FTC Gets 744 New Ideas On How To Hang Up On Robocallers 281
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said the submission period for its Robocall Challenge had ended and it got 744 new ideas for ways to shut down the annoying automated callers. The FTC noted that the vast majority of telephone calls that deliver a prerecorded message trying to sell something to the recipient are illegal. The FTC regulates these calls under the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Challenge was issued to developing technical or functional solutions and proofs of concepts that can block illegal robocalls which, despite the agency's best efforts, seem to be increasing."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually USE all your wiretapping crap (Score:4, Informative)
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Motherfucker! You tell me this now?
I reported a spate of them a while back. When every single one of them came back with one of those responses, I just cursed the FCC and trashed the whole issue. I didn't even realize I could appeal!
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They do investigate consumer complaints, which is why one of the major companies running the "Rachel from Cardholder Services" scam got caught.
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They do investigate consumer complaints, which is why one of the major companies running the "Rachel from Cardholder Services" scam got caught.
What I don't understand is how, after she was supposedly caught (twice!), I still keep getting calls from that scam.
Because "Rachel" isn't unique, easy to outsource (Score:3)
There's a large ecosystem that provides most of the pieces - call centers that accept calls, equipment and service providers for making calls, workers willing to listen to abuse for low pay, credit card companies that will pay merchants. Long distance telephone calls cost next to nothing even before VOIP made them cheaper, and the Caller ID system wasn't designed to prevent spoofing (in fact, spoofing is a feature, because it lets your office PBX output your phone number instead of the main number for the
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I think we just found a use for Camp X-Ray over in Gitmo....
Too bad... (Score:2)
Too bad the FTC just can't apply for an overly broad patent and sue all of the automated callers in the Eastern District of Texas.
Leave a fax machine plugged in during the day. (Score:5, Interesting)
This works well for land lines. The calls stop. On my cell, it hasn't been much of a problem.
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Until the FAX spammers find you. Then you will start getting random calls from FAX machines at all times of day.
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Better to have a modem with some obnoxious BBS software behind.
In one way - the best way is to have an answering machine saying "Please hold - your call will be answered in a moment" but then you just don't provide more and don't hang up until later. That will keep the robocall line blocked longer.
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Just change your Answering machine announcement to this little mp3:
http://www.soundjay.com/communication/sounds/dial-up-modem-01.mp3 [soundjay.com]
Re:Leave a fax machine plugged in during the day. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in law school, I worked at the legal clinic. They had a fax machine that got all sorts of spam. So, I followed all the proper techniques for opting out. Didn't stop the spam. So, I sued all of the companies for statutory damages. Winning a couple of those stopped the spam real quick.
I still remember a phone conversation I had with one of the lawyers. He was talking about how I shouldn't waste everyone's time and money by suing his client. And I said they shouldn't waste everyone's time and money by spamming them and using up their resources. The funny thing is, the FRCP 11 and 37 sanctions imposed by the court caused by the out of state firm playing fast and lose ended up being more than the damage award. They really shouldn't have messed with the largest law firm in the state, especially when everyone works for the fun of it.
Old technology, useful only for thieves... (Score:2)
Why not get rid of robocalling altogether? These are not the days where it was difficult to get the word out to the public for fundraising or other reasons. The reason that robocalls are increasingly made up of scammer activities is that legitimate uses of the technology have gone elsewhere, to email or other online methods which are far cheaper and which leverage existing multipurpose infrastructure...and which, unlike telephone-based communications, also provides for more robust metrics regarding respon
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Why not get rid of robocalling altogether?
In what sense? Make it illegal entirely? As TFS says, they're focusing on people who are already robocalling illegally. Making it illegal probably won't stem that much.
Or are you suggesting somehow implementing a CAPTCHA in the telephone system?
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Wrong first question.
Why not get rid of the telephone network?
Go entirely IP based.
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Wrong first question.
Why not get rid of the telephone network?
Go entirely IP based.
Yeah, that will solve this problem, after all it worked so well for unwanted CompuServe messages.
