call blocker device suggestions?

Using a "SIT tone" might help:

"In telephony, a special information tone (SIT) is an in-band international standard signal consisting of three rising tones indicating a call has failed. It usually precedes a recorded announcement describing the problem " "Because many predictive dialers (used in telemarketing) respond to SITs, consumer devices such as the TeleZapper play an Intercept SIT to trick the telemarketer's equipment into flagging a called number as disconnected.

Alternatively, the above recordings of SITs could be used on a voicemail or answering machine, or played manually on a computer, to achieve a similar effect."

Susan

Assuming USA, assuming landline. Add sit.wav to the beginning of your answer message. It cut robo calls by about 30%. Some robo calls go right to a recorded message and never hear the sit.wav though. Or just use sit.wav as an answer message and nothing else. Doing that not only confuses robo machines but confuses humans, too, and they hang up.

+1. Have the numbers you care about in "contacts." The phone buzzing can be annoying but... better than dealing with them...

OP...Get on the do-not-call-list.

[snip]

I normally don't respond to calls with these on caller ID, since they are usually junk calls: I do have an answering machine.

1. blocked.

1. NAME is the same as the number.

2. NAME is 'V' plus some number.

1. NAME is excessively ambiguous (such as "IEM", "CSW INC", or "cust serv" if I don't know the company).

2. city and state (especially with unfamiliar are code).

1. unfamiliar business.

2. charities (they seem to think my money is theirs, and won't shut up about it).

I've had a few in that 4th category, that were valid calls. I do listen to the answering machine. Junk callers almost never leave a message.

--
Mark Lloyd 
http://notstupid.us/ 

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in 
philosophy only ridiculous." [David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 
(1739)]

[snip]

Considering all the junk calls I've received in the last year, that would be several hundred numbers. Many (most) of those won't be used again. For this device to be of much use to me, I'd need this year's list in advance. And then, since many of the numbers would be spoofed, some important calls may be blocked.

--
Mark Lloyd 
http://notstupid.us/ 

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in 
philosophy only ridiculous." [David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 
(1739)]

[snip]

When the federal Do-Not-Call list was new, I registered for it, and forawhile was getting almost no junk calls. Now, I get as many as before.

[here]

Here I left the regular phone company (Verizon, formerly GTE) and switched to cable (Suddenlink, formerly Cox) and saved about 50%. I'm not sure if that's still true as it's part of a "bundle".

--
Mark Lloyd 
http://notstupid.us/ 

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in 
philosophy only ridiculous." [David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 
(1739)]

Call blocking devices are more of a placebo than anything useful. My Panasonic phones have a feature that allows you to add numbers that you want to block. As of today, I have 98 numbers blocked, at least 14 of these belong to "Consumer Services". If their robocaller doesn't get an answer on one line, it just uses another of the hundreds of lines they lease. They spoof their phone numbers also. I too, have gotten calls from my own number.

I'm not saying to give up, but you will never stop these calls completely.

NoMoRobo allows one ring thru and then cancels the call for identified calls of this type.

I have been using it for some time on Cablevision (Optonline).It is free but only works with certain phone systems so try it if you can.

[snip]

I have had one of those challenge-response things. It didn't do much better than just an answering machine.

A few of the people who called me would press the button. Most wouldn't, so I would still need to have the phone ring so I could get the caller ID and answer (pressing the key for them).

I didn't have an exception list like you did. It would still be a problem (new important callers who won't press the key).

--
Mark Lloyd 
http://notstupid.us/ 

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in 
philosophy only ridiculous." [David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 
(1739)]

Often, there is a delay (sometimes a few seconds) while the "dialer" tries to track down a "human" to speak with you.

CID is a useless service. It is too easily spoofed. You need an authentication method that *you* control, not one that TPC *poorly* implements!

See above. Regardless of how "smart" it is, you're still relying on the information provided by the CID service (or, dealing with "blocked").

Yes, if *all* it does is require a particular DTMF tone-pair, then anything above $5 is ridiculous (e.g., DX.com sorts of prices)

We've adopted a simple solution in the past: answering machine with "factory default" outgoing message (so no information about our identities is revealed, why we aren't answering the phone, etc. Folks who know us don't need that information; folks that don't,

*shouldn't* need it!).

The ringer is also turned off (unless we are expecting a "call back" from a friend, doctor, etc.). Every day or two, we notice if there are any messages for us and screen them when we are in the mood. Machine is digital (aren't they all, nowadays) so *if* a caller was unsolicited, just pressing ERASE after the first two words is enough to delete the message and advance to the next. Callers who don't leave messages cost us nothing (time).

This approach works without incurring the cost of (spoofable and therefore worthless) CID service. The downside is we don't see messages for hours or days at a time. OTOH, friends know they can more promptly reach us via other means.

If all of your callers are made aware of it, you can also eliminate the outbound message entirely (IME, this makes callers very uneasy -- despite the fact that they should instinctively *know* that the "beep" means "leave your message, now"). Or, replace it with the "service disconnected" message. Some robodialers will detect the pipe tones at the start of the message and remove your name from their list automatically.

