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Ultimate Caller ID Screeners? 57

Posted by Cliff from the keeping-the-riff-raff-off-of-your-lines dept.
omasse asks: "I'm sick of telemarketing. Really sick. And since I'm in Canada, the new U.S. telemarketing law won't change a thing for me. The only easy solution is a technological one, and it ought to be fully transparent: No phone in my house should ring at all if it's an undesired call, and friends and family should not have to enter a 5-digit code to make them ring. To my knowledge, the only gadget that could do this is a sharp filter based on caller ID that I plug in my main phone drop. But Digitone's Caller ID Screener has been announced some time ago, there are no guarantees they'll meet their fall 2003 deadline, and I would prefer having a few products to chose from. There's been a discussion here once on a DIY home PBX system but that's way, way overkill for me. Could anyone tell me what are the ultimate Caller ID Screeners?"
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Ultimate Caller ID Screeners? More

Ultimate Caller ID Screeners?

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  • Asterisk (Score:4, Informative)

    by tzanger ( 1575 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:19PM (#7158556) Homepage

    Asterisk [asterisk.org] can solve that for you. I am playing with it now. It can do different things based on the received CID and even do things like play the "disconnected line" tone sequence before passing the call to you if the CID is unknown.

    Just a word of advise: Don't use Quicknet's cards -- the cards work fine but the asterisk developers seem to have something against them, almost forcing you to use Digium's FXO/FXS cards instead. The PhoneJack/LineJacks will work fine for a little while and then you'll get weird problems like oddball rings, CID not being passed through, DTMF not being passed through, all kinds of little issues that you'll have to restart asterisk or reload the modules to fix. The standard answer on #asterisk is "Use Digium cards instead." Right.

    • Asterisk can solve that for you.

      It certainly can. You can script any behavior you want in Perl.

      For instance, when someone calls me, it first checks for a supplied caller-ID (CID) number. If there is one, and it's not on my blacklist, the call rings through to the phone (otherwise I hear nothing).

      If they're on the blacklist, the call is picked up and immediately dropped.

      If there is no CID, it starts playing my "answering machine" message. During that time, they can touch-tone in a code which I have

    • is a simple caller-ID display unit similar to the many cheap (~$AU15) models available, but which the user can program to associate the caller's name with the number. Does anybody know of a gadget like this? I haven't seen one on the market here in Australia. I don't imagine such a thing would be hard to produce...
      • I have a program called NCID on my Linux box that allows this. It is client/server and works over the LAN. Cilents are my TiVo (OSD Caller ID, with name/number ailaising) and a client for my Matrix Orbital LCD using lcdproc.
  • A lot of cell phones have include/exclude facilities built-in. A lot of people are eschewing their landlines altogether for their mobile equivalents.

  • Or... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:27PM (#7158613) Homepage
    ...you could call up Information and harass them f or the 1-800 number for the Direct Marketing Association, or whatever they call themselves up here, and then get your name put on a do-not-call list.

    I did this going on eight years ago, and I've received fewer than a dozen telemarketing calls since. My postal junkmail also was reduced.

    There is a registry, it can just be a bitch to find out how to get on it. Shouldn't stop you from succeeding, though!

    • Re:Or... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Blkdeath ( 530393 )

      ...you could call up Information and harass them f or the 1-800 number for the Direct Marketing Association, or whatever they call themselves up here, and then get your name put on a do-not-call list.

      That's correct, however we already have legislation in effect that functions similar to the Do Not Call list. The CRTC, bless their hearts, some time ago drafted a regulation that states that upon request, a telemarketting firm must (I'll reiterate; MUST) remove your number from their call list within seven

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:27PM (#7158616)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Where are your moderator points when you need them?

      Moderators, mod the parent up.
    • We have left the original factory message without a name on our answering machine. No problem.
    • The problem with a simple phone answering machine is that it still allows an unwanted caller to wake you up in the middle of the night, or harrass you by calling every ten minutes throughout the day, etc.

