Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/phone-ringless-voicemail-fcc-telemarketer.html

by HarryHirsch • 9 years ago

151 217 9 years ago

But HOW does it work? It's not clear by the article precisely how this is done. Possibly a triple call system. Three calls to that same number at once, each a millisecond after the other, and when the third hits the voicemail the other two disconnect immediately.

13of40• 9 years ago

Wasn't thinking of that. I assumed the phone company was complicit and selling this as a service to the telemarketers, but we can't really know if the article avoids any implementation details.

mee_too2• 9 years ago

Or bribe the phone company and get direct access to the mail box.

edoceo2• 9 years ago

You really only need a double call. It's quite easy.

I wrote this ages ago http://edoceo.com/exemplar/call-to-voicemail

Oddly, my number gets blown up by these things.

rgj• 9 years ago

How about call waiting?

Overtonwindow4• 9 years ago

I've never gotten them. -shrugs- How strange.

yusyusyus• 9 years ago

Another way of doing this is looking at LRN database and hitting the voicemail access numbers for the carrier. Often times the pilot number will let you dial a mailbox directly.

Overtonwindow4• 9 years ago

LRM database? Could you please elaborate?

mee_too2• 9 years ago

I was planning to switch to data-only SIM anyway, don't need no phone number or voice mail.

thrill• 9 years ago

I assume one can make either-direction VOIP calls (i.e. Google Voice) via a data-only SIM? I wonder if I could get that via Verizon.

extrapickles3• 9 years ago

The article doesn't describe how the technology works.

Due to the slow speed (100 voicemail/min) its likely what they are doing is initiating a call far enough for the phone system to busy out your phone, then very quickly placing a second call that the phone system sends straight to voicemail as your phone is busy. Once this call starts to hit voicemail, the original call is dropped.

I doubt phone companies let people directly send voicemail to people as they wouldn't be billing for that.

eli• 9 years ago

If I call my T-Mobile voicemail I can leave a message on someone else's T-Mobile line. Definitely possible.

zeronight• 9 years ago

Voicemail are just other phone numbers, most of the time they are internal to the network though.

Crosseye_Jack• 9 years ago

In the uk we have had the ability to send direct voicemail for years, one operator actively marketed the system before text messages took off as a method to message another orange customer without having to ring their phone.

EDIT: just called my voicemail and the option to direct leave a voice mail for someone else is right on the main menu (Three UK).

cschmittiey• 9 years ago

For what it's worth, I've been able to do this in the US as well -- don't remember which carrier, I think Tracfone

abalashov• 9 years ago

what they are doing is initiating a call far enough for the phone system to busy out your phone, then very quickly placing a second call that the phone system sends straight to voicemail as your phone is busy.

I can tell you that's exactly what they are doing.

smacktoward• 9 years ago

This is fascinating. It never occurred to me until now that there might be a window in the call process between "line is flagged as busy" and "phone rings."

I assume we're talking about a very narrow window here, right? How narrow?

Is it something that has always existed, or something that crept in because of the transition from phone-as-mechanical-device to phone-as-software?

moomin• 9 years ago

If that is how it works, I can't see how they'll manage to argue these aren't calls in a court.

extrapickles3• 9 years ago

Even with the carrier/country specific techniques everyone is mentioning, they all involve calling, so they should fall under existing law too.

pbhjpbhj5• 9 years ago

I can't see how they'll manage to argue these aren't calls in a court //

I'd have thought on the basis that a telephone call involves two parties in simultaneous communication, the caller and callee, and that a voicemail box isn't a party when a message is being left; the recipient collecting the mail does so of their own volition; the communication is not a phone call, it's asynchronous.

Whether that will wash probably depends on caselaw that I have no knowledge of.

glasz2• 9 years ago

i am working on an application that sends calls straight to voicemail. there's "an api" for that in germany, meaning you put special codes between area code and number.

qrbLPHiKpiux• 9 years ago

How do you sleep at night?

tomjen3• 9 years ago

How would this work when my phone declines their call? I assume it would hang up on the first call, then be available to hand up on the second call?