I've been trying to come up with an interactive scheme that would allow the "attendant" to screen the calls in real time. I.e., quizzing callers to verify their identities. Presumably, that would eliminate the "automated" callers who wouldn't be able to comprehend the questions asked of them: "Press to be connected" as any "standardized" number could easily be handled by a dialer knowing that number a priori

"Press to be disconnected, and to be connected" as a trivial workaround would be to press *all* digits in a quick burst to defeat the previous option.

"What's ?" to try the patience of a human solicitor. etc.

For frequent callers, I am hoping to use speaker recognition techniques to make *their* experience less tedious (like your secretary recognizing your wife's voice and putting her through, automatically)

[snip]

And you don't get calls from real people you want or need to talk to.

Anyway, I've been hearing about this use of SIT for a long time now. Wouldn't the robocaller machines been adapted already?

--
Mark Lloyd 
http://notstupid.us/ 

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in 
philosophy only ridiculous." [David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 
(1739)]

But there are other choices, even less expensive than what you pay. For example I use PhonePower and pay them about $5 a month.

People who *know* you and your practices adapt easily.

Where you get screwed is the folks who contact you only occasionally. Or, who may "vary" with each contact (e.g., someone calling from your doctor's office, the public library, a friend who's forgotten this idiosyncrasy, etc.)

That;s why its better to engage them interactively. Someone from your doctor's office is more likely to "comply" with some minor inconvenience in contacting you ("Please press 3") than they would "remember" the service disconnected message.

If you answer on a low ring count, there's no real way they can differentiate between a genuine message and a spoof. And, what do they do if they *suspect* it isn't genuine? Remain on the line and see if the message repeats? Or, if the connection is dropped?

Ideally, you are "listening" during the outgoing message (announcement) so legitimate callers can short-circuit the message and get to the *real* answering machine (or, cause a ring-thru).

While most of these firms are annoying, it really wouldn't be *smart* for them to persist. If you've gone to these lengths, it's because you are UNLIKELY to ever accept any of their "offers".

Correct. Inform the few that you really need or want to talk to. The rest can hang up. Those that know me can call my cell phone.

Yes. Many just start in with their message and the answering machine starts recording. That includes my dentist's office as I found out last week. However, it knocked out about 30% or so of the junk calls and all calls from real live beggars. I have the answering machine to not ring at all.

Why would nobody be on the line? Doesn't make sense unless it's harassment. Change your phone number.

Such call are, in general, already illegal in the United States, and have been for some years.

Robo-dialing and the playing of automated announcements are not permitted. Making marketing calls to people who have registered their phone number on the "Do Not Call" list is explicitly illegal.

The law has next to no teeth, though. It is rare for the authorities to actually prosecute cases - it takes a *lot* of complaints to pressure them into doing the "legwork" needed to trace back these sorts of calls to the originator(s), and gather the evidence needed to secure a criminal conviction or a civil fine.

If I recall, the law does give the offended consumer (who receives such calls) the right of private action - i.e. the right to file a lawsuit in civil court against the marketer. Unfortunately (as with junk fakes) it is both difficult and expensive to track down the offender, collect proof that s/he was the one who called, identify the business or business owner, file suit, serve the suit, go to court, make your case, win, get a judgement, and then actually collect.

A lot of these calls come from "boiler room" telemarketing operations, which can set up and shut down on a moment's notice. By using Voice over IP they can make calls to anywhere, from anywhere, with excellent anonymity. And, a fair number of such calls are now originated from outside the U.S., so applying the TCPA law becomes almost impossible.

A couple of years ago, I switched my wife's business landline over from a dedicated hard-line to a voice-over-IP provider. The incoming call comes to an Asterisk server I run. It has a multi-layer defense against junk calls:

- Any call which is on our private "blacklist" is immediately rejected with a "CONGESTION" error.

- Calls from outside our local area codes go to a "Please wait to be connected" voice message, and then a 10-to-15 second delay before the phone / answering machine are rung. This gets rid of a lot of junk calls - they don't hang on the line long enough to get past the delay.

- I can dial "666" from any of our VoIP phones, and the system will read back the number of the last call on her line. I can then hit "6" to add it to the blacklist. If I head a ring-no-answer from her office I call 666, write down the number, run a quick Web check to see if there are telemarketing complaints against it, and if so, call back and "6" it to the blacklist.

I'm strongly tempted to add an automatic Web lookup to the "telemarketing complaint" web site, while the call is still in progress (or immediately after) and blacklist numbers that have been mentioned repeatedly or recently.

Unfortunately, none of the above helps with our main home land-line, which is still olde-fashioned analog (I don't want to get rid of it as it's pretty certain to work even during a power failure or Internet outage).

+1. Get the kind that plays the incoming caller on a speaker, and listen for valid calls. The only feature that I'd want to add to such a setup is a "hangup" button, although most robo-calls detect answering machines and cut off.

Our current cordless phones also read out the Caller ID. The voice synthesis is awful, but after a while you get to understand their mangled version of the names of various friends and family members.

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com

| But there are other choices, even less expensive than what you pay. | For example I use PhonePower and pay them about $5 a month. |

That's VoIP. We're talking about real phones.

That was just a small portion of the "Change" that Obummer has given us that we didn't want.

You may not want oligarchs, neither do I, but you probably voted for the all mighty supreme leader who rules without regard for our constitution, the will of the people or the safety of our country.

Nobody is holding a gun to your head demanding you continue with that company are they. You are free to choose any provider you wish.

You poor, poor, helpless child.