      Telemarketers don't normally do that, but many people would still like a system that can block unwanted calls without allowing the caller to bother them by even ringing the phone.
      • The way to solve this is to replace the ringer in the phone with lights, like they do in on-air booths at radio stations. I can't imagine it'd work with cordless phones, but my cordless lets you shut off the ringer on the handset, so it might work.
      • When my wife was expecting we had a problem with my mother-in-law (who had azhimers) and other morons who would call late at night. My phone company offered a 'ring master' service that adds up to 3 phone numbers to the same line that ring with a different cadance. I got a second number on this service that was not listed or published and bought a distintive ring decoder to separate the numbers out to separate (internal) phone lines. I then broke the connection from the phone line to the rest of the hous

  • Try this: (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dark Nexus ( 172808 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:31PM (#7158645)
    http://www.the-cma.org/consumer/donotcall/dnc_serv ice.cfm [the-cma.org]

    Certainly not legally binding, nor as extensive as the US Do-Not-Call list. I think this is what an earlier poster was referring to (though I could be wrong).

    Alternately, just fake your death [www.cbc.ca]!

    • Re:Try this: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Quikah ( 14419 )
      you beat me to it. There is a similar list for every country the Direct Marketing Association operates in (I think, hard to tell where I don't speak the language, but UK, Australia, Canada and US all have lists).

      You can find your country specific weblinks at http://www.the-dma.org/affiliates/dmintl.shtml [the-dma.org].
    • I was about to mention this as well. considering the number of Telemarketers that refer me to this when I ask them to remove me, it seems like a reasonably well-respected list in Canada. Might just be something to do with our politeness and whatnot.

      as well, if you repeatedly get calls from marketters that you've requested not to call you (either by talking to them, or by getting on the list), you can report them to your local telephone company, and let them know about it.

  • Calls from strange numbers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:45PM (#7158744) Journal

    The problem with blocking calls from strange numbers is that the times you really need the call to get through are often also the times you are calling from a strange number (e.g. a kind stranger's cell phone, since yours is somewhere under the rubble).

    -- MarkusQ

  • ...a call screener which would let me route calls I know to be telemarketers into a pre-recorded message where I would talk nonstop for about 10 minutes attempting to sell them some product or service of my own.
  • I don't know precisely how you would implement the system, but your ideal solution should involve ANI, not CallerID. Unlike CallerID, ANI works 100% of the time and there are no blocked numbers. To get ANI services, you need to have an ISDN line or something to that effect.

    Back when ISDN was the cream of the crop, I used to have a dual-line ISDN connection with a WebRamp router. The router would report the ANI information for incoming calls on its status page. Neat stuff.

  • Number of Rings (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jonadab ( 583620 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:39PM (#7159074) Homepage Journal
    All you really want is to program your phone to ring silently the
    first N rings, and _then_ start ringing on the N+1th ring. The
    right value of N will effectively prevent telemarketers from ever
    reaching you, period, but anyone who knows you can be told, "Just
    let it ring about eight times", which is what anyone with a real
    and urgent need to reach you will do anyway.


    • > All you really want is to program your phone to ring silently the
      first N rings, and _then_ start ringing on the N+1th ring.

      I'd like to have an answering machine with a menu like most businesses do these days, but have it be a "honeypot" machine that would create fake submenus to an unbounded depth on the fly. Then you just tell your friends the secret code to enter at the first level to skip the runaround.

    • I don't see how that would work. Telemarketing calls tend to be set up by auto-diallers; human callers are only assigned to the outgoing calls once they've connected. The auto-diallers will happily wait a long time for someone to pick up.
      • > The auto-diallers will happily wait a long time for someone to
        > pick up.

        Do they? My experience suggests otherwise. (I'm one of those
        annoying people who doesn't even _notice_ the phone ringing for
        several rings, then gets to a stopping place with whatever I was
        doing, _then_ gets up and _walks_ to the phone... it can be the
        tenth ring before I pick up even normally. It often quits before
        I get there, but I haven't answered a telemarketer call in quite a
        few months. Members of my family who answer mor
        • Well, I'm not speaking from experience - I don't think I've ever received a telemarketing call at home, and both my phone numbers are now on the TPS register (the UK's do-not-call register). What I meant to say was that they can wait as long as they're programmed to.
  • Despite FFFish comment about do not call lists, many organizations such as religious groups can still call you. Dont rely on do not call lists. Also, people are tallking about new laws that may make it so that there is noo longer any such thing as a do not call list.

  • SCUD (Score:2, Informative)

    by Van Halen ( 31671 )
    Perhaps SCUD [drqware.com] will work for you. I've never used it, but a quick search in /usr/ports/comms turned it up.