Because if not, I need to disable my voicemail.

extrapickles3• 9 years ago

This entire process occurs before your phone is even aware of the call to decline it. They are taking advantage of the fact that it takes at minimum a few dozen milliseconds to route a call to your phone.

If you have one of the carriers others have mentioned, they are calling your voicemail directly, completely bypassing your phone.

olegkikin• 9 years ago

But the first call would ring then.

theclaw• 9 years ago

No, the two calls are dialled concurrently with a skew such that call A finishes dialling moments before call B. Call B immediately goes to voicemail because the line is locked setting up call A. Call A disconnects before the phone starts to ring, but after the network has routed call B to voicemail.

Edit: clarified.

caseysoftware3• 9 years ago

That's exactly how it works. While I was at Twilio, we figured out how to do it - mostly from a customer abusing the system - and shut them down at the time. The problem was that it wasn't complicated enough that it would take long for others to figure out.

The problem I noted at the time is that since we only charged for minutes during the call, the first call - which was dialed and immediately dropped - would never get a charge, only the second would.

opendomain• 9 years ago

I am a big fan of twillio, but I suspect that they or companies like it are contributing to the problem.

I would like everyone that uses a telephone API to be required to register a bond. If they are found abusing the system, they will lose the bond and be banned from using ANY companies telephone system.

That telephony companies do not take the opportunity fix tbe actual problem makes me think a court may be able to find they are complicit.

patrickg_zill• 9 years ago

If there are enough short duration calls, the phone company will ask for more money. The every four years political calls, for example, often have to pay a little bit more due to their short call duration.

analog31• 9 years ago

That could reasonably be regarded as wire fraud, a la prank calling.

DaiPlusPlus2• 9 years ago

Prank calling isn't illegal unless it's harassment.

grovegames• 9 years ago

When I worked for a telco, you could easily call the voice mail main line, and then just use options to leave a voicemail in any mailbox. Easy peasy.

IgorPartola• 9 years ago

Back in the day, I remember Verizon Mobile had a thing where you could dial into your voicemail and then they had an option to leave a voicemail for another VZN subscriber just by punching in their number. I used this a couple of times to listen to an unknown caller's outgoing message.

briandear• 9 years ago

So if that is the case, these companies ARE violating the law because they are actually calling you. I hope they get slaughtered in court.

evan_• 9 years ago

I doubt phone companies let people directly send voicemail to people as they wouldn't be billing for that.

I mean- they could just bill for that. Like, offer a product that would send a voicemail message directly. Evil but I would not put it past a cell carrier.

matt_wulfeck• 9 years ago

In early 2000s this used to be a feature of my phone and I actually liked it. It allowed me to call someone and leave some information quick and easily. Text messages have largely replaced the need for that now. So much so that I've often pondered disabling my voicemail altogether.

bifel• 9 years ago

The method (at least here in my country) is really simple (and not really a secret): The voicemail can be reached from a special number. This number is easy to derive from the actual phone number (usually inserting one or two digits, depending on the provider). When the "owner" calls the mailbox, he gets the "admin" functionality. Anyone else calling it can only add messages. The rest is just simple call forwarding. So all that is needed is finding out the number of the mail box.

ilanco• 9 years ago

Not sure if it still works, but in Israel it is as simple as prepending the voice mail prefix to the phone number. Some voice mail boxes can receive faxes, so there is some legitimate use for it.

tjoff5• 9 years ago

People still use voice mail? I don't believe I've encountered one in at least a decade...

thejosh• 9 years ago

Where abouts are you? Here in AU, it seems everyone uses voicemail for their mobiles.

tjoff5• 9 years ago

Sweden. A text message is faster and infinitely more accessible for the recipient.