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The robocallers costs have already been driven down. That is why the issue exists. It isn't going to drive down their cost more since they are already using it.
And yes, you can block calls to your IP based phone just fine depending on the service you have.
http://www.google.com/googlevoice/whatsnew.html [google.com]
http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice [youtube.com]
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It isn't going to drive down their cost more since they are already using it.
Yes it is going to drive down costs more.
There is no way for IP based call to my POTS home landline to avoid paying something somewhere to somebody.
POTS lines are not callable by VOIP or SIP phones without a gateway to POTS somewhere. That gateway needs a traceable origin. Nobody provides these for free, and even if they did, they are traceable, and the telephone company through which they first connect knows explicitly who they bill for these trunks.
Most people do not have IP based phones, and those tha
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If all robocalling were made illegal and phone companies were compelled to provide a reporting option that was useable to law enforcement, then you might have a point.
However, there are a couple robocall uses that are legal that I appreciate. A local school uses it to notify parents of unusual situations, like going on lock down or closing for inclement weather. I believe some cities use robocalling to warn residents of tornado dangers.
Who's dropping the ball? (Score:2)
I'd really like to know why there's so much !@#$ like this going on. Spammers pollute the net with crap, and we can't find them to make them stop. Assholes build botnets to do that and worse, and we can't find them to make them stop. Robocallers annoy millions of people daily wasting their cell minutes, and ...
This's the 21st Century. Why is any of this still happening? Why can't/don't the telcos police their damned networks?
Re:Who's dropping the ball? (Score:5, Insightful)
The feds and ISP's are too busy busting kids for downloading movies in their dorm rooms.
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I'd really like to know why there's so much !@#$ like this going on.
Its called step 3: profit.
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There's more than one country involved.
Canada isn't terribly concerned when robocallers are calling US phone numbers. Mostly because the US isn't terribly concerned when robocallers are calling Canadian phone numbers.
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Why can't/don't the telcos police their damned networks?
Because they qualify for Common Carrier status and will not jeopardize there legal indemnification.
Block calls with spoofed ID ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere along the line, it must be technically possible to identify that the number isn't coming from where it claims to be.
Most of the obvious fraudulent crap is all using fake caller IDs and they're calling another country.
If I could simply tell the phone company that I'm not willing to accept numbers which don't match their origin, that would kill off all of the crap I get. And I don't care about the legitimate ones, because by masking their real phone number they're no better than the scammers.
Unfortunately, these guys lobby hard enough that they make sure nobody could pass anything which cut into their business -- because they feel it's their legitimate right to call us.
It's gotten to the point where even the ones with legal exemptions like charities and political parties usually get an earful of profanity.
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I think the best case would be to get rid of POTS.
The fact that the end point does not know who is actually calling is a major flaw.
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I don't want political parties or charities calling me either. The fastest way to get on my "do not give money to ever" list is to call me.
Seriously, why does "Save the Puppies" and "Elect My Candidate" get to be except from the Do Not Call Registry? Just because you think your puppies are special? They aren't and I don't care about them. I'm sure "Buy My Awesome Vacuum" also thinks they are special and if they could just get me on the phone I would see that I really do want to buy their vacuum. Well,
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Somewhere along the line, it must be technically possible to identify that the number isn't coming from where it claims to be.
I second this. Interestingly, I got a robocall today on my cell phone. Every month or two, I keep getting a call during the daytime offering me a fantastic deal on some sort of cruise they claim I have won. I have looked into it and the callers are rather infamous but what they do is they change their number every time they call. So it does no good to file a report (I have actually done this before) as the number you report is something they'll never use again and probably never really had to begin with
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Worse than that, Skype always shows the same caller id for spam calls. Which means tracking anybody down would involve entering Microsoft's terrain. If the telcos can't do what you describe then imagine the horror of adding Skype to the mix.
