Fighting Back Against Ghost Calls

An anonymous reader writes "You're doing something interesting. The phone rings. You get up, pick up the phone, and hear only silence. It could be a slasher waiting outside your house, but it's probably an errant computer at a telemarketer. This article describes how some are fighting back by setting up websites to track the worst telemarketers by their caller ids. The article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen), 800notes.com and numberzoom.com . One intrepid guy is even writing a program to check these sites when the call comes in before ringing the phone."

Internet-connected phone

[mwvdlee (775178)]

Next up, a phone that connects to the internet, checks the number, than picks up without ringing and starts playing a tape of you acting interrested in what the telemarketeer says only to hang up after an hour. Either that or pick up and hang up immediately so the line stays clear. Whatever costs the telemarketeer most. All without the phone ever bothering you ofcourse.

Re:Internet-connected phone

[decipher_saint (72686)]

If I'm in a snarky mood that's exactly what I do, pick up the phone and tell them I'm interested, tell them to hold on for just a sec and put the receiver down and put on some awful Wurlitzer music or go back to whatever I was doing (dishes is my favourite) and see how long it takes them to hang up.

I had one guy on the line for over an hour, at one point he said "hello" loud enough for me to hear and I told him to "uhh... hang on just a bit more" and returned to whatever I was doing.

I've actually just recently used some of the sites in question to figure out what lame person was trying to ring my number at dinner time. I did a Google search with the number and it came right up with it on 800notes.com. Impressive I thought, now if only I could block numbers for free...

Re:

[Fozzyuw (950608)]

and starts playing a tape of you acting interrested

I'd do one that just went... "Hello? Hello?... Hello?... Can you speak up? Hello?... Sorry, the phone doesn't seem to be working, could you try calling back? Hello?". Then see how many times the person calls back. =)

Re:

[decipher_saint (72686)]

I tried this, most don't call back but some do and sometimes from a direct line. This is key because you can have some fun with that number...

Not that I would do anything like that.

You, Sir, are a whimp

[Embedded Geek (532893)]

You wanna play a tape!? What is the world coming to? Any real geek would slap together a program that passes the Turing test, hook it to a speech synthesizer, and have it chat away with the telemarketer. And he'd do it in Perl or LISP!

Shame on you! You should turn in your pocket protector.

Damn kids. Stay off my lawn!

Re:Internet-connected phone

[spyrochaete (707033)]

This software already exists! It's a free open source application called Telecrapper 2000 [pagerealm.com]. It refers to a text file full of phone numbers deemed "annoying" by the user and checks caller ID when the phone rings. If the caller is on the list the Telecrapper jumps into action, playing WAV files and waiting for the person on the other end to pause before playing the next WAV. After a while Telecrapper resorts to a subset of WAV files and plays them randomly until the caller hangs up.

This cute Flash animation [deviantart.com] shows the Telecrapper in action. Hilarious stuff!

Did that 14 times last weekend...

[rthille (8526)]

forgot to lock the keys on my cell phone and my phone called my friend 14 times!

Doh!

Re:Did that 14 times last weekend...

[Kjella (173770)]

Fun fact, this is what happens if the center "stick" on the Sony Ericsson k700i does if pressed repeatedly:

1. Menu
2. Text messages
3. New text message
4. Send message
5. Contact book
6. Pick top contact
7. Confirm send

It gets even better because that stick apparently sends repeat presses if held down. I once got a phone call from an unlucky woman who was at the top of my contact list, saying I had sent her 60 blank text messages...

Strangely enough, I've now made a "AAA" entry in my cell phone with a dummy number that goes nowhere. Whoever designed the damn thing should get a "stupidest design on market" award though.

Re:

[peragrin (659227)]

My Motorola L2 would dial the first person in my address book under the same situation. Since then I have reordered the main menu list to put games first. Most automatic calling has been stopped. Now the big problem isn't the menu but the voice dial button which is easier to press.

I sneezed once and it called my father. I was laughing so hard I forgot to cancel the call until he picked up which resulted only in more laughter.

Re:Did that 14 times last weekend...

[z@ph0d (25646)]

you should point it back to your own number, that way it'll remind you on the first message that you forgot to lock your keys.

Re:Did that 14 times last weekend...

[adrianmonk (890071)]

Whoever designed the damn thing should get a "stupidest design on market" award though.

I've mentioned this piece of junk before, but I think that award should go to the Samsung phone I used to have where holding down "9" would dial 911, even when key lock was turned on. Arrrrrrrggh.

Not surprisingly, this behavior made the 911 operators angry. It made me even angrier since I started to fear I might eventually be arrested if I kept carrying the phone. Of course I ditched the phone.

