOS) 6.2
> Can you open a browser?
Yes, I have Lynx here...
> Linux? I thought you said Microsoft.
No, Lynx, like a Tiger or Lion, not Linux.
> Whatever, just go to supremocontrol.com and look for the big link in the middle.
Ok, I went to supremocontrol.
> Do you see the big link?
No, I just see a lot of HTML.
> What do you see?
Umm, DOCTYPE HTML TRANSITIONAL 4.01 EN
I repeated this skit about 5-6 times with several different people before they finally just gave up.
Someday I want to prepare a VM where all the standard commands they use have been replaced with joke programs. Like ones with pictures of Borat smiling and saying this is totally not a virus. Or maybe they can trigger some horrible virus that will cause the computer to explode unless the Microsoft Technical Department wires 1 bitcoin to some address and then fake some explosions and a disconnect.
That or maybe I can convince them to yank out the wires on their phone system before it hacks them. Or maybe to pour water on it? Hmm... so many fun ideas.
This is criminal activity. If the federal government wanted to stop this they CAN trace a call, follow it back to the U.S. call center or credit card billing number. How? Find 100 people willing to have a tap on the phone; tell them to agree to anything and pay with a government credit card they are given; trace the credit card info and land on the U.S. part of the operation HARD using the conspiracy laws.
If you don't think they have the ability to do that do the following though experiment: How fast would it take for the police to arrive at your door if the robo call was saying "I think we should bomb the White House with confetti using toy drones. Would you like to buy one set up to use? If so, press one.
If any of the people running for President made it a campaign promise to shut these people down I'd vote for him or her at the March 1st Texas primary
You can set up such a system in about 5 minutes with something like voip.ms
Yes, because not everyone gets great cell reception at home.
Personally, I get awful cell reception at home for about 8 months out of the year. Why? Because the leaves on the trees block the signals from the cell towers. Once the leaves fall, my cell reception is noticeably better.
Their Kickstarter campaign will fail because their implementation sucks, for several reasons:
1) It's a subscription service instead of a device that you pay for once
2) It requires manually forwarding every Robocall to their service
If it were a device similar to the Caller ID blockers that you can buy on Amazon, then I'd contribute to their campaign.