Why do these bastards phone you and then just hang up if you answer? I can't see what it gains anyone. I get 4 or 5 a day from numbers that caller display lists as either international, withheld, or numbers I don't recognise. Subscribing to the telephone preference service didn't help. What the f*ck are they trying to sell me? Tossers.
Because it's an auto-dialler, but when the call's connected there's nobody free in the call centre to take the call.
Try one of the websites like "whocallsme" or install a call blocker or ansaphone to filter incoming calls if it bothers you.
I have found that a "silent answer" is quite a good way to fox the autodialers that wait for a human on the line before handing it over to an operative for whatever the pressure sale de jour is.
See also the nuisance calls thread in uk.legal & uk.telecom
The government are going to protect us from phone spam - honest. (don't hold your breath)
Sounds like a robo dialler[1]. They have a bank of telesales bods to do the talking and a computer basically queues up the outgoing calls automatically. The intention being that when one is actually answered, it is put through to a sales droid. However if for whatever reason there is not one free at the time you answer, they just cut you off.
I find that if you pick up the phone quickly after it starts ringing then its more likely to mess up the system and their not be a free person to handle it.
The advantage to the call centre is less time wasted dialling and waiting for answers, so they keep their staff selling for longer. From their perspective there is no down side, since the only people they piss off are the few who get bounced due to lack of capacity, and their numbers can just go back into the queue for tomorrow!
[1] Their use is illegal in the UK, but obviously the perps are hidden under layers of VoIP etc can can be anywhere.
Silent answer is quite amusing if you don't mind tying up your line and you recognise their CLID as a persistent offender.
I suspect there are plenty run in the UK too. I can't see ICO doing anything other than Pontius Pilot hand wringing though despite the governments latest announcement to get tough on phone spammers.
Spam txts might at least get zapped soon:
I just posted about this in a different place.
Latest thing seems to be you get a few of these calls, then one from "Nancy" at British Telicol (sic) with the solution to them.
I suspect they're random auto dialler bots that log any number as soon as (if) they answer, along with the number of rings.
Numbers that answer within a specified number of rings can then be sold on to cold calling call centres.
So that numbers that answer within 5 rings will sell for a premium as compared with those that answer within 8 *
This works out a lot cheaper than having humans dialling random numbers in the off-chance that someone might answer.
IME most of them give up after between 8 and 10 rings, and so all calls lasting less than 12 are ignored.
It's the same principle as not clicking on links, so as to be "taken off" mailing lists etc.
michael adams
...
That one's well out of date. Clicking on links to take yourself off mailing lists from legitimate businesses who you've dealt with in the past is the right thing to do, and it works. But for other spam, I agree with you.
I don't think they are. I often wonder about them as well, usually they are around lunch time and late afternoon. I wondered if it was to see if anyone was home and so they could come around and burgle you.
What worries me about even the ones that just play messages is that surely nowadays, nobody on the planet with a phone would touch them with a long pole, similarly the long time delay ones that are obviously a foreign call centre who start by asking if they are talking to (mispronounced name here), and then say they are not selling anything, of course they are. The gap at the start is enough for me to put the phone down now. One in particular leaves a number on the exchange starting in 0203, but when you try to do a ringback it says, t this number does not exist. How can you send out a non existent number?
Brian
Well that is not designed very well then is it. Lets hope they get a connection charge. Brian
They may say they will protect us, but its really not that easy. IE unless you have a white list of numbers allowed to call you it cannot be at all easy to stop calls. In my view, all organisations inside the uk should be set up to send a number that is readable. None of this callers number witheld or from a network unable to pass numbers crap, then extend this internationally as well, its the only true way to sort out the fakes from the genuine. Brian
Like many things in life, number spoofing is a double edged sword.
My outgoing VoIP provider doesn't supply a number, that is quite common, but it does allow me to spoof my CLI. I choose to spoof my existing landline number.
Number spoofing is not evil per se.
Current 2 favourites for spam callers, if you get a sales droid.
Ask them who they are looking for , tell them you`ll get them , and put them on `hold`, some will wait upwards of 10 minutes on Radio 1 playing or silent hold , before getting dumped.
or answer unknown numbers with "GCHQ , your call is important to us"
Has an unsettling effect on script monkeys :-)
or
"Security Services. How did you get this number?"
I must try that on the next moron.
7726 has been around for a while. Chocolate teapot territory IMHO.
That thought had crossed my mind, but you live in hope...
ActionFraud were so inept that they were bouncing all the bulk UCE they were sent as "SPAM" having misconfigured their mail server.
Then they made it so tedious to report anything that noone bothers.
It is quite galling when there are publically available crowdsourced catalogues of the bad guys that the government fails to do anything about it. I guess the telemarketing folk have bought them off :(
"Hello, Morgue - you stab em we slab em"
It's enough for me to put the phone down as well but somehow I always miss the cradle. The ten sconds of telly tubbie at the other end saying "Hello", "Hello", is 10 seconds they aren't scamming someone else.
I have just had a call that the caller ID flagged as international and passed with this number: 01997978125, which is already the subject of numerous inquiries on whocallsme.com and similar.
Which was it? It can't be both. It either displayed as a UK number (area code is for the Strathpeffer exchange Northern Scotland) or it's just simply identified as "International".
It's amazing how most of those posting to whocallsme react to recieving such calls. The simple rule is not to mouth off once you've determined that the call is some sort of scammy cold calling telesales droid and just hang up ( a peremptory 'Goodbye' is optional).
If they've helpfully provided a number in the caller display, it gets added to the list of barred incoming numbers which neatly solves the problem of repeat call attempts becoming a nuisance (you simply don't hear the phone ring as it answers and sends NU tone back to the perpetrator).
With "International" calls, I just let it ring until the answering machine takes over. I've never ever had any such callers bother to leave a message, they usually hang up during the outgoing message. In fact I can only recall one such caller who actually waited for the beeeep before hanging up.
The only time I answer "number withheld" calls on the business line is during the working day. Unfortunately, some of the family are ex-directory so also appear as "number withheld" when calling the home line so I feel obliged to answer those calls as well but any that are from telesales droids are dealt with in short order and without unnecessary fuss. We get very few such calls on the home number on account of being registered with the TPS compared to the business line which can't be registered anyway.
The trick is to never offer them any glimmer of hope that they can engage your attention in any way. The briefer the dismissal, the less likely they are to consider you worth hassling any further. Calls that identify as "out of area" also get screened by the answer machine.
The incoming call barring seems to be effective since I can identify such calls in the 'missed calls' listing, calls we weren't even aware had been attempted thanks to that function of the Panasonic DECT phone system I have installed.
If you have a DECT phone, it's worth checking to see whether such a facility exists since it's a not uncommon feature with the later models.
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