Blocking 425-336-8351 Robot Caller Parasite

Hi,

Blocking 425-336-8351 Robot Caller Parasite:

Verizon told me they can't block calls that are not local. I have filed a complaint with my state attorney, and will with the U.S. attorney.

This "parasite" is a "robot" telemarket (Visa & Mastercard) caller, calls four or more times a day, every day except weekends. It started June 6. I tried everything to get the "parasite" to stop calling.

A Google search, "425-336-8351" produced well over 500 hits. All the "hits" I viewed has the exact same PROBLEM as I have. I read one article where someone is offering a reward for the location of the person or organization so he can "beat the sh.. out of this person".

Does anyone know of a Caller ID device with a special feature to "block", disconnect, or automatically hang-up on a specified telephone number?

Thanks in advance, John

Reply to
jaugustine
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The Philips SJA9191 talking caller ID box has the option of setting an specific outgoing messages for two different calling numbers.

You would hear the first (and possibly second) ring as the caller ID is usually sent between the first and second rings.

However, the call would be answered immediately with no action from you.

The Philips device is less than $20US here:

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The only better solution would be to find an older Phone Genie (something like that) that answered the phone, detected caller ID, determined voice versus fax calls, etc. It probably could have intercepted the call before your phone was allowed to ring. I think the device was in the $100 - $150 range and may have interfaced with a PC.

John

Reply to
news

Isn't there enough information on the display to help you decide whether or not to answer? That doesn't eliminate the wasted time, of course.

One approach might be to accept the call, wait to be patched through to one of the reps, and then say something extremely obscene to her. (Most are women.) After a few times, they might "get the message".

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

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Reply to
Sofa Slug

Ya know, there's also the clowns from Survey RC that call here repeatedly, "This is Victoria, stand by for an important message." And then I get the cruise ship horn "This is your Captain speaking."

I wish there was some way to hunt these ass holes down and remove them from anything remotely connected to the phone system.

Jeff

--
"Everything from Crackers to Coffins"
Reply to
Jeffrey Angus

When I had a land line I could block any number by putting them on a preview call list where it would call and say so and so was calling. Then I assigned the preview number to a 555-555-5555 number so it never rang my phone. This was provided by AT&T.

--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

Whenever I get these calls in the UK - you can spot the 'class' of numbers on the caller ID - I always pick up the phone to make sure that the company gets billed a connection charge, and then just put the phone straight back down. Doesn't stop the calls coming in, but makes me feel better that I've cost them some money.

Another approach for a persistent number that you recognise, might be to answer the phone something like "Drug enforcement agency covert team support line ! Please state your badge number and code name !" If you then get a person on the other end without them hanging up, read them the riot act about it being an unlisted government number that they've called, and insist that they inform their supervisor, and get it removed from the call list ! :-)

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Panasonic have a range of digital cordless phones that feature incoming call barring for upto 30 numbers that can stored in a list. The phone does not ring if the junk caller ID matches.

Either of these model numbers have it, and probably others.

KX-TG6511 KX-TG6512 KX-TG6513

KX-TG6521 KX-TG6512 KX-TG6513 KX-TG6514

They are sold worldwide. Quite impressed with the 4 station set we have.

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Adrian C
Reply to
Adrian C

Hi Adrian,

Thank you and everyone for your responses.

I will keep the information regarding the Panasonic cordless phones and the other device from another reply.

On Friday, I received only one call from the "parasite". I'll wait and see what happens first. Maybe it will stop?

John

Reply to
jaugustine

Per Adrian C:

The growing problem that I see is telemarketers going offshore - where they are immune to prosecution - and using VOIP services to spoof caller ID.

In that context, the same telemarketer can call my cell phone three times a day with the same message - but display a different callerID each time.

Unencumbered by any real knowledge of telephony, I see the eventual solution as a service offered by the land line or cell phone provider:

- A caller rings my number

- My phone does *not* ring at that point.

- Caller gets a voice prompt "Dial 1 for Mary, dial 2 for Joe, dial 3 for Sam...... dial 9 for Pete".

- "Pete" is the only one that exists. If somebody dials anything else, something else happens but my phone does not even ring.

- If they dial "9", my phone rings.

- If I do not choose to answer, the call goes to voicemail just like it does now.

- Regular callers, once they know, can press "9" as soon as the call completes - even before the voice prompt begins.

Seems to me like that would get rid of most junk calls without unduly penalizing legitimate callers.

If that's true, and great minds with the same data reach similar conclusions, I would hope to see such services offered within the next few years.

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PeteCresswell
Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

File a complaint with the FCC. You should see some results some time before hell freezes over or when pigs learn to fly:

425-336-8351 is registered in Seattle, WA. However, some digging found it to be somewhere in New Yuck and possibly used by Merchant Pro Express, owned by Wells Fargo Bank:

I'm NOT sure about this info so treat it as guesswork.

This might also help, except that the caller can be almost anywhere.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

When I used to play with these guys, well when I had a land line with a good assortment of tools, calls not on my allow list were forwarded to the country sheriff's office :) They however after a few months got tired of these calls and had the source traced back to my number. I got a notice on official letterhead that I was to cease and desist this practice immediately or possibly face disruption of public services charges. Then I got wise to the caller verify function and blocking the verify from calling me :) I never got a ring from a telemarketer after.