SimbaOnSteroids• 9 years ago

The question you're looking for is how old are you, for my generation(later mellenial) it's a minor faux paux to leave a voicemail instead of a text.

elchief• 9 years ago

I changed my message to say please don't leave me voicemail but they did anyways. So I got rid of it and I like not having it

semi-extrinsic2• 9 years ago

You can always set your voicemail number to something funny. I used to set it to a French ski resort automated weather report telephone - that's annoying and an expensive international call to boot, so people quickly stop trying (not that you'd notice if they didn't).

su3aseuo96• 9 years ago

It's like a computer dialog box. Just as users don't read dialog boxes, phone users don't listen to the message at all. They just wait until the beep and start talking. I used to have a home phone that had voice mail boxes and we had a message that said, "To leave a message for husband, press 1, to leave a message for wife press 2." It had a default mailbox if the user didn't press anything. 95% of calls went to the default mailbox. People are idiots.

mavhc• 9 years ago

I disabled my voicemail as I'm charged to call it, but not to receive calls normally

dboreham• 9 years ago

Hmm. I worked on voice mail systems in the 90s (by then they were already old and encrusted with feature bloat). This is actually how they work: like email or any other message delivery system. Messages are sent and delivered into mailboxes. The typical "ring-no-answer -> automated attendant" workflow that everyone sees as the face of VM is in fact an application layered on to of the base messaging service. If you know how (and it hasn't been administratively disabled) you can log in, compose a message and give it a recipient list just like email. Yoh can even schedule delayed delivery, ask for read receipt and on and on.

jumpkickhit• 9 years ago

I should be able to charge people to leave a voice mail.

Not much, say 25 cents or around there. If it's important that's a negligible cost.

praptak• 9 years ago

I never got the appeal of having voice mail in the first place. Send me a text, call again or wait for me to call back.

bsamuels• 9 years ago

i dont answer phone calls from numbers i dont recognize because 90% of the calls i receive are telemarketing

if they dont leave a voicemail i assume it's not important enough for a phone call

zzzeek• 9 years ago

My phone already alerts me to "spam" phone numbers for incoming calls, this will become just another spam control issue based on audio analysis / transcription of the message content. Regulations would be awesome but considering how poorly enforced even simple things like "do not call" are, well established spam control techniques probably where this will end up.

spc4763• 9 years ago

You might very well be using the software my company produced. I'm not sure how the database is constructed, but there is a query we make that returns the type of call, it's reputation (on a -4 to +4 scale---low score is bad), the category, the carrier network and line type, which we pass on to the phone. I suspect it might be partially created from complaints about calling numbers, or even carrier (one recent spammer call I received came from the "Onvoy" carrier, whoever they are).

dewiz2• 9 years ago

I disabled voicemail a long time ago, never going back. I educated my contacts to retry or send a text, worked well so far.

su3aseuo96• 9 years ago

So what happens when, for example, you're trying to get a home loan to buy a new house, and the loan officer is an older person who doesn't use texts? (This is something real that recently happened to me, and for which a phone and voicemail were indispensable.)

I find that while I can do what you suggest for friends and family, there are just enough situations where I can't do that, that I need to still have voicemail. Doctors offices that robocall to remind you of an appointment are another one. The occasional lawyer, or other professional who have a particular way of doing things. Getting rid of phone and/or voicemail just isn't a realistic option for a lot of people.

dewiz2• 9 years ago

I disagree, people have used phones without voicemail for decades, they know they can retry. And when I miss a call from an unknown number I can easily look it up if I'm expecting important calls. There are also apps that helps with that, showing who called you even when it's a new number. About robocalls from doctors and pharmacies etc I also manage those comms via email, I take care of telling doctors and pharmacies to give me an electronic prompt, most have a computerized system that does that anyway. There might be people who need voicemail, but I don't buy that it's so common, it's more about people being used to it and not knowing they can turn it off.

dmnd• 9 years ago

As if voicemail wasn't already in danger of being routinely disabled.

sillysaurus33• 9 years ago

Anyone else in a situation where you're receiving robocalls ten times a day? Hard to believe, but I can show screenshots as proof.

I just counted. It's four times per day, like clockwork. Then there are various other robocalls that come in every couple days. So sometimes it's 4 per day, sometimes it's up to 7.

It's mildly annoying, but is there any other option than to just ignore it or keep blocking the endless new numbers that pop up?

kaybe2• 9 years ago

Is getting a new number a bad option for you?

cynicalbastard• 9 years ago

robocalls are made by war dialers.

sillysaurus33• 9 years ago

Ehh, sentimental value. I've had it since I was 13 or so. Plus I occasionally get a random text from an old friend.

