First let me preface that by explaining how the process generally works. Robo callers are looking for a connection and as long as you or your voice recording answers the call, a connection has been made, which tells the robo caller that your number is a valid one. And, it will continue to call every time one of those type of connections is made. For weeks or even months.

Although I realize this won't work for every or even most people's situations, there are three things that helped me get rid of them: 1) I work out of my apartment. 2) I have caller ID. 3) When I see a number that I don't recognize or it shows up as something like -'caller outside of area' or 'unknown caller', or from a state that my friends or family doesn't live in, I simply unplug my phone for about 15 seconds. I do this for each and every call. It was a big hassle and an inconvenience for a couple of weeks, but eventually the 'robo' calls did go away.

And, if I need to step out for awhile, I just unplug my phone. Face it, if you get an important call and the party can't reach you for an hour or two, they will call back later or will call your cell phone, which luckily I haven't had a 'robo' problem with... yet.

@courtneywoah: They only use your minutes when you answer - so don't answer if you don't recognize the number.

While I find all of this incredibly amusing, am I the only one who feels bad for the telemarketers themselves? Who knows what personal circumstances may have led them to that job? They may have very few options right now. My company laid off 10% of our workforce nationwide...and the only places hiring around my area are the telemarketing firms.

Hate the company, but not the employees who are only doing their jobs.

All it will take is a bunch of us to go screaming to our representatives that this "fatal flaw" in the nation's phone system will aid individuals and groups wishing to harm us in any sort of terror-related or crime-related activity - once Homeland Security gets involved you bet they'll make the phone carriers fix this nonsense in a hurry with our Xeroxed-a-plenty money.

Remember, if the car warranty guys can spoof phone numbers, so can the (other) criminals, too! Unless the situation gets resolved we as a country will be in a big world of hurt!

@oneswellfoop: I agree. No doubt that 4Chan and reddit and the crazy pranks they've generated will be way more effective at the end of the day than the lawsuits. But it's nice to know that the car warranty people haven't totally escaped the notice of the people whose jobs it is to protect us from this kind of stuff.

And just to touch on everything else everyone has said, the versatility of VoIP is only going to make this worse.

Even the most /b/tarded of them surely realizes that this = epic lulz

That's not possible. One time, anticipating that they would hang up when I said such a thing, I said it as fast as humanly possible, like Micro Machines guy fast. You could hear the other person breathe and then hang up.

When these guys call, I tell them I have a DeLorean, then ask if they cover Flux Capacitors and if I can add Doc Brown to my warranty.

[www.autoonewarranty.com]

Asterisk PBX (open-source, free) has the anonymous call screening feature built in. I have this set up on my personal/home lines for numbers without a proper or valid CallerID. The PBXinaFlash distro's quite good and is a good solid platform. Definitely requires some technical skill to get started successfully, but not as much as a traditional phone system.

The other style that's used by larger offices are Private Branch eXchanges (PBX). These use digital connections (often T1 lines) to the PSTN and have channels instead of dedicated lines. These are far more flexible. Think of this as how the internet works. The phone line info for a call is just a packet, not a physical line. In the case of your husband's office, businesses usually have it display the main phone # for outgoing calls. Our execs have direct #s BUT only shows up as the main # for outgoing calls.

I've also given them the option of which office (city) the outgoing CallerID# will show as. There's times you don't want people to know you're in town. I've provided for that. Similarly, I'm sitting out at the beach right now, Cisco phone sitting on the desk next to me and no one from my office is aware of it. :) They know I'm not in the office because my butt's not in my chair, but calls to my extension still ring to me & my calls to them still show my office extension #. I love technology.

Blasting droids ftw!

Maybe we'll finally be able to learn if these warranty companies like Mudkips or not.

I would like to convert my home number into a conference bridge. When people call and they are not in my address book, they are forced to create an entry before being connected. "Thank you for calling, you will be connected to 847.555.1212 in a moment." "To continue, please say your name after the tone and press # when complete".