Now my mom has digital phone on cable and she gets several of these calls every day. She ignores them if she doesn't recognize the caller ID. Before she switched to digital phone she seldom got telemarketing calls. I think the cable company got hacked into and phone numbers were stolen and they never told anyone. My girlfriend also has digital phone from the same cable provider and she gets telemarketing calls all day long. I asked her if she was plagued with these calls with a traditional land line with the same number and she said no. This bolsters my thinking there was a breech in the cable company's security or maybe they just flat out sold a list of numbers. Of course they would never admit to either the numerous times I've talked to them at their main office.

--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

Do they have a unique prefix? Here the landline numbers are 02,03,04,06,08,09, cell phones 05 and the various secondary landline (e.g. cable, DSL remarketers, etc are 07).

Cell phones cost a lot to call, landlines less and the secondary provider landlines are very cheap.

Although you can port a number from one to others, no one seems to notice. :-)

Maybe they have a similar setup and call the cable phone numbers hoping to get a hit without having a list.

BTW, one way you can get around this is if you live in the US is to use Google voice. You can program in a list of numbers to forward, numbers to reject, numbers to go to voice mail and numbers to screen (ask for name).

Another is with a SKYPE incoming number. I cheat and have my incoming voicemail message the old three tone pattern which tells an autodialer its a dead number. :-) Once you get a call from a number, you can select block this number and they get a number not in service error if they call you.

I wish there was a realtime black hole list for asterisk systems (freeware PBX software) like there is for SPAM email addresses. I.E. your asterisk system would check a database of SPAM callers and reject the call, with someone maintining a global list.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Making your enemy reliant on software you support is the best revenge.
Reply to
Geoffrey S. Mendelson

I'd be inclined to think they sold the list. Might as well make money off of it since it's going to get stolen anyway. Or that's our excuse.

Jeff

--
"Everything from Crackers to Coffins"
Reply to
Jeffrey Angus

Per (PeteCresswell):

With, of course, the additional feature of a gold list: any number on the gold list rings though immediately....

--
PeteCresswell
Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

We have number portability in the US, which means the prefix can no longer be used to determine the type of phone or the general location.

For cell phones, while the rest of the planet the caller pays, in the US, the call recipient pays, making cell phone spam profitable.

The Federal Trade Commission do not call list is widely ignored by international telemarketers.

The do not call list does not cover calls within a State. However most states simply pass the problem to the federal system. For example, California:

Calls are still permitted from: (1) collection agencies and creditors, (2) political organizations, (3) charities, (4) pollsters and individuals doing surveys and (5) companies with whom you have an existing business relationship. A company may call you for 18 months after you make a purchase or three months after you submit an inquiry or application.

All of the phone solicitations I receive fall into these exceptions.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I ended up doing something vaguely similar, recently, when we switched my wife's business line from a dedicated AT&T landline to a VoIP connection. We terminate the incoming VoIP call at a small home server running Asterisk, which has some blacklisting capabilities built in, and the potential for more via dialplan scripting.

My current recipe:

(1) Any blacklisted number (the prolific "ADA" phonespammer being the lead among them) - the call is rejected with a "congestion" response. Phone never rings - from the telco's point of view the call is never answered, and the caller hears a fast-busy. [2] Calls which provide caller-ID, from any of the area codes near ours (most of my wife's clients) or a couple of distant cities... rings the business phone / answering machine immediately. [3] All others - answer, robo-voice "Please wait to be connected", wait 10 seconds, ring the business phone if the call is still alive. Rule (3) seems to deter most sales-slime... they hang up rather than wait.

I've also got a couple of three-digit codes programmed in, to add the most recent caller to the blacklist, or remove if in error.

The total number of nuisance calls she has to deal with is down by around 90% since the old land-line days.

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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Reply to
Dave Platt

Note that business to business telemarketing calls are exempt from the do not call rules:

Android cell phone blacklist software (with huge blacklist of numbers included).

Same with OOma VoIP:

Nice. That should work. The basic idea is if unidentified, to waste their time. Since telemarketers don't like to sit on hold, they just leave. However, they often come back. I was just hanging up on one idiot caller, who would just wait about 30 minutes, and call again. He eventually went away when I asked for the name of his telemarketing organization.

On a customers system, I plagiarized a script I found on the net, that was designed to irritate telemarketers.

It was fun for a while, until a very important caller got stuck with it.

I later had it making Strowger switch sounds before ringing.

Those with a clue thought it was cute. Those too young to remember a step CO, were confused.

Also nice. List management is not fun.

I must be leading a charmed life. I get very few unsolicited calls on any of my 4 assorted numbers. The few that I get are from exempt organizations, my long lost college, a few clueless head hunters, and desperate usenet readers needing help with their wireless. I guess being mean and nasty pays.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Privcode, if thats the same one you are thinking of.

I had two of them, worked great. For that time period it was a well thought out device. If they didn't have a touch tone phone to punch in the code (you could issue up to 16 different ones, I think), it would start to speak the numbers (one, two, three...) and the caller could say "stop".

There was like one dummy code to hand out, would just ring for the caller, wouldn't ring the phone on your end. 123 always went straight to the answering machine.

Even came with a deck of cards you could write out the code number issued, along with the instructions for the caller about how to get in.

Best feature was, it intercepted the incoming call. If someone dialed the number and had no code, end of story, never rang your phone.

Biggest problem with them was with lighting strikes, even a near-by one seemed to blow the unit, not a direct hit either. Kinda pricey for the time, was either like $600 or $800 in late 1980's dollars.

I think the common place caller-id and cheap digital answering machines killed off the company, but that really was a great device.

-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com

Reply to
Bruce Esquibel

Yeah, no prefixes here to distinguish between land, dsl, cable, or cell. My mom has a decent caller blocking system, I just need to get over there and program it for her.

--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

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