Fighting Back Against Ghost Calls 297
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."
So basically... (Score:2, Funny)
Did that 14 times last weekend... (Score:3, Funny)
forgot to lock the keys on my cell phone and my phone called my friend 14 times!
Doh!
Forget the ghost calls. (Score:5, Funny)
1. whocalled.us? 2. slashdot 3. please hang up ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Internet-connected phone (Score:4, Funny)
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:Did that 14 times last weekend... (Score:5, Funny)
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:My friends and I.. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
URLs that sound naughty, but aren't. (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously never seen www.gotahoe.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.
Re:Forget the ghost calls. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually - the call is coming from inside the house!
Re:in 2007 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:in 2007 (Score:5, Funny)
Ye I do, ecause I do't ike he crappy overcmpressd audo uality tha ireless hones ave.
Re:Did that 14 times last weekend... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Couple of solutions ... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Answer the phone, tell the person on the other end you're right in the middle of something, but if they hold on
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
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.
Re:Marginal utility, at best (Score:3, Funny)
Treat every call like a ghost call (Score:5, Funny)
(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.
Re:Method to foil the computers? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:My friends and I.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:2, Funny)
oblig. (Score:2, Funny)
That's my number, you insensitive clod!
You, Sir, are a whimp (Score:5, Funny)
Shame on you! You should turn in your pocket protector.
Damn kids. Stay off my lawn!
Surely we're not thinking Web 2.0 enough? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I always thought... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Surely we're not thinking Web 2.0 enough? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Screening works especially well.. (Score:4, Funny)