    A few years ago I had a whole answering machine system running on my Linux box using this voice modem package [apsoftware.it] and a heavily modified version of the included script. I rewrote the script in perl and modified to, among other things, answer unknown or private calls after the first ring. It was hacked together, but not half bad in the end.

    Then about 3 years ago I switched to FreeBSD and never quite got

  • VoicePulse VoIP works here in the U.S. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rescate ( 688702 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:41PM (#7159565)
    I use the features of voice-over-IP provider VoicePulse [voicepulse.com] to accomplish what you are talking about. I know that you can't get VoicePulse in Canada, but maybe there are other VoIP providers there that I don't know about, who offer similar features. You sign up with them, and they send you a preconfigured Cisco ATA-186 to hook up to your broadband connection. You plug a telephone into the Cisco ATA to use it.

    You can then set up anonymous call blocking [voicepulse.com] so that callers without caller ID don't get through. You can optionally set it up to allow anonymous callers if they enter their phone number after prompted, which then gets sent to your caller ID as ??1234567890?? to indicate that the call was originally anonymous.

    They also have "Telemarketer Block", which I assume is the same kind of thing the Telezapper [telezapper.com] does. I should probably turn it on, but I thought it might be annoying to callers.

    You can also use their Do Not Disturb [voicepulse.com] feature in combination with their Filter [voicepulse.com] feature to send most callers immediately to voice mail, but allow your family to ring through. You do this by activating the Do Not Disturb feature, and then setting a filter for each family member's telephone number with the filter action set to "Always Ring" (the filter overrides the Do Not Disturb).

    The filters are cool, you can set them up for individual callers with actions of "Always Forward", "Always Ring", "Always Voicemail", "Always Busy", or for the truly annoying, "Not In Service", which plays a "not in service" message. One final option they don't list in their promo materials, but appears on the Filter setup page when I am logged in to my account, is "Rejection Hotline". It supposedly plays a "humorous message provided by the Rejection Hotline." I haven't tried this option yet, so I don't know how lame it is, but I can guess...

  • CID-Smart Answering Machine (Score:3, Informative)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @12:18AM (#7160175) Homepage Journal
    I got an AT&T answering machine [amazon.com] that can play different messages for different CID matches. The important feature is support for unique messages for blocked/unknown CID data - telemarketers always block this.

    So, you setup a message like "Hi... [pause to let the auto-transfer gidgit connect you to a drone] ... if this is a telemarketer, please put us on your do not call list, otherwise please leave a message." A friendlier message goes on the unblocked caller ID calls.

    This has reduced my calls to fewer than 1 per week. I think taking advantage of laws instead of technical quirks is the better strategy, more immune from arms races.

    Of course, I'm assuming Canada at least has per-company DNC list legislation.
    • ...taking advantage of laws instead of technical quirks is the better strategy, more immune from arms races.

      At least a small-time arms race doesn't run the risk of unintended consequenses, such as permanently removing rights that every person is entitled to. The markets are already telling telemarketers to piss off, the DNC list only makes it happen just a little sooner.

      • Rights? (Score:2)

        by adb ( 31105 )
        Please explain these rights of which you speak. I don't believe anybody has a right to use my phone (which I own) or my phone service (which I pay the phone company for) as the vehicle for their freedom of speech when I don't want them to. They have the right to publish a newletter and offer it to me, put up a web site, stand on a soapbox and yell, to broadcast radio signals, to tell their friends to tell their friends to tell their friends to tell my friends to tell me... but not the right to ring my pho
        • I don't believe anybody has a right to use my phone (which I own) or my phone service (which I pay the phone company for) as the vehicle for their freedom of speech when I don't want them to.

          Thus, we have technological "no trespassing" signs, such as screening calls, those fancy machines that deliver different messages based on caller ID, the TeleZapper, etc. The DNC list really only adds more regulatory burden to both the government and the private sector, making it a lose-lose proposition. Also, the D
          • None of the devices you mention functions as a "no trespassing" sign. In all cases, the telemarketer is permitted to occupy my line without my permission for a certain amount of time, and both call-screening and the TeleZapper require my attention as well. If there's an appropriate metaphor, it's me having to come out and chase those damn salesmen off my lawn every time they wander on to it, because I can't post a no-trespassing sign and the cops wouldn't enforce it if I did. This law permits centralized

            • No one said that freedom was easy.

