"intelligent" telephone answering machine

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lock known numbers. That's a small percentage of spam calls. Adding a num ber that won't be used again is of no value.

ng the caller to punch a button or two. Like, what is 2 + 11? But how lon g before the spammers get voice recognition software to defeat that?

that won't stop all calls. Some spammers likely call 1000 people to find one that they can con, but then would hook them for $10,000 for $9,900 prof it. Well, maybe only $1,000 for $900 profit.

ff and give you a bunch of shit for it. lol You gotta love the irony. On e guy actually wouldn't get off the phone so he could keep insulting me and my long dead mother. He was so pissed it had me rolling on the floor laug hing.

have that. But I think it works. Surely someone here uses it or at least has tried it.

I looked at it and tried several different phone companies my service is wi th and it said none of them were working with them. That included Google, ATT and Verizon land line. I gave up at that point. If they don't even wo rk with Verizon land lines how many phones can they support?

--

  Rick C. 

  --- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  --- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

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force a dialing robot to listen to robot music. Actually, most of the rob ocalls I get are from out of state only because my phone number is from out of state. They even pick an exchange local to where my phone number was o riginally from. So how would this detect a spammer?

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Are you actually rational? Can you form a coherent thought???

The calls are nearly all robo calls with no human to hear your noise. When you press the right button they connect you to someone from India. They u se random phone numbers local to you and pay for nothing other than being c onnected to a phone line somewhere in the world, very possibly over the Int ernet before it reaches a phone network.

Caller ID tells you nothing about this callers. Nothing.

--

  Rick C. 

  --+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  --+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Caller ID is useful for whitelisting calls as it's unlikely that a spammer will know the phone number of your MD, dentist, friend(s), etc. Less useful for things like the local police department (but, how often do THEY call you???) which could be faked.

Caller ID can tell you the caller is someone you WANT to talk to but can't tell you the caller is someone you DON'T want to talk to!

So, *blocking* based on CID (unless you're really pissed off at a friend/neighbor) is useless.

Note that you can also add heuristics to further bias your assessment of an incoming call; e.g., if "around dinner time" it is likely a spammer/pollster/etc. We only allow calls through "after hours" if they are from folks who deserve "special access" to us (e.g., calling to ask for a ride home from a club or a ride to the hospital, etc.). I certainly don't expect to hear from my MD *much* after dinner time (though a 6PM call is possible if he's returning MY call).

Why?

It might only be effective if played after a /person / is listening. What's the trigger that disconnects the robot and connects the person?

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

Would a sharp, loud click ,and waiting for the round-trip delay echo reveal a connection to India? Must be guite different from a local call.

NOMOROBO and any blocker based on CID is USELESS. Pretty much every spammer call uses a spoofed CID.

Our system recognizes that there are 3 types of callers: those we want to talk to (white), those we do not want to talk to (black), and those we don't know about (gray).

White calls are put through & ring the phones. Black calls are blocked. Gray calls are put through to a separate answering machine without ringing. Spammers are generally gray, but occasionally black. Importantly, some gray callers are not spammers, but white callers with a new number (e.g., an MD using his cell phone).

What we really love about it is that the phones NEVER ring unless it's a white call.

You either block specific numbers you recognize as spam, which is what the NOMOROBO does, or you block EVERY CALL that isn't white listed. Either way it is blocking based on CID and useless. My entering the number of every contact I've ever had is not at all practical. I had to talk to police rec ently. There are many others who call me first and I don't always want to make them use voice mail. Then there is the issue of the robocalls leavin g voice mail which I get all the time.

Caller ID is not a useful basis for blocking spam calls. My phone already has it through the phone company and it only flags a fraction of the calls.

Bull. I get spam calls all day long.

I'm glad that you don't mind listening to your phone right 20 times a day f rom spammers. The NOMOROBO doesn't even work with most phone services, so it's really just a joke.

--

  Rick C. 