I've thought about it though. If I knew it'd fix the problem, I might do it. But the robocalls seem to scale up faster than new numbers. I guess it'd be a nice reprieve.

dentemple• 9 years ago

It never helps.

leejoramo• 9 years ago

I have had several friends and colleagues get new numbers and immediately be hounded by collection agencies looking for the old owner of the number. Some of these collection agencies also stared sending postal mail to their homes based on the linking this new number with their addresses.

bediger40002• 9 years ago

I get about 4 "Card Services" or "Google Marketing" or some such robocalls a day, too.

The Verizon customer service rep suggested "just blocking the number" after expressing shock and awe that robocalls happen, and he had never heard of such a thing!

I suggest at least leaving the robocall running until it hangs up. Any given organization has to have a finite number of outgoing lines, and IVR/VRU's, so keeping them occupied should be a priority for all of us. If you've got the time to fuck around with a Real Human, do that, too. They definitely have a large, but finite, supply of call center workers. Keeping them unhappy should be a priority for all of us. The faster someone quits out of despair, the more that they have to pay to train a new worker.

ziszis• 9 years ago

Most of the call spam blocking solutions suffer from needing to trust Caller ID. Spoofing caller ID is now trivial and used by spammers [1] There are some work arounds to this like "audio fingerprinting".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing

DaiPlusPlus2• 9 years ago

These orgs don't necessarily have a finite number of outbound lines - they'd be using SIP and just buy more channels from the myriad providers out there for a few bucks a month. You can also get "unlimited channels"-SIP trunk providers too - in which case you're limited only by the number of simultaneous virtual channels your Asterisk setup can handle.

So no, "keeping them busy" is not a viable solution.

pavel_lishin4• 9 years ago

I suggest at least leaving the robocall running until it hangs up.

It only lasts for maybe 15 seconds.

If you want to hurt them more, press 1 (or whatever) to talk to the operator, and string them along.

But the downside - if you care - is that the person working a job in some hellish call center probably gets dinged, performance wise, for spending 15 minutes on a go-nowhere call with you.

But on the gripping hand, you can't hurt the top without hurting everyone along the path - from the person on the phone, up to the call center manager, up to the call center owner, up to the actual business contracting through them.

joering2• 9 years ago

My experience tells me it varies by network. All my family runs on ATT, Verizon and TMobile.. and all get spam by robocalls. Meanwhile I have SimpleTalk (which is a rebrnd t-mobile so you get reception of tmobile network under silly name simpletalk), I got about 10 robocalls since I have this number circa 2011.

Also - certain area codes are hotter than others. While I have Cali number, I know many folks living in Alaska and never got robocalled.

ngoldbaum• 9 years ago

For a long time now I've received many many more robocalls than real calls. It makes me want to turn off the phone features of my phone.

mgbmtl2• 9 years ago

I did! You can do that with most providers. If they don't explicitly offer it, just tell them you want to switch to an tablet/iPad plan. I pay $15/month for a 3 GB data-only plan and $1/month for a VoIP number that routes SMS to email/app (voip.ms), for those 2 people I know who still use SMS.

city41• 9 years ago

Be careful about leaking your phone number online, such as in whois data or other places. I started an LLC a few years ago and my god the number of spam calls I got, it was absolutely ludicrous (I still get them to this day, although it's now on the order of 2 a month)

su3aseuo96• 9 years ago

Oh god, not just phone calls, but mail, too. And they make some weird connections. I once got a credit card offer that was addressed to me and a woman who's name I did not recognize. It took me a few minutes to realize that she and her husband ran the ISP I used. I was the business contact for my domain, but she was the technical contact since she was at the hosting company. Luckily my spouse is a very understanding person! She was like, "Why are you getting credit card offers with this other woman's name on them?"

thescribe2• 9 years ago

I've gone as far as reporting the numbers to my state AG, but it clearly hasn't stopped them. I get them constantly. I used to hang up right away but these days I try to keep the robot on the line as long as possible to make it less cost effective to call me.

