Modem TAM commands and procedures

Oh-oh. Allow me to offer an evil and devious idea. I was setting up an IVR (interactive voice response) system for a client. Basically, it's a Windoze PC with multiple sound cards and line interfaces. We had 3 such units, one for each satellite office. I took one home to learn the programming and play with the features.

Programming it to allow the user to do their own call routing was trivial. Say "operator" and it would ring the front desk. No big deal. However, that wasn't much fun, so I threw together some programming suitable for dealing with an incoming telemarketing call. At that time, most such calls were initiated by humans, not robocalls. I started by having it recognize a list of common telemarketing buzz words, and branched down to return appropriate responses, rants, lectures, insults, and noises. I typically got only about 5 such calls per day, so it wasn't much of a test.

Playing back the days recording showed that I had a long way to go before I had a sellable product, but I could see some promise. I also discovered that a scripted human robot doesn't communicate with an IVR machine very well. If I had some clue as to what script the caller was using, I could detect some buzz words, but most often, the machine would belch "I don't understand. Please repeat". I also found that I had confused customers and friends with the machine, which I blamed on some mysterious telephone company call routing error that had temporarily taken over my home phone number.

I ran the IVR system at home for about a week, learned quite a bit about its programming and its limitations, but eventually had to let go of the new toy. At the last possible moment, I skimmed the tutorials to see if I missed anything important, and installed it for the client. In general, they worked acceptably and required minimal tinkering.

So, assemble and IVR system, program it for dealing with telemarketing and robocalls,

Isn't it wonderful to see our government working for the benefit of those who provide political contributions instead of for the benefit on the general public? If something that nobody wants had been suggested or implemented in a foreign country, it would be called "government corruption" but in the USA, it's a "public information service". Incidentally, have you noticed that advertisements are now called "notifications" on your smartphone?

Think IVR, not TAM. They're similar, but an IVR is more elaborate.

Why go to all that trouble? My telephone "provider" is Ooma, with fantastic blocking capabilities...

I block ALL 800 numbers

I block individual numbers and can even block numbers beginning with certain digit combinations

I block individual names and can even block numbers beginning/containing certain letter combinations

Ooma has voice mail, though I don't use it... calls that make it thru go to my cell's voicemail if I don't answer

Ooma has logging of all calls, received, missed, dialed

And forwarding... my cell acts like an extension of my home and office phones

I avoid confusion by having my voicemail answer, "You have reached the voicemail of the person whose number you just dialed. Please leave a message." (This also prevents auto-dial callers from snagging my cell phone number. :-) ...Jim Thompson

I have one, discovered it accidentally. Our ould PBX phone system died, so I set up an Asterisk/FreePBX system. It has too MANY options, we are still tinkering with settings. We have two lines, a business and a home line. We used to have FAX recognition on both lines. This works by listening between rings for the caller ID, then as soon as that has been taken, it answers the line and generates synthetic ring while waiting so see if there are fax tones. When we took out the FAX recognition on the home line, all the robo-caller just hang up! I guess they hear a click and a pause in the ring signal, and just hang up right there! Wow, quite a discovery. My wife was worried she was losing important calls, but after a while she agreed all the hangups were actually people she DIDN'T want to talk to.

So, apparently if you just cause a click, the robo-callers give up, they probably have lots of people who use caller ID to dump their calls.

Jon

Actually, I have Ooma too, but the new screening device is really intended for people with real land lines or ISP VOIP systems where the blocking features are far more primitive than Ooma's, if they exist at all.

But even with Ooma, what I notice is that any blocking based on Caller ID is becoming less effective. The reason is that spoofing of CID is becoming more commonplace. Increasingly what I see is not only the same area code as my number, but the same prefix. Then the last 4 digits are just random. These calls are ringing through to my phone, and there's no effective way to block them because I can't block my entire area code or my prefix, and the CID as a whole is effectvely random.

So blacklists of any kind will become less and less effective. Whitelists should work pretty well, but there will always be cases where a call you would like to receive isn't on your white list. So I have Ooma send the community and nomorobo blacklist callers to voicemail. So far, it's pretty rare that any of them actually leave voicemail. If that changes, I'll have to figure out something else.

I've seen an occasional one of those as well. But I have no problem doing a blanket block since my number was transferred to Ooma before I moved to a new area.

...Jim Thompson

Yeah. I even had one spoofed call that showed up on caller ID as my own phone number.

That has happened to me too. So I have my own number added to my personal blacklist.

Discovered this...

So I'll block "Number Begins With" with my area code and prefix.

Since I have two lines, I'll add the alternate line as a contact for each of the two lines.

Q.E.D. ;-) ...Jim Thompson

One reviewer writes in German that this modem works with linux without vendor drivers.