With VOIP becoming more prevalent, the scams are getting more creative. For example I got a call the other day with a Skype caller id. It was Microsoft calling to inform me that my computer was infected and will shut down after 24 hours. Intrigued, I went along to see
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If I could simply tell the phone company that I'm not willing to accept numbers which don't match their origin, that would kill off all of the crap I get. And I don't care about the legitimate ones, because by masking their real phone number they're no better than the scammers.
This. +1 pseudo mod point.
No No No. It's a non-starter. That ability doesn't exist due to the design of the phone system. The only known hop is the one immediately before you.
Someday, hopefully, that'll all get replaced because the resulting routing due to costs (LCR) + wholesale voip + intra/inter state taxes and termination fees etc etc etc ends up being horribly inefficient. Routing over pure voip would be far more efficient as far as the routes and miles of cables and number of routers/switches/etc involved, even if it does chew
Presumably one of the was Real Time Blacklisting (Score:3)
If there was a widely publicized shortcode you could text with a number to say has been spam calling you then people could do that, and set up an ENUM–style directory which has the RBL info for use by phone companies.
Also phone companies could text people with information about this shortcode the first time every month that a previously unknown number makes a call or sends a message (until they say STOP of course ;-))
Might work for mobile spam, at least.
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So, *86?
Robo lawsuit trolling (Score:4, Interesting)
I've arrived at the point where I hate my land line. I'd drop it in a second but my wife thinks it's important. None of our friends or family ever call the land line, it's always trolls. I dunno.
But I digress. I had a new one last night. My land line rings and I can't help myself, I need to see what asshole it is this time. I've been getting a lot of survey calls recently and I'm now openly hostile to them "get a real job, f-ck off". This time it's a robocall collecting names for a class action lawsuit against a medicine. "Have you ever taken whateveritscalled and experienced the following side effects? Blah Blah Blah. If so you are entitled to receive penies on the dollar while our bloodsucking ambulance chasers get rich"
So now we have lawsuit trolling to look forward to.
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Grow a pair and cancel it. Duh.
"Sorry honey, but we waste way too much money on a useless, obsolete service that no one but fraudsters ever uses. In a local emergency, our cell phones have a better chance of working than the land line; and in a wide-scale emergency, you can't use the land-line from the car as we flee the coming Tsunami."
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And either never get laid again or more accurately have you cell phone die on you because the power is out and will be out for days. That is assuming no cell tower damage and that the tower has a backup g
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In a local emergency, our cell phones have a better chance of working than the land line
That is patently false. Landlines have been proven to be far more resilient to local emergencies than cell phones dozens of times.
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Turn the ringer off, and don't hook up an answering machine or voicemail. It's still available for an emergency, or to make local and toll-free calls (if conserving cell minutes is a concern).
...and for giving out as a phone number to organizations that require you to provide a phone number when buying from/donating to them online. Then they can call a phone that's never answered. (We left voicemail in place, just in case, and just delete all the hangups - presumably somebody hung up when they got the "leave a message" prompt.)
Why I got rid of the land line (Score:2)
It also helps to never give out your cell # except to friends and family. I found that a lot of the businesses I was giving my phone number to were somehow passing it along to telemarketers (I could tell because sometimes I would vary my name slightly just to see).
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That is why businesses get my google voice number.
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Everybody gets my google voice number. I set family and friends to connect directly, but everybody else has to be announced. Don't want to tell me who you are? Straight to voicemail for you. Marketing voicemails? I'll never need to know you called again.
Saving puppies or trying to get elected? Please feel free to leave a voicemail like every body else I don't have any desire to talk to.
Re:Why I got rid of the land line (Score:4, Informative)
It also helps to never give out your cell # except to friends and family. I found that a lot of the businesses I was giving my phone number to were somehow passing it along to telemarketers (I could tell because sometimes I would vary my name slightly just to see).
I ditched my land line a few years ago, but even my cell number wasn't immune. I'd still get calls from "Rachel" and her friends, not to mention "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo!!!! This is your captain speaking . . ." [wafflesatnoon.com]
Worse, by far were the debt collectors calling for people I'd never heard of -- or even not asking for anyone in particular, just wanting a return call to some number to "clear up a file on my desk". Then if I did call them back and tell them they had the wrong guy, sometimes they'd stop for a while -- at least till that junk debt collector resold the debt to another.
