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)
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Internet-connected phone (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
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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. =)
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Not that I would do anything like that.
You, Sir, are a whimp (Score:5, Funny)
Shame on you! You should turn in your pocket protector.
Damn kids. Stay off my lawn!
Re:Internet-connected phone (Score:5, Interesting)
This cute Flash animation [deviantart.com] shows the Telecrapper in action. Hilarious stuff!
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!
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.
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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... (Score:4, Interesting)
oblig. (Score:2, Funny)
That's my number, you insensitive clod!
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You have to keep in mind, that, assuming you're in the US, the *carrier* gets some very strong input on phone design. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a profit-maximization scheme by your average ethics-free phone carrier. an extra say, 5 SMS's per caller who uses this phone would be a great additional revenue.
Re:Did that 14 times last weekend... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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My friends and I.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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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.
Re:My friends and I.. (Score:5, Funny)
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The TeleCrapper 2000. Windows only, though it looks like they have one with Asterisk. Answers the phone, if it's a telemarketer, boom, they get a nice littl
Forget the ghost calls. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Forget the ghost calls. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually - the call is coming from inside the house!
1. whocalled.us? 2. slashdot 3. please hang up ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1. whocalled.us? 2. slashdot 3. please hang up (Score:2)
2. Who's there?
3. Slashdot!
4. Slashdot who?
5. Slashdot slashslashslash slashdotdotdot slashslashslash slashdotdot slashdotslashslash.
Yeah, lame.
So as not to inconvenience telemarketers... (Score:3, Informative)
Marginal utility, at best (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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That all sounds like a lot fo work. (Score:2)
As for stopping what I'm doing, getting up, going over to the phone, etc? Cordless phone is usually within arm's reach. If there's no phone near by or I can't get away from what I'm doing? That's why I have voice mail.
Don't call again... huh? (Score:2)
However, another, more self serving and therefore likely reason, is that the person on the dropped line cannot utter the words, "Please take me off your list." The scum also have to comply with that one.
I always thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ryan Fenton
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Telemarketing Industry (Score:2, Insightful)
Does everyone stay below that number? No.
-R
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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.
donotcall.gov? (Score:2)
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Seriously, though, I've had all my numbers registered with the FCC for years, and I still get at least 5 telemarketing calls every day. I've filed complaints with the FCC over the more persistent ones, not that it matters since they usually don't bother following up, and when they do, ask for information you can't get unless you actually engage with the telemarketers.
When I get a telemarketing call, I'll usually Google the number, and most of the time I'll get a hit on whocalled.us or one
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> Unless it's Bell. Or Microsoft. Or a bank that needs bailing out.
Um, perhaps you might want to actually visit donotcall.gov?
Silence is Brass (Score:2)
Not errant at all. Telemarketing computer systems are designed so that the call center people are never idle. That means there always has to be an incoming queue of suckers, er, potential customers waited to be talked to. Of course that means that a lot of people will just hang up before they get a chance to hear about the wonders of Timeshares and Male Enhancement Herbs, which is really sad, but an ac
voice captcha?? (Score:2)
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Not to mention that legitimate automated call services would be affected
Not to mention that we already have laws on the books to stop unwanted telemarketing calls -- we should just start enforcing them, instead of adding temporary hurdle
Asterisk FTW! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"I'm sorry can you please speak up."
Even if it's 20-30 seconds it will greatly annoy them.
The worst is when... (Score:2)
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Cell Phone (Score:2)
Jacking up volume should be illegal (Score:2)
I actually set up a Predictive Dialer (Score:2)
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.
Dealing with the droids (Score:2)
You would think the telemarketers would realize that answering the phone and hearing nothing is a dead giveaway that it's a telemarketer, and change their tactics. If they hit my answering machine they get dead air, because the (fairly brief) outgoing message has long since finished by the time they pick up. This results in recordings of confused telemarketers saying "Hello...hello...hello...". Serves the dumb f**ks right.
I'm in the phone book as "L. Halliday", and the cold calls always ask for Mr. or Mrs
Key opening questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
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:
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!
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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
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Ironic, that the answering machine is the savior of my family's dinner time.
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OTOH, privacy is determined by society, and 92% feel it's an invasion or privacy, then it is.
I don't have caller ID.
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No it doesn't. There are many legitimate reasons for having a phone without wanting to receive calls, such as emergency support for sick or old people, dialup data lines, or simply the fact that you have to have one to get DSL in some places. Maybe those aren't all that common, but it's not my responsibility to prove to them that I want to receive calls.
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Not quite... They do get paid by the hour, but if you fall under a certain number of calls per hour, you get fired.
The "counter-script" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Ah, the counter-script. Great fun. I used it before the DNC list went operational and eventually developed several variations. I think I managed to really disturb some of the operators (try asking them for their names, cities, home addresses and numbers some time).
To the guy who's working on a program (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless you're whitelisting your calls (which comes with a risk of losing a
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.
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Answering machine (Score:3)
Ghost website (Score:2)
Trick them into the answering machine... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
524-000-0001 (Score:2)
Worst CID ever: your local government (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Just hang up. (Score:3, Insightful)
The next time you receive one of these calls, just hang up. Don't waste your time, don't install some advanced phone system, don't engage in conversation, don't get angry and don't try and be funny (unless you are). Just hang up the fucking phone and get on with your life.
Surely we're not thinking Web 2.0 enough? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Surely we're not thinking Web 2.0 enough? (Score:4, Funny)
It's configurable (and it runs on SCO) (Score:3, Informative)
Long story short, to up your sales numbers you tell it to dial more numbers in advance. If the setting is too high, nobody's there on your end to take the call because they're all already talking to someone. The more numbers you dial the better chance someone's going to answer. There's a pacing algorithm too which takes into account the number of reps available and average call times and many other variables - but since upping the number typically gets you better sales figures... yeah you'll never guess what people do - they up the number.
There are federal regulations in place, however, specifically to limit this practice. Hard to enforce. These calls are probably not coming from a big and established telemarketer, but rather a small startup shop.
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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> 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
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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).
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If the caller presses 1 the phone will ring.
If the caller presses 2 they can leave a voice mail.
If the caller does NOT press a button you still record what they say and save it as a voicemail.
So the only way to hear the phone ring, would be if someone called you and pressed 1. If its a computer system, you will get the voicemail.
Sounds good to me.
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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 (
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Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people who call the landline are telescum. Everyone important has my cell phone number.
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But yeah, the ringer is turned off.
And to that point: (Score:2)
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
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 "
Is ANI spoofing criminal? (Score:2)
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Luckily, in the UK we have a "don't call" list and it works fine for me - no ghost calls and not even any marketing calls. I've just got to get re-listed now that I've moved house...
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Sneaky bastards.
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Re:in 2007 (Score:5, Funny)
Ye I do, ecause I do't ike he crappy overcmpressd audo uality tha ireless hones ave.
Re:Caller ID (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re: Screening works especially well.. (Score:4, Funny)