Spam phone calls

[Huge]

That's because you need a "DNC" entry for them, too.

[Mary Fisher]

Yes. But people wanted more ... they always do :-(

LOL! I hope I remember that :-)

Mary

[Lurch]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 01:36:05 +0000 (UTC), "Dave" strung together this:

Nearly, I came in at around DOS 5. Used to use it more than Windows at the time.

[Lurch]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:25:32 +0000, John strung together this:

Then don't call from the mobile, leave it until your company has no customers left. Someone might do something about it then.

[Peter Twydell]

In message , Bob Eager writes

Not always. I still get calls showing up as International, usually with an Indian voice. They often sound baffled when I mention the TPS, but usually hang up.

However, the worst case was a few weeks ago, when a woman with an American accent called. This is the paraphrased conversation:

She: Hi, this is Jane Doe, did you get my e-mail? Me: Yes. I deleted it because I don't read spam. She: Have you noticed how your phone call costs are increasing? Me: I'm not interested. I'm moving house soon anyway. She: Well, would you like... Me: This number is registered with the Telephone Preference Service and you shouldn't be calling it. She: I'd like to tell you about our VOIP service. Me (irritated): I told you, this number is registered with the TPS and you are committing an offence by calling it. She: Well, we can save you... Me: (now very irritated): I told you, You are committing an offence! She: Well, our service... Me (incandescent): GO AWAY (or something similar). (hangs up)

Next time I'll try to stay calm long enough to get their details and fill in the on-line complaint form, not that it'll help much for international calls.

[Bob Eager]

That's not proof that it doesn't work. It provides a definite

*reduction* in the number of calls - the UK originated ones. At least, that's what I have observed, before and after registering for TPS.

[Bob Mannix]

This was also our experience. The calls more or less stopped. We did get one just recently (automated tape loop style).

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Both the companies I get most of my freelance work from have switchboards that give 'number withheld' So not much use to me blocking those. ;-)

[Peter Twydell]

In message , Bob Eager writes

I said "Not always", i.e. it's not 100% effective. I agree there has been a reduction in the number of calls, but they _are_ still coming in.

In fact I had one this afternoon, from somebody (his accent was English) trying the "free holiday" scam on me, but he hung up before I could do anything about it.

[Bob Eager]

I keep hearing about this, but I haven't had any of these yet, on any of my numbers.

OTOH, all my numbers are about to change (not moving, though!) so who knows what will happen...

[Coherers]

He hung up on *you*. How did you manage that?

[Mary Fisher]

It's not difficult. You start asking details, they twig and ... KAZAAM! ... they hang up!

[Andrew Gabriel]

Very common. Caller is fishing for data. When they've got what they want, the call will drop mid conversation. There's never any free holiday. The data can be used for identity theft, so you should never provide it. Many of the people doing this are _extremely_ good at convincing you they're genuine, but they aren't.

You can play games here -- firstly never supply any accurate data about yourself. Secondly, see if you can keep the conversation going with duff data for as long as possible _and_ be the party the hangs up mid sentence ;-)

[raden]

In message , Peter Twydell writes

Not Blue Mountain, or whatever they're called

So persistent, you know there's a catch without even listening to what they're trying to say

Worse still is they're as pleasant as Mormons

[Suz]

I agree - we have been getting loads just in the last few months - up to 4 a day, all recorded messages. Apparently they are coming from outside the UK and change base frequently so are almost impossible to ban. My mother, inspired by the tea ad (may be a NI one), leaves the phone off the hook for as long as possible to cause them maximum call charge.

Suz

[Andrew Gabriel]

I reported a couple too. I think I got a reply around 9 months later -- certainly long enough I'd completely forgotten about it. In both cases, the service provider had turned out to be untraceable by the telco -- they had supplied false details.

On "You and Yours" (radio 4) yesterday I think, it was stated than new rules are coming in. Telcos will have to retain the money for a month before handing it over to the service provider, so that there is some chance of payout in the event of fraudulent use. Telcos will also be responsibile for ensuring service providers are traceable, or will lose their allocations of premium rate numbers or will require ICSTIS pre-vetting of service providers (heard both options mentioned but can't recall in which context).

[Dave]

Well, that certainly pre dates the version of 3.1 that I cut my teeth on. I wonder what it could do, other than access the disk drive :-)

Dave

In DOStalgia mode

[Bob Eager]

Well, it's 2.0 rather than 2.10. So it can't handle the timing on the half height diskette drives that came with the PC Portable. But it can handle hard disks up to 32MB.

BTW, IBM provided it so that I could write one of the early books on DOS!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've just changed my main HD on my RPC. To a 37G one. And despite having more progs than I can ever use. ;-) it's now saying 5G used - including a load of audio files, about 4 CDs worth.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I've still got a GEC4160 minicomputer with 1Mb RAM which can run off a 6Mb hard disk (although I've actually got 8 hard disks on it and some are 20Mb). We used to run perhaps 10 people logged in working at once on it. This system also used to support 128 Prestel users, but with bigger disks attached.

A number of years ago, I wrote an instruction set emulator in C to emulate this machine. I use it as my personal benchmark of new CPU's. On an Athon64 running Solaris x86-64 bit, it emulates the GEC4160 20 times faster than the original machine runs natively. When I originally wrote it, I had a 120MHz Pentium and on that it runs just slightly slower than the original machine.

I think you're rather out of date...