It wasn't all bad. One agency had a particularly entertaining tactic: each week or so a different person would leave a message. Since it was always the same voice actor, he had to use different names with appropriate accents for each persona. My favorite was fake Scotsman Alistair McTavish.
Curiously, it seems that while people who do owe money have certain rights when dealing with collections agencies, people who don't actually owe money don't seem to have quite the same level of protection from harassment. You'd think that harassing non-debtors would be a self-limiting thing, since you (presumably) couldn't collect anything from someone without an overdue debt, but they were oddly persistent.
Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Follow the money trail. Once you know what company is getting the money, find out who owns the company.
Once you find out who owns the company, you shoot them.
Problem solved.
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I think that is why the recommended punishment was to shoot them.
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Someone is connecting these calls right?
Someone is paying a bill to make them, seems like you could figure that out.
The fact that POTS lets you fake a number is a big problem with it. The fact that the endpoints have no knowledge is another.
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Asterisk (Score:4, Interesting)
I solve this problem by having asterisk prescreen all incoming calls. An IVR prompt requires you to press a combination of numbers before it actually rings any phones. A white and black list for caller ID data are used to bypass or simply play line disconnected tones and hang up.
It's the only reason I still have a POTS line. I never give out my cell.
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So there are two of us who have found the same solution.
A+, it has been working for me for a couple of years now.
No Enforcement (Score:2)
Any law that is not enforced is meaningless. And that's the big problem here. If I get one of these calls that is clearly violating the law, then what? There is no one I can can contact who will immediately take action and prosecute the person who is breaking the law. It would take an enormous amount of resources to really clean up this problem, and so nothing is done. And the people making these calls know that.
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call rejection (Score:2)
The only issue here is that phone companies refuse to enact these simple and common sense solutions. They either refuse to allow the subscriber to manage call, as is true for most cell phones, or they charge for it. Really this is a business model issue, not something the end u
It's not really an FTC problem (Score:2)
The FTC aren't in a position to really handle robocalls and SMS spam, other than acting as a last resort legal hammer for egregious cases.
The telcos, on the other hand, could *trivially* stop the vast majority of it if they had any interest in doing so. But they don't have any interest in that - they get paid by the various crooks doing this sort of thing. And it doesn't cost them any customers - what are the customers going to do, move to a different US telco that's just as bad?
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Why as a last resort for only the egregious cases?
Any case they should prosecute as fiercely as possible.
I actually submitted a proposal (Score:3)
Our submission is at: http://robocall.challenge.gov/submissions/13007-save-me-time [challenge.gov]
I found that most suggestions fell into the following buckets
*Things the Govt can do*
- FTC needs to ensure caller ID cant be spoofed
- FBI needs to hunt down the racketeers and bust them
- FTC needs to mandate (likely by fiat) that the telephone companies make the robocallers pay the full cost for the call
*Things you can do*
- Use an audio capcha system
- Provide a system to black list known and irritating callers
- A few people discussed how Google voice might solve the problem.
I did not expect to see that many people going through the submission process which tells me that the pain point is real.
However, I think people are mostly converging on how they intend to block the calls and the winner will get decided on how good your execution measures up to every one else.
What FTC finally does implement based on the contest is another matter.
just pass a law (Score:2)
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Whooooosh
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There's also a large jurisdiction problem.
US law enforcement can't arrest people in Canada, despite the fact that the US and Canada share the same phone system.
(Btw, the Canadians are upset by the robocalls coming from the US)
Meh (Score:2)
Examples listed are all variations on a theme. All technical solutions, which are always known to fall to technical attacks (Payment? Use stolen credit card. Whitelist? Implausible if you're running a home business.)
The only way to stop robocall telemarketing is to cut off the source of income, or make it too expensive to obtain income. Always try to get a live agent (robocalls ask you to press 1), delay tactics to keep people talking as long as possible, providing fake/stolen credit card info, and the l
They're not untracable. (Score:2)
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They do track the calls. To Canada.