              • You claimed active defensive measures (like call screening, TeleZapper, and automated call screening) with "no trespassing" signs. I told you why they are different, and pointed out that this law fills the same function as a "no trespassing" sign. You then made an irrelevant throwaway remark.

                The next move is still yours.

                • this law fills the same function as a "no trespassing" sign. You then made an irrelevant throwaway remark.

                  My point is that the law isn't truly a "no trespassing" sign. You'll still get the leeches from charities and political campaigns not to mention the three-month delays and probably other loopholes we have yet to discover. The only real protection is that which the people provide for themselves, because the government solution will always be the half-assed solution. The challenge is to find the tele
                  • Ah, so what you're actually saying is that there shouldn't be exceptions to the law, not that it shouldn't exist. I agree completely.
                    • Ah, so what you're actually saying is that there shouldn't be exceptions to the law, not that it shouldn't exist.

                      Well, in a way, yes, but politics guarantees that to be an impossible outcome. There is more blatant racial, economic, and social discrimination in our nations laws than in all of our society, even when considering crap like the KKK.

                    • "Since laws are never enforced uniformly, but rather give certain favored groups advantages over other groups, we shouldn't have laws"?
                    • we shouldn't have laws"?

                      No, just not so many of them that we have to seek a lawyer for every trivial decision. For example, the US Constitution is written to be pretty agnostic regarding special interests. The only amendments regarding race or gender dealt with the inclusion of massive groups of people without much nitpicking. It was probably the income tax and prohibition that really started the the whole thing downhill, where people now feel that any minor complaint or percieved hardship can be writt
  • I have been working for the last 6 months on something I call Choicelist [choicelist.com] that aims to be a solution for spam through any electronic communications medium. once the system is in place, it will be easy for a company to make an internet enabled caller id box that can check to see if a number is a personal number or not.
  • Here are the links that you want:

    Telephone - http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ [tpsonline.org.uk]
    Fax - http://www.fpsonline.org.uk/ [fpsonline.org.uk]
    Post - http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/ [mpsonline.org.uk]
    Email - http://www.dmaconsumers.org/emps.html [dmaconsumers.org]

    The first three are pretty effective, but as to how effective a national email preference service can be combatting an international problem... Well we all know the answer to that one.

  • check with your phone company (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @11:52AM (#7163604)
    They may already have the service you want. Qwest (formerly U.S. West) has it - can't remember the name, but here's what it does.

    You get the service, and anyone calling you gets a message saying press '1' to proceed as long as you're not a solicitor, etc.

    The message only plays if the caller is calling during legally-approved telemarketing hours.

    The message will not play for people you've programmed into the system to bypass it - so put your friends and family members phone numbers into the system, and they'll never get the message. And if they do, all they have to do is press 1 right away, anyway.

    Very nice, very simple, about $7 per month if I remember correctly.

    So, check with your phone company - they may already have the solution you're seeking (assuming we're not talking about a cellphone company - I haven't seen this solution from them, yet).

    The secondary defense is Caller ID, of course. That way you can avoid those calls from Mom when you're just not in the goddamned mood to put up with nonsense. :)
  • Check out The Network CallerID Project, NCID [sourceforge.net]. I've been using it for about a year, and it's very effective. You can use a simple user program to call festival [ed.ac.uk] (which I do), and voice announce the name of the caller (or not announce some callers, like telemarketers). If you turn the ringers on your phone off, you'll never be bothered again. The network capability lets my (802.11b connected) laptop display the information too, wherever I am in the house. Great software!
  • I've tried many methods of screening telemarketing calls, but the tried and true method is prevention. Why screen if they don't call? You thought it was myth. They thought it was legend. I present to you the Blotto Box...
  • Check out YAC. It allows you to take your 56k voice modem and get the caller ID. You can even brodcast it to "listeners" on your network. It can even be incorporated into your TIVO. http://www.sunflowerhead.com/software/yac/ [sunflowerhead.com]
  • My number used to be a fax number. I continue to get fax calls -- if I hook up a fax to the line, they are all junk faxes.

    I've tried to ask them to remove me -- and when I asked one of the junk faxers where they got my number, they said the phone company sold it to them.

    Now if only there was a simple way to only ring the phone if it was not a fax call

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