OT: lots of unwanted phone calls

[hugh]

Similar experience with thorn-ericsson -so I scrapped the idea.

[Bob Eager]

It's still useful if you need to turn them off at some point.

[Andy Champ]

To their credit, Which? Magazine admitted their database had been hacked, and apologised. Others have claimed that the problem must have been at my end, as there was no way that their systems could have been compromised. Stand up and wave, Corus Hotels Group and Swinton Insurance!

Andy

[Alan]

In message , Andy Champ wrote

The masters of the daily spam email and the "please contact us about your insurance" answerphone messages - a year after last dealing with them.

[Gary]

I registered with the Telephone Preference Service, that is good . It won't stop international calls. BT won't help either. I just enjoy hanging up on them as they plead. " this is not a sales call"

[hugh]

I can do that anyway by rejecting sender.

[Bob Eager]

But if they've sold it on, that requires work for each sender.

[Stephen H]

There is a foolproof way of screening for such nuisance calls at no cost to yourself.

When the phone rings, leave it and count the number of rings.

If it rings for 7 rings and then stops, its an autodialler. So no call to answer. you will find that the 7th ring will stop part way through the ringing.

If 8 rings or more its a real person trying to get through to you and thus you can then pick up the handset.

One happy side effect is that you will find that if you follow this simple rule for a few months, the autodialler system will eventually mark your number as a "dead number" after so many attempts as no one is answering and the nuisance calls will eventually stop.

If you use an answering machine simply set it to answer the phone at the

8th ring if you are plagued by silent messages or long lists of recieved calls.

It so far has worked on PPI calls, calls on "claiming for that accident you had etc. etc

Stephen

[Stephen H]

I should also add that if you do answer such calls before the 7th ring, the autodialler marks your number as active and thus the company can sell on your number to other nuisance firms for money.

If you do not answer any calls till at the 8th ring or later, as mentioned previously, your number will get marked as a "dead number" and the company will know better than to sell on a list of "dead numbers" to other nuisance firms.

[Mark]

Same here.

Swinton Insurance are dreadful anyway and kept calling me asking me to buy insurance despite the fact I had already informed that I would never use them again (they screwed up my breakdown cover so, when I broke down, I found I wasn't covered).

[Mark]

Our answerphone answers before then (and we can't change it). I doubt that autodiallers would stop after 7 rings anyway.

I really doubt it.

[michael adams]

I've always been ex-directory on my home landline and since they became available I've always given a throwaway mobile number as my phone no where this has been unavoidable.

I generally agree about the eight rings business but -

AFAIAA this only applies to auto-diallers and bots. Not live cold callers.

On my home landline I've only ever had cold calls from auto-dialled bots which as you say usually ring eight times. A 1471 followed by a quick Google reveals these are mainly from PPI claims companies at present.

Surely where autodiallers are concerned if a phone rings then that is a live number.

Dead numbers would be where no phone rings.

But in addition where auto- diallers and bots are concerned why should anyone be bothered about buying and selling phone numbers ?

Surely the things are switched on, numbers are generated at random for specific countries during their waking hours, and the things run 24/7/365 or until everyone in the known universe has claimed back PPI twenty times over.

michael adams

...