That "different country" thing makes it a tad awkward to enforce US law upon the robocallers.
And since the robocallers are nothing if not fair, the Canadians are upset about robocalls coming from the US.
Cant stop the Robocaller (Score:2)
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Call "Magic Jack" and report the number to them (seems to be in their pool), or call the police? (wait, no, they don't do shit until after you fall for a scam). They try to get your card number and expiration date "just for verification".
Protip: Caller ID can also be spoofed. NEVER give any information to anyone who calls you, unless you know them personally. Even if it says that it's your bank on the caller ID. Just tell them that you have no way of knowing if they are who they say they are, and th
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I mean the article is about how they aren't doing a great job right now.... but you can still report it here:
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/ [ftccomplai...istant.gov]
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Never ever EVER give them a yes answer. That puts your phone number on a list they sell of valid targets. Made that mistake with "Rachel", trying to get real info from them for the FTC. I am still paying for it, even after they shut her down.
See, the mere fact that you answered the phone and pressed 1 makes your phone number itself valuable, at least in bulk with all the others. You can bet that "Rachel" has probably made more money selling lists of answered numbers than on the services being marketed.
Re:Cant stop the Robocaller (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and I have turned that name & number in to the DNC web site until my fingers are bleeding, fat damned lot of good its done. Now the wife is answering them playing like she is hard of hearing and going into hillbilly vernacular as soon as a human comes on the line. They hang up quickly but they keep calling backIt just encourages the bastards.
We have one of those call centers here. They made the mistake of doing a local call campaign, so I wrote it all down, and had smoke coming out of both ears when I walked into the office. Some red headed bitchj came to the counter & claimed it wasn't them, so I quoted the callerid I had written down, then quoted the number in the phone book for them. She reached under the counter as if to retrieve a weapon but found herself looking at my carry piece faster. I said, slowly and quietly, once, that if that number ever showed up on my callerid again, that I did know where there was about 50 sticks of very old Nobels, and that I knew how to use it. She took me serious. Took my phone number and purged it from the database.
That was nearly 20 years ago.
I was serious in case anybody cares.
Anything that raises their CODB gets my approval. Point is, its my telephone, and I pay the bill for it, so I should have control over what its used for. That part simply is not open for discussion. But I think Card services has changed their name, we are now being harassed at least daily by an outfit called SERVERS TDM, at 1-213-344-4839. Make of that what you will. What we really need is the home address of the owner of the scam.
Smartphone auto-screener (Score:2)
Just Whistle (Score:2)
Just like there was a "Captain Crunch" guy that could whistle at certain tones, why cant a group of "trusted parties" have
a special audio signaler that sends a signal -back- to the originator of the call. This signal could be heard by the phone
companies and they would know what circuit has the mad dial-er on it.
Just an idea.
Loud whistle (Score:2)
Somewhere there is a story about someone that actually got charged with blowing a loud whistle into the ear of a telemarketer. I think this was before it was actually illegal for them to call. Now that it is, it is really tempting to do. And no, I don't care about the poor underpaid schmuck on the other end of the line, they deserve what they get.
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Why isn't the Gov. using CFAA (Score:2)
What is really needed ... (Score:2)
... is for the phone carriers to test the caller ID coming from their customers to validate. If the caller ID info is not associated with the customer of that trunk, then do not complete the call. Additionally, if the outgoing volume exceeds a certain amount (around 1000 per month), the business gets classified as an outbound caller, and their numbers get added to a list of publicly available numbers people can look up for free to find out the legal name of the company, their address, main contact phone n
Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is the law. There are so many loopholes in it you could drive a Mac truck through them. For example, the whole "if we did business with you before we can contact you again" part. There is no definition of "doing business" and it can include things like they sent you snail-mail spam. It also exempts the most annoying which are the political robocalls. In short, the law itself is contributing to the problem.
Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Funny)
There are so many loopholes in it you could drive a Mac truck through them.