Do we need the equivalent of Fail2Ban for phone numbers? Some app that allows you to flag calls, and past some threshold the whole network bans the number?

function_seven2• 9 years ago

As far as I know, they just spoof the originating number. This makes reporting the numbers useless, as well as any kind of blacklisting. Imagine if you could send spam emails from any arbitrary IP address or domain you wanted to. Blacklisting would be meaningless in that case.

Frondo• 9 years ago

If you're on Android, there's call-blocking apps that let you do various kinds of blacklist/whitelist call screening.

For now, I block spammy numbers and unknown/private numbers. If it gets bad, I'll move to a whitelist (only people on my contact list ring through).

It's galling beyond belief that any political party anywhere would let the abuse of the phone system become a free speech issue. These people are actively making the world worse. (And what's worse is how cheaply they're bought off. Come on, you scummy congresspeople, are you really worth so little?)

su3aseuo96• 9 years ago

These exist for most phones and provider. However, having read the terms of service on them, they pretty much collect a bunch of data about you for marketing purposes, so it kind of defeats the point. They will, for example, collect the numbers of everyone who calls you. (They have to be able to do that in order to look up and block calls from known spammers.) No thanks.

woodruffw• 9 years ago

I used to get one or two robocalls a month, but over the past 2-3 months I've been getting multiple nearly every single day.

What's really interesting is that I'm seeing a lot of spoofed numbers from my same area code, and even from the same branch (i.e., the next four digits). My guess is that the robocallers have found that people are more likely to pick up when the call might be coming from next door.

chrsstrm2• 9 years ago

The spam call filter is arguably one of the best benefits of using a Google Voice number. My spam call and voicemail folder is full of SEO, payday loan, and other outright scam messages. Just activate the filter and you never see these calls unless you go into the spam interface on the Voice site. You can manually add a number to your spam block but most calls are auto-blocked against a list of known offenders.

plorkyeran• 9 years ago

Google Voice filters out most of the spam calls I get, but there's still one or so per day that make it through.

reustle3• 9 years ago

I use google voice (hangouts?) and get 3 to 6 robo voicemails a day. They are 2-5 seconds in length, and empty.

coding1233• 9 years ago

I'm at the point where I'm going to start telling places my Skype ID and let them figure out how to contact me. We don't need our phone numbers any more.

reustle3• 9 years ago

The problem is, we do. Telegram, LINE, 2fa on many sites, banks, they all want my phone number. They require it. I already use a google voice number, but that still doesn't solve it all (still getting tons of bot voicemails)

maxerickson• 9 years ago

I pick up and say "Please put this number on your do not call list", talking over them if necessary.

People doubt it, but this works. They don't actually want to waste resources on you if you are not a good lead. Even the scammers want to be efficient.

pavel_lishin4• 9 years ago

You actually get real people who are calling you, and not "if you're interested, press 1"?

mirimir3• 9 years ago

This is a funny routine: http://sfglobe.com/?id=18461

Also:

The Jolly Roger Telephone Co.
Tired of telemarketers? Now you can turn the tables on them with this clever bot.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/202664225/the-jolly-rog...

pmcjones• 9 years ago

nomorobo.com works well for me (with an AT&T U-verse VOIP line). You need to have the "simultaneous ring" feature, which most mobile phone carriers do not provide.

e40• 9 years ago

Yeah, me, too. And the calls are mostly from numbers near my number. Only once did I get repeated calls from the same number (until I blocked it). Very, very annoying.

gech• 9 years ago

They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.

There's no limit to how low pro-business thinking can go.

rhizome4• 9 years ago

There is no "low" in business thinking. Capital is amoral.

pbhjpbhj5• 9 years ago

True - for all businesses in which there is only capital involved and no people [or animals, or environmental concerns, or ...]. Capital may be amoral, but the people using it certainly are not.

s73ver6• 9 years ago

People aren't. And unless we have business robots, there are still people involved.

crooked-v• 9 years ago

The Republican National Committee, which is in favor of ringless voice mail, goes as far as to argue that prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail messages may be a violation of free speech.