Forget the ghost calls.

[RandoX (828285)]

I'd rather have somebody do something about that slasher outside...

Re:Forget the ghost calls.

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

I'd rather have somebody do something about that slasher outside...

Actually - the call is coming from inside the house!

1. whocalled.us? 2. slashdot 3. please hang up ...

[trolltalk.com (1108067)]

1. whocalled.us ?
2. slashdot called us !!!
3. "please hang up and try again - you melted our server, you ignorant clods (#*#(@&&!

So as not to inconvenience telemarketers...

[uberdilligaff (988232)]

Most of these ghost calls arrive because the automated dial systems telemarketers use dial several calls at once, and the first one that answers gets patched to the telemarketing stooge, while others that answer a few seconds later give that spooky silence for 5-10 seconds before they are hung up. The system logs the fact that you answered. Don't worry -- they'll call back to give you some love later.

Marginal utility, at best

[damn_registrars (1103043)]

I really don't see the application of this information. If you get a call with an ID that you don't recognize, do you really want to run to your computer first to decide whether or not to answer?

And to make it even less useful, I checked two of the sites listed: whocalled.us and numberzoom.com. The first one was painfully slow (slashdotted perhaps?) and the second one was mostly a wiki with lots of numbers that have no information. You can look up a number, and then find that nobody has added any information on it.

Re:

[backwardMechanic (959818)]

We need to use audio capthas: 'If you are a robot please press 0, if you are a human being please press 792168387231962887613'

I always thought...

[RyanFenton (230700)]

I always presumed it was telemarketers who, in order to act more efficiently, would call multiple targets at once, then only connect to the first who picked up the phone, dumping the rest. This avoids the statistically costly tedium of reaching answering machines after x rings, or just waiting for 5 rings to hang up. After all, if you're in a state of existence where telemarketing or managing telemarketers is your main concern in life, a little extra inconvenience for random phone users would not be a key concern compared to profit ratio over time.

Ryan Fenton

Re:I always thought...

[Sierpinski (266120)]

I used to work for a call center (as the DBA who handled all of the data) and you are pretty much correct about how it works. We had 40-60 callers working per any given shift, and our dialers were capable of dialing out about 120 numbers at once. There was a percentage (known/calculated statistic for this call center) of no-answer and busy signals, so they tried to tune it to be as efficient as possible. What would happen would be the 60 callers would be at their stations, and the call center computer would dial out 120 numbers. The first one that connects gets sent to the first caller (their phone rings, they pick it up and their screen is updated with that person's information), and so forth. Once all of the callers were engaged, or if too many of the people being called answered their phones at once, they were immediately disconnected. They called these 'nuisance calls' and the number of them was kept track of every night. They had a goal to stay under, and they usually made it. (I don't recall what the goal was, but it was greater than 0)

There are also two different types of dialing, one is usually called 'autodialing', where the caller is sitting there, looking at the information of the person they are about to call. They initiate the call, and are met with a standard result: Answer, no answer, busy, line dead, etc. This causes no nuisance calls, because the caller is only calling that one person.

The other kind of dialer is a predictive dialer [wikipedia.org], which dials ahead, and can cause the nuisance calls mentioned above. This is the most efficient method from a call-center point of view, because they can get through many more numbers. Lines that are no-answers, and busy never make it to the callers, so their time is spent with live calls.

URLs that sound naughty, but aren't.

[jackpot777 (1159971)]

the article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen)

Obviously never seen www.gotahoe.com ...damnit, they changed it to www.gotahoenorth.com.

And powergenitalia (PowerGen Italia) was a myth. [snopes.com]

Never mind. There's always whorepresents [whorepresents.com], expertsexchange [experts-exchange.com], and Australia's molestationnursery [slurls.com], now renamed.

Asterisk FTW!

[SIGBUS (8236)]

I've set up an Asterisk box on my phone line, and a nifty CGI script that lists incoming calls from the call detail record database. With one click, it can do a whocalled.us lookup on the number, and with another click, I can blacklist it. Once it's in the blacklist, when they call again, I get blessed silence, while the junk caller gets SIT tones (boop-bap-BEEP!) and a recorded message not to call again.

I can also blacklist the last caller by picking up the phone and dialing *60, if I'm not at a computer.

I've noticed that certain blocks of numbers are rather spammy, so I'll go ahead and blacklist blocks of ten or 100 numbers when I start noticing a pattern. I'm not interrupted nearly as much as I used to be.

Couple of solutions ...

[Archangel Michael (180766)]

I have a couple of solutions I use when telemarketers call. Now if more people used these methods ...