Is Apple making wheeled vehicles now?
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Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn’t worry about the Apple Mac Truck being a death trap; after all they are all very well engineered devices.
It's the other things that worry me; such as add-ons like the "Standard fuel pump to iGas adapter", "sloped driveway parking adapter", and the fact that I could only get gas, wiper blades, air freshener and other iTruck items from the approved iTruckStore. But then again ... they really do make the best adapters; and the door is on the bottom!! *mind blown*
-- sent from my S3 --
Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is the law. There are so many loopholes in it...
Actually, if you look in the summary, that's exactly not what the FTC found. All of the loopholes are legal ways for companies to call you that are still not desired by the recipient. But the majority of robocalls, it says, are illegal. Meaning they're not driving through loopholes, they're just ignoring the law.
Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Funny)
what we need now is an overzealous federal prosecutor looking to make an name for themselves and perhaps perform some act of societal penance.
won't anybody help?
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Or how they disguise their sales pitch as a "survey" to use THAT loophole.
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Better yet, agree to the sale.
Then once they get you one the phone with the person who takes your credit card info, hang up. This will result in a cost to the call center and the agent who called you will get reprimanded for the failed conversion.
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Even better, string them along and give them a fake credit card number (The first 4 digits must be from a real number). When that fails, give them another fake number. When that fails express surprise that they keep calling back in spite of giving fake numbers on previous calls.
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Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Informative)
Better yet, agree to the sale.
Then once they get you one the phone with the person who takes your credit card info, hang up. This will result in a cost to the call center and the agent who called you will get reprimanded for the failed conversion.
I tried this. Unfortunately, the fact that I actually wanted to talk to somebody got me bumped to some sort of "possible target" list, where I get called probably 5 times as frequently now. Before starting your strategy, I got called maybe once every few weeks. It bumped up to once or twice a day after I actually talked to somebody. *sigh*
Re:Google Voice call screening (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent. That means they are too busy to call me.
Everybody else do it too. You won't regret it.
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I did the same thing with a home alarm service company. I arranged for an install at the address of my local police department. They didn't call me back.
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I find it interesting that there have been so many replies to this suggestion and all of them are ignoring it. Google Voice does indeed rock. I have an interface where I can schedule how I'm going to respond or which phones I'll take calls on. There is an anti-spam caller option which is very effective. I can set my default to have callers announce who they are before I take the call. I can block callers I don't want to talk to, or send calls to voicemail and listen in and pick up if they turn out to be off
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I find it interesting that there have been so many replies to this suggestion and all of them are ignoring it. Google Voice does indeed rock.
Why yes, I was so pleased when my ISP outsourced their email services and handed two years of archived email, and all future email, over to a company whose business is gathering and selling data about people. I will immediately switch my telephone service over to the same company, because perhaps there is something about me that they don't know yet.
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Amazingly enough, when I hang on long enough past recorded "Rachel" to get to live "Rachel", and ask her nicely to put me on their do-not-call list, she rudely and peremptorily hangs up!
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It takes a bit of effort, but works great. [youtube.com]
Says right there on the youtube:
Please don't watch this video. Don't send it to your friends to watch, either? Don't even leave a comment. It's just a sad waste of time.
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Astrix VOIP PBX with the call block function. They dont change the caller ID much so you just block the calling party and you are good for several months. Setting the block message to play the "Number has been disconnected or is no longer in service" message helps as many of them remove the number when getting that message.
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Robocallers are generating numbers at random, now. They just want to call everyone. They are not basing this on collected personal information, anymore. Just crank out the calls and play the recording.
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Then get up and protest. Write letters. Start campaigns. Be loud. You are the freaking Land of the Free and Brave, the inventors of Democracy, yes? Then act like it, get a few million citizens together, rally the media, and in 12 months that crap is over.
We tried that in 2011. We were roundly dismissed.
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They will start calling cell phones. These are people that have no problem committing crimes, already.
The real solution is the glare of light. Set things up so their truthful identity is known, verified, and made available to the target.