Absurd. The right to free speech does not include forcing others to listen to you.

oneweekwonder• 9 years ago

The right to free speech does not include forcing others to listen to "it".

BenjiWiebe2• 9 years ago

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1357/

Also the mouse over text applies very well to this situation as well.

SpikeDad• 9 years ago

It does when you run it through the right wing filter. And when the FCC is run by the head cheerleader of right wing policies you can bet the filter is going to catch a lot more things.

jerf2• 9 years ago

This isn't right wing. This is just crony capitalism. Find the "right winger" of your choice and ask them what they think about this.

Part of the way the cronies keep us in line is to direct our fire at "the other wing", instead of at them. There is approximately nobody in this country going "Hooray, finally our right to be spammed by telemarketers on the phone that I pay for is being respected!"

bobcallme• 9 years ago

They are not forcing you to listen to anything. You can a) delete the message or b) change voicemail systems so this does not work. These problems can be mitigated from a technical perspective.

BenjiWiebe2• 9 years ago

You have to listen to the message to find out if it is something important...

derimagia2• 9 years ago

.. and why does that allow them to spam you? Just because you can avoid it by changing numbers? You could make that same argument for a restraining order -- "Oh you can just move, so why would we legally protect you?". Absurd.

jonknee• 9 years ago

change voicemail systems so this does not work

But if the GOP made prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail illegal you wouldn't be able to do that...

majormajor• 9 years ago

Regardless of if it does or not, what's the likely end result? Spam voicemails become the new email, filtered aggressively, and increasingly ignored over time in favor of less-spam-prone methods. They're asking for something pointlessly unsustainable that would be no different from any of the other high-noise/low-signal-ratio channels they already have.

Retric• 9 years ago

More likely IMO, is people just ignore / disable their voicemail in favor of text messages / email / etc in the short term.

Alternatively, carriers simply block voicemail for the first few seconds of a call which kills the perceived loophole. Because frankly this is an obvious feature that people will switch carriers for.

mirimir3• 9 years ago

How feasible is antispam for voicemail?

Something like:

in my address book => allow

no id or not in my address book => delete

clamprecht• 9 years ago

Anyone who's read one free speech case knows that commercial speech has less protection than, say, political speech.

pasbesoin• 9 years ago

It also doesn't including using a private commercial service that I am paying for.

The stench of hypocrisy is more than subtle, here.

As always, follow the money.

P.S. Here's what I expect from carriers, if this goes through: A clear, easy to use, and permanent switch to turn this off on my account. (Yes, government emergency situations -- genuine ones -- excepted.)

If this really is a "free market" or something arguably comperable -- their basis for arguing for the elimination of a whole bunch of regulation -- then someone should offer this "off switch" as a feature in response to the obvious demand for it.

If they don't? One more nail in the argument that they do not represent anything like a free market nor real competition.

philovivero• 9 years ago

How many nails do you need in that coffin? I don't even see a coffin anymore. I just see a bunch of nail heads in the shape of a coffin.

builtinbuffalo• 9 years ago

This is because the use the technology and it works well.

gumby• 9 years ago

A nail in the coffin for voice mail, which I hardly check at all anyway. Automatic transcription has made thee easier to ignore, but if the volume goes up I'll just disable voice mail completely.

I'm not sure anybody actually listens to their messages any more and so I rarely leave them. After all, if it's important, why would you call at all?

dredmorbius• 9 years ago

I see death of conventional telephony.

POTS is dow to <10% in many areas. Mobile is abysmal.

VOIP, voice chat, highly constrained accept policies.

amingilani• 9 years ago

How does this even work? How can you not ring the phone and have a voicemail?

