When Telemarketers Harass Telecoms Companies 234
farnz writes "Andrews & Arnold, a small telecoms company in the UK, have recently been hit with an outbreak of illegal junk calls. Unlike larger firms, they've come up with an innovative response — assign 4 million numbers to play recordings to the telemarketers, put them on the UK's Do-Not-Call list and see what happens. Thus far, the record is over 3 minutes before a telemarketer works out what's going on." The sound quality (and the satisfying humor) of the recording gets better as it goes on.
Re:There is an app for that. (Score:5, Informative)
There is an app for this and it's called Asterisk.
You can also do this with sipgate via Asterisk on any cell phone if you publish a sipgate number and route through to your cell and configure Asterisk do the filtering, which it can also intercept a whitelist/blacklist caller and then start playing games with them.
The cheap way of doing this is to let Google Voice be your answering machine, and change your voice message to "Hello? (4 second pause) Oh I'm sorry I'm not here." That is enough to trick most autodialers into routing your voicemail to a live operator, who then has the option of revealing who they are or hanging up and calling again. I don't accept blocked/800/877 and Unavailable caller ID. At least with Google Voice's translate feature I can bulk delete most of the crap voicemails without listening to them and if I did dump a call to VMX that was a legit caller I can read their voicemail and return it.
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
how about reading the article?
i mean... so you know what you're talking about?
to answer your questions:
-the numbers are on a do not call list, so the companies haven't got the slightest right to call them, it's illegal in fact
-it would be an opt-in for clients, but currently only active for unused numbers of the company (the ton of numbers they haven't assigned to a customer yet), and for the numbers of their own offices.
i mean seriously... are you just trolling? cause your entire comment is just so wrong -_- if you don't RTFA, don't make dumb assumptions?
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:1, Informative)
TFA states that the calls are received on their office "DDI block." In US terms, this is the same as a DID block.
Therefore, the numbers are assigned. They are subscribers to them.
The fucking summary accused the writer of being a "telecoms operator," which is perhaps misleading. At cursory glance of TFA(s), they appear to be just an ISP with that happens to subscribe to a whole lot more incoming phone numbers than they currently use in their own office, which simply isn't all that uncommon in a world of VoIP and PRI for any business.
Therefore, any Do-Not-Call list, in any sane country, should apply.
(I was going to href all of the acronyms in this posting, but anyone who is interested can just look them up on Wikipedia for their own selves.)
Re:There is an app for that. (Score:4, Informative)
Then I leave the phone somewhere and forget about it (record is 15min of waiting). Every time I do that they blacklist my number.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
At cursory glance of TFA(s), they appear to be just an ISP with that happens to subscribe to a whole lot more incoming phone numbers than they currently use in their own office, which simply isn't all that uncommon in a world of VoIP and PRI for any business.
The offer VoIP services, including routing calls from POTS to VoIP for their customers. The numbers that they have are ones that have not yet been assigned to a customer. You typically get these assigned in large blocks, and they appear to now be using all of the ones that are assigned to them but not yet given to a customer for the honeypot.
As an added bonus, by the time that they are given to a customer, it's likely that they will likely already be blacklisted by telemarketers, making these numbers more attractive to potential customers than ones from other companies.
Working as a dialler coder... (Score:5, Informative)
I work closely with lots of companies in the UK who use a particular predictive dialler. And as such I know that most of these companies are small 10-50 agent setups. Most of the time they have nothing more than the script on a screen, a headset and a 2ft wide desk. It's horrible.
To get to my point... I know for a fact that most companies don't subscribe to the TPS list, and even if they did, they wouldn't know how to use it. I hear some of the support calls come though, and the questions are just terrible/illegal.
The favourite question is "how do I set up pinging". Pinging is basically taking a number range (say 0777xxxxxxx to 0779xxxxxxxx) and ringing each number in sequence. You only connect the call for 1/3rd of a second, so the result is the phone doesn't ring, it just makes a "ping" noise. It is a very bad thing to do. The point is people who are breaking the law by pinging are no going to care about TPS.
There are other regulations, such as "drop rate" which s a measure of how many calls you can throw away without connecting. In the UK it is set at 3% in any 24 hour period. Guess how many try and comply with this....
Generally in the industry, people will try and trick they can. When banned from one provider... switch. The never ending cycle continues.
Posting anon for obvious reasons!
