Telemarketing

[KenK]

I've been getting calls, which hang up on my answering machine message, for
years now from the same source. You'd think they'd take a hint by now.
Evidently these calls come from a country (602 area code IIRC) where phone
calls are sold wholesale. There's a couple of other numbers that keep
calling as well.

Maybe they get paid for dialing the calls, not making sales? Or both?

Do cell phone users hve this problem? No answering machine to screen calls?
I have a cell but it's normally turned off. I only use it in emergencies
when my landline isn't working or I'm not at home and need to make a call.
I almost never see a missed call listed and those are not telemarketing
calls.


--
I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook.

[BigDog811]

Auto-dialers fishing for live numbers answered by people or machines that are then sold to various telemarketers, fund raisers, politicians, and other scam artists.

My cell phone is used exactly like yours and I too rarely find a missed call not from someone I know. I never give that number to anyone. Only immediate family and very few close friends have it. Not sure why cell numbers aren't targeted more, but I'm not complaining.

[hchi...@hotmail.com]

On Fri, 12 May 2017 17:14:10 -0400, Derald <der...@invalid.net> wrote:

> I do, sort of. My household has two cell phones. One is the
>"home" phone and is a ported landline number of ± 20-year's duration.
>For 19 of those years, I paid for a "unpublished" number. It gets no
>spurious calls. Another, "my" cell phone has been active for eleven
>years and ported across two "virtual network" providers that resell
>Verizon. It is off most of the time but, if left on for any length of
>time, it is far more likely to receive bs calls, and those from either
>of two numbers. I have messaging, data, and voice mail disabled on both
>numbers by the provider. That number has narrow distribution and an
>incoming call from a number not on its contact list is by definition bs.
>I either ignore calls from numbers I don't know or let it ring many
>times before answering. Trolls and autodialers rarely let a phone ring
>more than 4 times,or so it seems.

My home phone is a VOIP over satellite, and I've had only five TM calls since
the beginning of the year, with two of those being the same charity
telemarketer. When I had a landline with AT&T there were often days with
multiple TM calls.

Follow the money. The telcoms get a minor income (some hundreth or thousandth
of a cent) every time ANY call uses the system. WIth an excess of capability,
there is no incentive to curb TM calls, even if it would be an easy find and
fix. With the VOIP using valuable satellite time, there is a cost to the
provider when these calls tie up the links.

[The Real Bev]

We have an Ooma VOIP device which connects via cablemodem. For a year
we were able to block spam calls, but there were a lot of first-timers.
Then we got a Sentry device, which requires first-time callers to
press 0 if they're not a telemarketer. If they lied (only a few in a
year) we immediately blacklist them. Friends only have to press 0 once,
from then on they're whitelisted automatically. Only $50 or so.

--
Cheers, Bev
I'd tell you a UDP joke, but you might not get it.
-- K.E. Long

[Bob F]

On 5/12/2017 9:19 PM, The Real Bev wrote:

>
> We have an Ooma VOIP device which connects via cablemodem. For a year
> we were able to block spam calls, but there were a lot of first-timers.
> Then we got a Sentry device, which requires first-time callers to press
> 0 if they're not a telemarketer. If they lied (only a few in a year) we
> immediately blacklist them. Friends only have to press 0 once, from
> then on they're whitelisted automatically. Only $50 or so.
>

Does that Sentry device stop unwanted calls from ringing at all? Or does
it ring once for them before it rejects them? What does it do for
spammers that spoof your own number to the call?

[The Real Bev]

You never hear a ring from rejects. There's already a list of rejected
numbers and you can reject anybody who gets through. Everybody starts
out getting the "Press 0 if you're a human..." message, and if you don't
reject them when they get through they never have to do that again.

I can't see how spoofing your own number would happen -- if you call
your own number you get a busy signal. Besides, that takes more time
and effort than a telemarketer would want to waste on somebody he
already knows would like to see his head on a pike.

Only a few lying bastards (one reminding us about the gold futures we'd
been discussing a few months ago, one wanting to sell us home
improvements, probably one more I can't remember) have had the guts to
press 0 ("If you're a telemarketer, please hang up...") and get passed
through. I kind of miss yelling at them, but not much :-)


--
Cheers, Bev
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. It comes bundled with the software.

[wilm...@gmail.com]

Centurylink offers a free service. Dial *78, choose the no solicitation option and viola! Now the caller is informed the resident does not accept solicitors, all others dial "1". You can then (or later, or before) put them on the accepted list and they won't hear the recording.

I was getting several a day, and now I haven't had one in months. Wish I knew about this year's ago. I bet other providers offer the same service. I was ready to pull the landline.