1) Answer the phone, tell the person on the other end you're right in the middle of something, but if they hold on .............. and set the phone down, and wait. I had one guy hang on for 1/2 hour for me to get back ... SUCKER

2) Act Crazy. Talk about Aliens, UFOs, Bigfoot, whatever. Paranoidism also works. "Why do you keep calling me, what do you want"

3) Start Preaching about Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Moses, Vishnu ..... (maybe considered a variant of 2)

4) Ask if the other person is into "phone sex" and start talking dirty.

5) Try to sign them up for MLM (Amway)

6) Pretend to be abusing/being abused by your SO, while on the phone. "Stop it you bitch or I'll beat your ass again"

In fact, mix and match all you want and come up with some new ideas. ie combine 6 and 4, hilarious.

The point is, if you're having fun with it, and it wastes their time, and enough people do it, it becomes unprofitable waste of the actual human's time on the other end. The bonus is, since I've started doing this, the number of telemarketing calls has dropped to almost nothing.

Key opening questions...

[gillbates (106458)]

I usually just hang up if there's no answer. But sometimes, I'll play their game. They invade my privacy, I figure I'm within my rights to ask a few questions:

1. Who is calling?
2. What is your name?
3. Most people have a last name, too. What is it?
4. Do I know you?
5. Haven't we met before somewhere?
6. (sometimes) DRUNKEN COLLEGE KID VOICE: I swear you sound just like that chic I met last night. (Also useful for male callers, but in an even worse way...)
7. Please wait while I Google your name.
8. Are you pregnant?
9. Boy or a girl? You must be so proud! Congratulations! (for added effect, I'll pretend to tell my wife in a loud voice: Hey Honey, so-and-so is having a ...)
10. Are you a college student?
11. At this point, I'll ask if they'd like to play a game of 20 questions.
12. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?
13. Do you believe in the theory of evolution?
14. Are you a Democrat or Republican?
15. etc...

Now, understand that these people are paid by the hour. I'm not wasting their time, I'm wasting their employers time.

Telemarketing is profitable because most of the people who don't want to buy will just hang up the phone. If everyone they called insisted on having a nice, cordial, and polite conversation about political topics, the business model would fail entirely. So, if you hate telemarketing, use the calls as a nice way of promoting your favorite political party, religious position, human rights advocacy, etc... You might even explain to them such topics as:

1. Why DRM is bad for consumers.
2. Why torture is immoral. Remember, the revenues they make are supporting the current administration through taxes, so it is most certainly relevant to the discussion of any sale they might make.
3. The difficulty of using Windows Vista.
4. The importance of privacy.

Remember, it's a captive audience. Don't be afraid to speak your mind - people need to know!. Don't be intimidated by them. Rather, use the opportunity for political activism!

Re:

[Sierpinski (266120)]

I usually just hang up if there's no answer. But sometimes, I'll play their game. They invade my privacy, I figure I'm within my rights to ask a few questions:

I'm all for wasting telemarketer's time, and I agree that you have every right to know as much about them as they know about you, but you can't say that they are invading your privacy by calling you. The mere fact that you own a phone and have a number means that you expect people to call you. Granted their reasons or methods by which they gained your

The "counter-script"

[wvmarle (1070040)]

A Dutch invention, from 1994. And then to think that in The Netherlands the problem has never been that bad! The counter-script it's called, and it's here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html [xs4all.nl]

From the website:

The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.
Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.

I'm not affiliated with the site, I just happen to know about it. I never even tried it, when a telemarketer calls I usually just hang up.

Treat every call like a ghost call

[by Anonymous Coward]

I treat every telemarketing call I get like a ghost call:

(phone rings) me: Hello?
caller: Hi, this is so-and-so from somewhere and we're conducting a research...
me: Hello? Is anywhere there?
caller: Hello? Can you hear me?
me: Hello? (pause) Hello?
caller: Can you hear...
me (yelling away from phone): I don't know who it is honey, I can't hear anything.
caller: Hello?

I can keep them on for maybe a minute sometimes. They don't usually call back.

Answering machine

[flyingfsck (986395)]

My land line is always on an answering machine. I never pick it up and neither does any of my frriends. Basically the phone service has turned into a voice messaging service decades ago already - no interactive yakking.

Trick them into the answering machine...

[dcavanaugh (248349)]

When the victim's phone is answered, the dialer has to rapidly determine if the voice on the other side is human or machine. To do this, they try to analyze the greeting. The dialer wants to hear the word "Hello", followed by silence. Actually, it wants to hear ANY sound for about half a second, with a few seconds of silence.