Re:There is an app for that. (Score:3, Informative)
I don't accept blocked/800/877 and Unavailable caller ID.
You might want to include 888 and 866 numbers in there too. Also the next block of area code toll free numbers is expected to be 855 so preemptively blocking those ones may be advisable as well.
Re:There is an app for that. (Score:3, Informative)
"Mr Jones? Sure, I'll just go and get him." [leave the phone under the sofa cushion]
And you're right, they blacklist your number after you do this, so it works out well.
Rich.
Re:sour note (Score:5, Informative)
You didn't read the article did you?
1. they do have 4 million numbers, they're not a phone compnay but an ISP that offers VoIP services.
2. The numbers they have are assigned to them, and are obviously able to be called, but ar not handed out to a subscriber yet (so technically,A&A are the subscriber).
3. They added every one to the TPS list - that is the correct thing to do. The message they play says the right things, giving the caller a chance to realise its a wrong number before going off on one - its just that telemarketers play a recording, and only connect to a human if you press a key, hence the beep near the beginning of each of the traps they have on the website. Regular people are going to hear the initial 'this is not a valid number'.
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:5, Informative)
Telemarketers (Direct Marketting) Association (Score:4, Informative)
For those interested in giving the Direct Marketing (Telemarketers) association feedback on their services their number is:
212 768 7277
and they can be reached by email at:
customerservice@the-dma.org
Enjoy.
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:5, Informative)
If its just an auto-dialer playing a taped message, the honeypot might be ineffective, although it still spares the subscriber from getting these calls.
I used to work in the telemarketing business, in the back room managing the data so I may have some uncommon insight here.
Legitimate telemarketers work off large lists of numbers, provided by their customers. In this case though it may be simply the list was generated as a complete block of an entire exchange or three. Anyway, the list when provided gets scrubbed against any DNC lists, usually one for client, one for state (by area code) and one exceptions list. (screamers, 911 and other emergency services, cell phone and fax blocks, etc) Sounds like these clods are also skipping that step. By scrubbed I mean dispositioned a DNC termination, that number will not be called.
Anyway, the dial servers are dialing lines faster than all the TCs on the floor can answer. They auto pace their dialing so they get on average someone that has just answered their phone just in time for a TC to become available (off previous call) to keep our TC idle time as low as possible. (cranking up the pass call rate beyond a certain % is also illegal, maybe they're doing that too? that's what gets you calls where there's nobody there when you answer)
So, the TCs can disposition a call such as "no thank you", "call me back later", "answering machine", or some form of sale. Non terminating dispositions just get you dropped back into the pool for calling back again. Robocalls can disposition calls too, such as detecting answering machines or quick hangups. So, having a machine play a recorded message may not help any, depending on how the call gets dispositioned. Or it may cause that number in the list to get terminated and never called again. Depends on what they want to do. I remember getting robocalls for "your new car warranty is about to expire!" almost continuously for a month. In those cases it didn't matter if you took the call, let it ring, or put it on a machine, you'd still get called again in a few hours. But that's not very efficient. They were being highly illegal so for them they probably were more interested in take-the-money-and-run rather than trying to work out an efficient call method for the long haul.
The effectiveness of the honeypot comes down to a battle of resources. The object of the honeypot is to tie up their resources to such a degree that their cost-to-revenue drops below acceptable and they move on. Lets say they are robocalling a block of 10,000 numbers, only 4,000 of which are used. If they call a number that is unused, and you play back an easily identifiable recording, it may be caught by the dialer even before the TC gets it, in which case the dialer dispositions it recording, which may terminate it. In that case, by the time they've gone first pass through all 10k numbers, all 6,000 inactive numbers are terminated and will not be reattempted. So they now focus round 2 on what's left of the 4,000 live bodies. This method fails to deter them because it's only a VERY minor inconvenience on pass 1 only.
If you can get to the TCs and they have to disposition it, you take up a little bit more of their resources in manpower, but you're still very unlikely to survive the first pass. 98% of the recorded disconnect notices will be terminated by the TCs on round 1 and never called again. Again you have not accomplished much.