0898• 9 years ago

I expected the article to cover this, but it doesn't. I suspect they call a number from two lines simultaneously, causing it to reach voicemail.

delinka2• 9 years ago

Permission from the carrier to dump an audio file directly into your voicemail box.

dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

If that's the mechanism and this takes off, there'll be a strong incentive for one carrier to offer spam-free voice mail and either steal all the customers or cause the entire industry to fall in line.

stefanpie• 9 years ago

Yea, I was expecting the article to be a technical explanation.

dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

There may be (depending on the mechanism used to acheive this) a good policy argument to be made that these shouldn't be governed by laws governing phone calls, but they are exactly the same arguments that would lead to the conclusion that they should be governed by laws concerning unsolicited commercial email.

kop316• 9 years ago

Seeing this and some of the other people who get spam calls (I get them too from time to time), I am wondering if they allow this legally, why not do something to make the effort of it not worth it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/

I am reminded of this, where the goal is to waste to telemarketers time as much as possible, and my thought is enough people used it, it would make spam calling not worth it.

I would gladly pay for a program in which I could load that up on my phone and have it distract/annoy them back.

Thoughts?

15155• 9 years ago

http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/

No affiliation.

RandomInteger42• 9 years ago

In a way, this is a huge relief. I never listen to voice mails, so not having to be bothered by my phone ringing for something unimportant saves me a bit of time and anxiety.

Now I just have to worry about people I know, phone interviews, and debt collectors (who seem to be harassing me less often via phone these days).

r00fus• 9 years ago

How about just disabling VM?

RandomInteger42• 9 years ago

Then I would get the call no? VM isn't the problem. The problem is the ringing.

thescribe2• 9 years ago

Perhaps a shrink-wrap style TOS in my voice mail message? By leaving a message you agree to pay a fee per ringless message?

su3aseuo96• 9 years ago

I have heard that this works legally, but that you have to be willing to take them to small claims court, and good luck getting them to actually pay when you win a judgement against them. (You'll have to hire someone else to actually collect the money from them, and that likely makes it not worth your time and/or money.)

MichaelBurge• 9 years ago

My first impression is that having the government regulate them is unnecessary, since you can block them on your phone(and phone providers can sell phones that block them by default). All you need is one company to sell a "telemarketer-resistant" phone with an automatically-synced blocklist and some other settings enabled by default.

Macha• 9 years ago

If they're using the approach described elsewhere in the thread, sounds like you can't.

cmurf• 9 years ago

I get maybe a dozen calls per week that become 2 second hangup voicemails. It's been going on for a few years. Mark the number spam in Google Voice, but I still get a voice mail notification on my phone for those numbers unless they're also blocked. But it's a different number every time, endless.

coding1233• 9 years ago

Marriots is a company that should probably be bombed into oblivion. I signed up for a free night at a hotel. Ever since, I have probably received 2000 calls over the years from them. I think it's not just them but affiliates and other scammy/scummy businesses. If anyone is out there, please please do not ever pay Marriots a single penny. They need to go under.

tlb• 9 years ago

When a particular company calls you, just ask to be put on their "do not call" list. Real organizations always seem to honor that list, and there are large fines from the FCC if they don't. (The robocallers described in the article are a different beast, who spoof numbers and pop up under a new identity as soon as they are shut down.)

coding1233• 9 years ago

One of the times I answered I told him to put me on the do-not-call list and the live person said: "FUCK YOUUUUUU" and hung up. My calls increased considerably after that day. Yes I have considered suing many times, but chicken out realizing how much work would be involved. Most of the calls don't ring anymore as I migrated to Google Voice and just turned on Do Not Disturb for everyone. I can read that it's telemarketing spam or someone that's real.

Regarding spoofing - 100% are spoofed now. In the last 6 months all of the spam calls I have in my GVoice inbox match the same first 6 digits of my phone number. The last 4 digits are random numbers.

jimhefferon• 9 years ago

Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.

What's the point of a death penalty if not for this?

bjacobel• 9 years ago

If you'd like to submit a comment on this to the FCC, the link is here:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings

The proceeding code is 02-278.

mirimir3• 9 years ago

OK, so if the spammer wants you to call back, they must leave a number. So say, if someone offered suitable SaaS, you could put that number on a list to be voicemail spammed. At one minute interval, from random numbers.

sgustard• 9 years ago

The weird thing is I get plenty of telemarketing calls now, but they almost never leave voicemail. I had assumed their whole business model was to get a live victim on the phone, not in leaving spam behind.

s73ver6• 9 years ago

This is pure evil, and I hope those doing it end up living under a bridge.

Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

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