To waste more of the telemarketer's time, consider changing your outgoing message:

OLD: "You have reached the Smith residence. We are not available at the moment, but leave your name and number so we can get back to you."

NEW: "Hello [3 second pause] You have reached..."

This should cause the dialer to connect the call to a telemarketer, who will miss about 5 seconds of your message, but they will hear the rest. Obviously, the telemarketer will hang up in a few seconds, but not before wasting a little more time. I think of it as redirecting the annoyance back to the source.

Worst CID ever: your local government

[British (51765)]

If you live in St. Paul, MN, sometimes you get automated phone calls declaring a snow emergency.

The call itself I don't mind(time to move the car), but their choice of caller ID string is the worst one possible. It's 911-000-0000.

Just imagine old folks clogging up 911 call centers trying desperately to call back after the resulting confusion. Ramsey county can't afford a phone number that just plays back the same message when you call back? It just HAS to be 911, huh?

I know it's the caliber of telemarketers, but it's still stupid.

Re:Great

[luvirini (753157)]

Very easy solution.. just install asterix and make your own voice menues people have to navigate to get to the actual phone... no more automated messages or other annoyinaces..

You can even make diffent paths for telemarketeers.. and if they select the "I am family or friend" then they have actually allready lied once.. hmm.. starts to sound like a solution I have to implement..

Should only take a couple of hours..

Re:Great

[arivanov (12034)]

Check the so called "Torture" dialplan for asterisk. It already does most of that. Cheers,

Re:Great

[Fozzyuw (950608)]

no more automated messages or other annoyinaces..

Hmmm... there goes my automated video game reservation messages, my Blockbuster overdue messages, automated messages from companies telling us our product has shipped, and any other ligitimate and useful automated phone message you might receive for appointments, etc.

Re:

[John Hasler (414242)]

> Hmmm... there goes my automated video game reservation messages, my Blockbuster overdue
> messages, automated messages from companies telling us our product has shipped, and any
> other ligitimate and useful automated phone message you might receive for appointments,
> etc.

"Press 1 to speak to Fuzzyuw or press 2 to leave a message". Record whatever they say (even if they don't press anything) unless they press 1 in which case you ring the phone. The telemarketing clerks will have been told to h

Re:

[idontgno (624372)]

Which only leaves automated callout systems which aren't evil in the cold. Like, automated appointment reminders from the doctor's office. Which is a valid use of the technology.

This is yet another technical solution to a non-technical problem. If you choose to unilaterally reject a whole chunk of the incalling behavior spectrum, you can make it work for you. All that's requires is you decide the behavior (automated outdial, for instance) is evil, rather than the use (spamming versus "opt-in" reminders).

Re:

[fbjon (692006)]

Hmmm... there goes my automated video game reservation messages, my Blockbuster overdue messages, automated messages from companies telling us our product has shipped, and any other ligitimate and useful automated phone message you might receive for appointments, etc.

Email and SMS is great, you should try it sometime!

Re:

[tompaulco (629533)]

I want all phones to have that program to block the ghost calls.
Putting it on the phones is not efficient enough. It should just be put on the telco's switches.
Of course that would go over as well as ISP filtering your spam for you. Also, it would pretty effectively kill the jobs of 5% of the adult U.S. population.
Why do we still have such a problem with telemarketing even after the DNC registry? I would guess my calls got cut back by 25% or so, but most of the calls are from agencies which are exempt (

Re:Great

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

Funny story from years back.

The father is waiting for a call for a job interview. He'd occasionally do this, and nine times out of ten, something would go awry, usually due to my sister and I, who were fairly young at the time, running around at his feet or some such antics. I honestly don't know why he never got a study with a lock on the door for these things.

Anyway, this particular evening, we kept getting these "ghost calls". About half a dozen at least. Everyone of course assumed that it was a prank caller or something like that, as this was back before mobile phones came in and ghost calls, or one way ghost calls, became fairly common. I found it quite amusing, but my sister started getting more and more annoyed. She easily became irate.

Anyway, the phone rings one more time, and the sister, who by now is eager to give the "prank caller" a piece of her mind, picks up the phone and roars "LEAVE US ALONE!!!" into the handset. You guessed it; the guy for the job interview was on the other end of the line. Good times. I believe the ghost calls had been this guy trying to get through all along.

The morals of the story are: "Never assume that ghost calls are automatically stalkers." and of course "Always confirm the identity of the caller before you hurl abuse at them".

Oh and " Do not have the job interviewer call you at home if you have small children "

Re:Great

[geminidomino (614729)]

You may have been being ironic, but that's exactly what I do. I only have a landline anymore because I'm required to in order to have DSL (alternative being Comcast. Not happening.)