It becomes much more effective when you can take up their time, such as what this guy is doing. Stall them, tie up a TC and a line on their end, for as long as possible. In the above example, lets say they have 50 TCs taking calls. If 60% of the numbers they call are spoof recordings, you are tying up 30 of their 50 TCs at a time. Assuming you have the tech resources to pull this off, it's wonderful. You have just dropped their conversion rate 60%. If they have anywhere else to call, they will do so, quickly. If they don't give up, they either have nowhere else to cal
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:3, Informative)
In Georgia, you have to go to Magistrate Court and file a suit against the appropriate person or company (which is sometimes a hard thing to figure out). The relevant statute is 47 USC 227 b 1 A iii, with regulations to match in 47 CFR 64.1200 a 1 iii. I recommend the book "Everybody's Guide to Small Claims Court" by Nolo.
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, a month or so later (NOT BAD for a government agency) I got a notice that they had been fined $2000 based on my complaint. Granted, I didn't get any of that, but it took less time.
I've heard of another guy from CA doing what Sparr0 describes, and he had an in-depth description of what to do. In the end, these jerks really can't defend themselves and often have to pay up. If they don't you might be able to turn it over to a collections agency
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:5, Informative)
Where I worked, that list was extremely short (under 250 numbers?) and involved people that specifically had made the point that they were going to be litigious or had done so in the past. That, and all of US in the back had our numbers in there too of course. Before I put my number in, I got ONE call from them, and oh it was hilarious. I answered the phone and heard a veeeeery familiar opening sales pitch. "Is this xxxx?" (name of our company) Silence. very long silence. "um. yes it is." haha.. "put me on your Do Not Call list!". I think the rep had me on hold, asking her supervisor, "should I answer that?" I looked in the records that Monday and found my number in that list, correctly terminated DNC.
So yes, it happens, even to "us". That was back in the days of DOS and dbase iv.
We did follow all the rules. (for the most part, the sales managers were constantly nagging us to up the dial rate which would push the pass call limit) Numerous states at that time had DNC lists, I'm sure most of them do at this point. If you were on such a list, we would never call you, for any of our customers, regardless of the customer. I have no idea tho how common or uncommon it is for telemarketing companies to follow all the rules. I suspect the fraction that do not are a small minority, but due to the nature of what this leads to they tend to be very high visibility and give the entire industry a bad rep. Like when a single company can get a dozen states up in arms for blasting their entire population with robocalls for a month straight.
Bonus factoid: the senators that wrote and passed all those nice bills to protect us from harassment over the phone... there's ONE group that is exempt from those laws, in every single case. Care to guess who can get away with it, every time? Political Calls. If you want to direct your ire somewhere, there's a much better target. That's right, your favorite senator can robocall you all day long at election time and there's nothing you can do about it.
Oh, my mistake, one more. Unless it's changed recently, only privately owned numbers can be enforced on the DNC lists. Businesses can try to add their numbers to the lists, but the telemarketers can ignore it. (cannot be fined for calling you even if you're on the list)
Re:Sounds like a good time (Score:3, Informative)
In the USA, it's illegal to use a predictive dialer to call a cell phone.
Yup. Was that way when I was in the 'biz. Since that's all we used, all cell phone blocks were DNCd first thing when a list came in. Though back then there weren't nearly so many cell phones. I'm sure there's easily 100x more now. But we were going by area code and sometimes exchange. I have NO IDEA how they are handling things with "number portability" now. I don't see how you can positively determine if a given number is a cell phone nowadays. Unless portability is only from cell carrier to cell carrier?
It was more important back then, from a consumer point of view, similar to junk faxes. My mom's small business has to leave their fax machine off except when expecting a fax, or robofaxes for random advertisements will still run their toner out. I don't know why they can still get away with that in this day and age. But back then, cell phones were much worse. My first cell phone in 1991 (ya, really) calls were 50c/minute, $1 minimum, and counted for both incoming and outgoing. So you can imagine how quickly a cell phone user would get pissed off at telemarketers! Buck a call. Nowadays with people on 500-1500 min/month plans it's mostly just an annoyance, but with a small cost to legally justify protection.
Re:There is an app for that. (Score:3, Informative)
As you post shows, a depressingly high proportion of people who claim English as their native language get this sort of thing wrong, so your strategy would have a distinctly high false positive rate (where misidentifying a real human as an unsuccessful voice-recognising robot is a false positive).
You may find that non-native speakers of English (or whichever language you're working in) pass the test more easily, having probably been better trained in the language. So the faceless hoards of evil foreign telemarketing slaves would possibly pass your test more easily than Joe Five-Pack from down the street.