This has made me so happy today. So happy indeed.

@snowburnt: They often spoof the number showing on caller id.

@Radi0logy: If it was the cash register coin sound then the Spanish lady this is what I found a as the translation someone else posted:

I JUST GOT A CALL FROM THIS NUMBER, IT WAS A SPANISH SPEAKING LADY SAYING, "THE CASH REGISTER IS RINGING YOU JUST WON $1,000 PLEASE PRESS #1 TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE"

Everyone dial 1 and complain to them when they call.

They hit the 615 area code early April as people even with cell phones got the calls. They basically war dial through the entire area code and exchanges...

You should also pass along PrankDialer.com with the phone number. Then they can get automated calls just like us

Next, I need to get up to speed on who's 4chan. They sound great.

The Robot The?

:)

Get the # and if you can answer it when they're calling, remind them that it's a cell phone.

@YamiNoSenshi: +1

@Skaperen: I've done more than an hour in the past.

It's the incompetence of the employees at Bell (or whatever) that causes this for smaller businesses.

Now, 12 lines means they probably have a PBX. But smaller companies with 2 or 3 lines probably just use ringdown. And, considering how STUPID the employees working the phones are now, they probably can't do that right. Wouldn't surprise me at all...

Where do I have to click to read the actual article on Reddit?

Anyone tried adjacent numbers yet?

"I called, and to everything he had to say, I said "OK", or "sure", or "why". He said something like "you shouldn't be playing with phones", and I kept saying "why" etc. Eventually he got upset and started a lecture with "Look, I'm telling you", at which point I slammed the phone on him, a taste of their own medicine."

Also, found this info halfway through the comments:

Auto One Warranty Specialist
310 Commerce Ste 150, Irvine, CA 92602-1361
Contact Phone: (714) 832-1228

Lastly, it does look like there are several people in the thread claiming to have accessed voicemail over there. While I myself would never advocate something like that (no, not me, no way), I do have to say that I giggled over it. Shamelessly.

There were all like, We can lower your interest rate on your Bank of America credit card!

I was all like,

OMG! (cheerful) I don't have a Bank of America credit card! This is the shit! Lower interest rate on an imaginary card.

They hung up on me, the bastards, lol.

Which is mind boggling, how can they allow a call to go through their system without knowing where it originated from?

Every time I ask for company name, address, and phone, (to report to my Attorney General) they always hang up.

One person actually said they would remove me, now I just get ghost calls. Like they'll call me and it's all quiet and no one is on the line, it's really frustrating.

You can fill out the form to get a free quote
[www.autoonewarranty.com]

@HeldForRansom_GitEmSteveDave: Well played!

It drives me crazy when businesses with lots of phone lines can't manage to set it up so ALL outgoing calls come out of a couple of numbers. I know it CAN be done since I've seen it done. But, for example, my ob/gyn calls out on TWELVE different numbers (so far) when I can only call in on ONE, and since I don't pick up the phone from unrecognized numbers (and many doctors block their ID, which I'm okay with), I never know they're calling and only pick them up after they leave a message from that number.

Or, on the flip side, businesses that have direct dial to executives but their calls go OUT on whatever line the system happens to pick, not their personal number (so I never know when my husband's calling from work). WTF, guys?

Not such a problem if they're using caller ID, but if they're caller ID-free, I have to guess based on the number.

Off to make a list...

It's a cool idea, but as the previous callers stated, not practical at this point. Not to mention that as services such as Google Voice become more common, it will become near impossible, since the lines the calls are actually originating from won't actually match the ANI/CID at all.

Of course, a relatively simple solution is what Google Voice and a number of other services do now: it can be set so if the incoming call is blocked ID, or doesn't match a number in your phone book, it asks the caller for their name. I'm sure it won't be long before the voice detection algorithm will be smart enough to detect a robot dialer and simply terminate the call.