The only people who call the landline are telescum. Everyone important has my cell phone number.

Re:

[RockedMan40 (1130729)]

I did. Perhaps mine sounded a bit *too* prerecorded, because they wouldn't stay on very long. A generic one that just looped through "Yes"...."Uh-huh"..."okay"...."muted grunt." seemed to work much better. Especially if there were longer pauses. Sad part - is how bored was I one weekend to do such a project is another discussion.

Re:My friends and I..

[tompaulco (629533)]

Telemarketers aren't fooled by that. Acting interested is the wrong way to go. You need to record yourself saying things like "I'm right in the middle of dinner" or "this isn't a good time". Then they'll be on line forever.
I can't remember if it was the local radio show or a syndicated one that I listen to that had a guy on it who recorded his own pranking of telemarketer calls. He had one where he started off asking the telemarketer how he knew $IntendedRecipient and kept the guy on for about five minutes during which it evolved that there had been a murder, and that the telemarketer was now a suspect. They actually got the guy to admit where he was calling from and indicated that they were calling his local sheriff, and that he was not to move from his desk until the sheriff arrived. It was priceless.
I think it is disgusting when people prank call innocent Chinese takeout places, people's stay-at-home wives, and so forth, but a telemarketer is open game in my opinion.

Re:My friends and I..

[robkar (1050546)]

here we go: radio on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8 [youtube.com]

Re:

[archen (447353)]

I donno, I mean the Telecrapper 2000 [pagerealm.com] works astonishingly well. Keep in mind that most telemarketers aren't paid much and check their brain in at the door. The sheer repetition of reading off their prompts probably makes them less adept at figuring out that ti's a computer right away.

Re:

[atari2600 (545988)]

What's wrong with landlines? They are still functional during a power outage (Hurricane hit spots, Windstorm frequented areas). Internet connection down and need to make a call? Oh yeah the landline (duh of course this is valid if you don't have a cellphone or bad cellphone coverage at your home and/or bad signal). DSL (although some providers provide DSL without a landline). An uh....when broadband goes down, you can still dialup. Yes this is 2007 and landlines aren't quite the proverbial floppy disk (oh w

Re:in 2007

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

People still have landlines?

Ye I do, ecause I do't ike he crappy overcmpressd audo uality tha ireless hones ave.

Re:Caller ID

[ackthpt (218170)]

This is assuming that the caller id is not faked and is correct. Nothing like getting the call from the Caribean with a local area code.

My home phone, I screen with the answering machine. Swore I never would do, but have.

Similar with my mobile. Any incoming call from an unknown number I do not answer, let the voice mail sort it, if they leave a message. I had one call from a Las Vegas area code and Googled it. Turns out it's simply a call to see if someone answers, then they add it to a list they pass along for phone scams, holiday trip specials, time-shares, etc. Most people who have dealt with these people have come to regret it.

My though is this: If these people are known scumbags and there's already sufficient discussion of them and their tactics on internet forums, why haven't law enforcement done anything? I know in the USA there's such a thing as Wire Fraud.

Re:Caller ID

[nuzak (959558)]

My though is this: If these people are known scumbags and there's already sufficient discussion of them and their tactics on internet forums, why haven't law enforcement done anything? I know in the USA there's such a thing as Wire Fraud.

Because there isn't a lobby to convince Congress that they're a menace to law, order, and our purity of essence. Quite the opposite in fact, the DMA convinces them that the very engines of society will grind to a halt should any regulation be enacted that requires marketers to shoulder the onerous burden of obeying the law.

Re: Screening works especially well..

[tompaulco (629533)]

...with the new generation. My son and all his friends will absolutely not leave a message no matter what. At home, when my son's friends call and I ignore them because he is not home, they will not leave a message. They simply call back every so often until someone answers. if it is of an urgent nature, they call more frequently. My son once called me five times in the space of four minutes when I was in a meeting and couldn't answer. He never once left a message, which I could have listened to during the

Re: Screening works especially well..

[BKX (5066)]

ats jus cuz ur slo at it. speed up n get a plan wit free txt

Re:

[MikeyTheK (873329)]

You know, Grand Central from Google does the same thing. Using the "Wisdom of Crowds" theory, it allows you to use the "wisdom" to block spam calls, identify themselves before ringing your phone, etc. For a free service, it's pretty nice.

Re:Surely we're not thinking Web 2.0 enough?

[Scorchio (177053)]

ripthepissoutofatelemarketr.com for the full Web 2.0 effect.