  +-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  +-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

That might work IF you were on a land line. I haven't had a land line in y ears. There is one voice mail and the phone company manages that. I suppo se you could set up a service that reroutes the calls to non-phone company servers and does all that you describe, but it would have to play nice with the phone companies and right now NOMOROBO hasn't been able to crack that nut.

The phone companies don't want to let this get out of their control. So co mpanies like NOMOROBO aren't going to be the general solution.

--

  Rick C. 

  +-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  +-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

It's all home based & independent (Vonage is our provider). A standard desk-top answering machine & a PC-based system with the other answering machine. Not voice mail.

No, you allow whitelisted calls (to be further conditioned based on identity, time-of-day, etc.) to be "accepted" (ring-through, routed to personalized mailbox, etc.).

Non-whitelisted calls you identify with other MORE RELIABLE means. In our case, we do that by recognizing the voice of the caller (we don't "recognize" any spammers :> )

Each call I make is logged (phone number) along with the voice of the party that answers. So, the system already knows who my likely contacts will be before they call.

Spammers don't get routed to the "answering machine" -- why would I want to hear what they have to say?

The answering machine is used to allow DESIRABLE contacts to leave messages at times when I'm not willing to speak with them: "Sorry, Bob, but he's not available, presently. Would you like to leave a message? Or, should I just tell him that you called (at 3:12PM on Thursday the 14th)?"

It also lets us leave outgoing messages for specific callers: "Hey, Bob, I put the package in the mail this afternoon. I'll give you a call back tomorrow, around 9:00?"

Think about how your secretary would handle a variety of incoming calls (from strangers, folks you might not want to deal with *now*, folks you'd be willing to DROP EVERYTHING to speak with, etc.)

For a semi-cold call (i.e., someone I want to be able to call me but whom I've not yet "registered"), I tell them what to say to the "attendant" in order to have their call recognized as "not spam". Just like a caller interacting with a secretary needs a way to convince the sec'y of their genuine need for access (because they know some "secret" that wouldn't be known to a casual caller)

As I said, you use CID to ACCEPT calls, not block.

As do we. But we don't "get notified" of ANY of them! The system answers the phone (WITHOUT an audible "ring"), determines the identity of the caller and then decides whether we want to know that the party is calling us, "now". If it decides to "bother us", then the ringer sounds. Otherwise, the call is processed as in the above examples.

Spammers technically prevent our phone from receiving legitimate calls while they have the line tied up. But, that's a tiny fraction of the time so doesn't affect our accessibility. They spend THEIR time on the call, not ours.

Our phone only rings when:

- it KNOWS the caller is someone we want to talk to

- we want to talk to that person AT THIS TIME (of day)

How it rings varies based on the nature of the caller. E.g., if a "close friend" calls at 3AM, we probably *want* to be awakened as said friend wouldn't call at that time unless there was a genuine *need*, on their part (abuse the privilege and you lose it!). If a client calls "after five", just send him to voice mail tagged as such. If *I* call and indicate "it's urgent", go to great lengths to chase down my other half, including alerting via the outdoor and garage "ringers".

We REALLY don't like being disturbed by the phone. *REALLY*! So, even callers that we want to (eventually) talk to are usually told that we'll return their call later. The phone, unfortunately, exists for the convenience of the CALLER. Our approach turns that on its head and forces the phone to comply with OUR usage constraints.

TPC could implement a similar system -- without relying on verifiable CID (there are genuine needs for "faked" CID). And, I suspect most cell phones have the horsepower to do this, as well. (TPC could do so more efficiently as it could centralize -- ick! -- the biometric database)

[I use the same mechanism -- augmented with video -- to recognize visitors at the front door and "announce" them (as well as granting them conditional access in my absence)]

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I didn't say anything different.

How does your machine recognize voices? If you mean YOU listen, I don't ev en need to do that. But I don't want to be bothered with the calls. No ri ng, no messages, no monitoring the call. That's what the $0.10 per call fe e will do. Spammers and the services that connect them to the phone networ k won't be able to afford to make thousands of calls to bring in a few hund red dollars.