The system sends outgoing calls in about this manner.

Outgoing CallerID is based upon: 1) the phone extension being used, 2) number being called, 3) "line" chosen on the phone.

Imagine trying to get a phone co to recognize all of your phone #s across multiple telcos in multiple area codes, especially a legacy ILEC. Verizon wouldn't let me keep my own phone # when I moved down the street in the same zip code. It'd completely blow their mind that I have 3 different providers feeding a single PBX, with some incoming #s being out-of-the-country. And this is just a small 20 person office. Larger office have even more complex systems and arrangements.

I appreciate the sentiment, but it's not that simple, especially at the enterprise and carrier level.

For an example of the signaling issue, Google "blue box." (Hi, Steve and Steve!)

Has anyone been reading the posts on Reddit a bit further down? A few people figured out how to get into their voicemail system and are wreaking havoc...think a couple of them changed some of the outgoing voicemail messages too. This totally made my night, gotten at least a dozen of these calls over the past month or so.

rock n roll

[www.instituteforlegalreform.com]

In the meantime, why is CNN playing the US Fidelis commercials??? I hope one of the state's AG's looks into charging them with a crime for allowing the b.s. ads to be shown on their network.

Asterisk.annoy [www.voipphreak.ca] + caller ID spoofing all day tomorrow ftw

...Well, that's frankly filling me with a sense of glee that won't be equaled for quite some time.

Why not? Have you tried using babelfish?

!Quíteme de su lista!

The best part is it's no charge with Vonage :)

When you get a robocall, wait for the human to come on the line. You might need to repeat "hello" to make sure the cheaper equipment realizes someone is on the line. Once you get a real live human, do NOT yell at them, do NOT curse at them, do NOT hang up, and do NOT ask to be taken off the list. Pretend to be genuinely interested in what they are selling. It's OK to act dumb. But the objective of the game is to keep the call rolling as long as you possibly can. The number of minutes is your score. Post back here with the longest you manage to keep a telemarketer on the line before THEY hang up on you. Anything goes in the conversation, but in most cases talking about the product or service they are selling, or helping them hone their selling skills, usually keeps them on longer.

Recording the call is even better.

Who will be the first to keep one on the line for a full hour?

Require that telephone companies program their switches to validate the caller ID and ANI data being passed through their switch from any telephone customer (except certain customers exempted in the law, such as law enforcement). If the customer connection allows transmitting caller ID/ANI data, that data is to be compared against the telephone numbers assigned to that customer. If the data is present and does not match a number assigned to the customer, the call is not connected. If the caller ID data is omitted, it is treated like a blocked ID (that's a different issue).

The numbers to check against are the numbers that telephone company assigns to that customer. This allows a customer to use a main number for all calls placed from any phone, for example. If the customer has service from multiple telephone companies, the customer provides a list to the telephone company, and the numbers on the list are verified every 3 months as still being assigned to this customer. These numbers are added to the list that customer may use in the caller ID.

The same goes for company name info. Every possible string the company may use must be verified as correct and entered in the database used by the telephone company switch to validate the caller ID name. Any mismatch means the call is not placed.

Calls to any emergency service or law enforcement are never blocked.

Law enforcement may originated calls with fake caller ID. Few other entities should be allowed this right. This law would not apply to calls without caller ID or blocking the transmission of caller ID.

And, as is usual with all laws I propose, violations result in jail terms starting with 3 months for each offense the first time around, and doubling each time offenses are repeated after serving time (e.g. the next round of offenses is 6 months per offense, and so on).

Reading some of the comments on the reddit link, it looks like at least one woman who answers that line is incredibly pissed about all the calls she's getting.

That alone makes it worth it.

I'm charging all my lasers, and I just put on my wizard's cap and cloak.

Is it wrong that the thought of these "warranty callers" getting a taste of their own medicine is getting me hard?

The Internet Hate Machine is gearing up for battle.