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This is why no one else will want to use that system, it's too labor intens ive and also unreliable.

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Because they are the bank or credit card company calling about suspected fr aud on your account?

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Too bad that there's no automated method of distinguishing the spammers.

Wonderful, a feature nearly no one will use.

Too bad we can't afford secretaries. They could actually do the job effect ively, but will probably quit since they only get paid $0.10 per call and h ave to deal with annoying spammers.

So you implement voice recognition? Great, that alone is a useful tool. T oo bad the spammers already use it and will apply that to dealing with your voice recognition.

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You are making a false distinction. The CID is used to distinguish the cal ls that are accepted vs. the ones that are blocks. Stop talking nonsense.

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So are you talking about a home brew system on a landline? How does that w ork on the cell phones the other 99% of us use?

They spend zero time on the call, it's a machine!

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They won't take responsibility for the false positives and false negatives until a workable system is found. Your system is full of holes. It will o nly require the spammers to amp up their game. I've already talked about t he systems that sound so much like a human and recognize what I say so well that it is hard to know if they are human or not. Those systems will get right through your system like it wasn't even there. But they will only be come prevalent when forced to by the phone companies mounting a stronger de fense.

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Don't care much... I'm at the end of a quarter mile driveway on a half mil e private lane. I get no house visitors unless they are invited.

--

  Rick C. 

  ++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  ++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

If you're talking to a robot there will be no distant echo. if you're connected to a call centre with digital user equipment, it's probably not perceptable.

A human on a cell phone in the next room will have a delayed echo unless they're using earphones.

Presumably the entry to the POTS network is available on SS7 but they don't make that info available to retail customers.

Someone needs to take a class action suit against the VOIP providers against their publishing unverified CID data. Users should have to prove control of the number before they are allowed to use it in CID

--
  Jasen.

)

e a dialing robot to listen to robot music. Actually, most of the robocalls I get are from out of state only because my phone number is from out of st ate. They even pick an exchange local to where my phone number was original ly from. So how would this detect a spammer?

ge of ALL calls like they do if you have the budget service from ma bell. L egislate that originating companies for all calls with US destinations, reg ardless of origin, pay $0.10 into a fund to fight phone spamming. The provi ders will make it unaffordable for spammers to robocall and 99% of spam cal ls will end at the low, low cost of just one thin dime for each of your cal ls.

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rce a dialing robot to listen to robot music. Actually, most of the robocal ls I get are from out of state only because my phone number is from out of state. They even pick an exchange local to where my phone number was origin ally from. So how would this detect a spammer?

arge of ALL calls like they do if you have the budget service from ma bell. Legislate that originating companies for all calls with US destinations, r egardless of origin, pay $0.10 into a fund to fight phone spamming. The pro viders will make it unaffordable for spammers to robocall and 99% of spam c alls will end at the low, low cost of just one thin dime for each of your c alls.

I think I would use my modem to answer. Makes a nice warbling noise.

How does that help when the callers use randomly selected phone numbers and never the same one twice?

--

Rick C.

---+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharg> > > > Have need for such a beast; must recognize caller ID and determine if

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rce a dialing robot to listen to robot music. Actually, most of the robocal ls I get are from out of state only because my phone number is from out of state. They even pick an exchange local to where my phone number was origin ally from. So how would this detect a spammer?

arge of ALL calls like they do if you have the budget service from ma bell. Legislate that originating companies for all calls with US destinations, r egardless of origin, pay $0.10 into a fund to fight phone spamming. The pro viders will make it unaffordable for spammers to robocall and 99% of spam c alls will end at the low, low cost of just one thin dime for each of your c alls.

I used that tactic once before against a nuissance caller and actually got a connection, it turned out that some prankster person had announced the victims number as a BBS.

--
  Jasen.

• Not true; READ what i wrote; over 90 percent are FAKE callers and have a state code (WA, NY, TX, etc) after a city name.

• READ again.