call blocker device suggestions?

[Paul]

Interesting. I didn't know there were variations.

"CALLER ID DELIVERY TYPE

Caller ID signaling is sent by the local phone company's central office in either of 4 different electronic formats.

Bellcore 202 signaling is sent between the first and second ring in the countries such as the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia and others.

Caller ID is sent *before* the first ring by British Telecom (BT) in the United Kingdom. Similarly, Caller ID is sent before the first ring or after a very short ring burst using ETSI signaling that is prevalent in eastern and northern Europe.

In countries or regions where older central office equipment is used Caller ID is delivered via DTMF (touch-tones). Contact CallerID.com for a different version of this unit if Caller ID is delivered via DTMF signaling. "

So apparently there is a workable scheme, where the CallerID is delivered before the ringing voltage.

It's possible the first presentation of Ringing Voltage, could "open" the CallerID module to listening to the line. If the CallerID is listening all the time, if there is a noise burst on the line, you might get random displays appearing on the LCD display of your CallerID box. The error checking may not be fancy enough, to stop all error-filled packets.

Still, if BT can do it, why can't we ? :-) It would be interesting to see if they patented their idea :-)

Paul

[bill ashford]

Maybe I'll still be in luck then. Although I have the phone line split

3 ways, one for two phones and the last for my DSL/ phone combo, only one phone combination has ringers turned on, and that's the Uniden base and cordless phones. So hopefully if the device is serial and first in line there, no ringing of the phones unless the number is ok.... or so I hope.

If it doesn't, then I will have to return it and go with the Teleblocker. That one doesn't need caller ID, but everyone calling has to enter a 1 or 3, but they get right through if so. I would have gone with this one first, but no longer manufactured and I didn't want to chance it.

Thanks again for your help here. I expect the device will be arriving today.

Bill

[Robert Baer]

BUT NoMoRobo is un-available and thus useless if you ain't gottza mobile phone. I gots a land line to protect...i do not give a sh*t about a stupid mobile line..

[HerHusband]

ZERO per month? Who is your VOIP provider? That doesn't seem like a sustainable business model unless they are making money from you in other ways.

My first VOIP provider charged less, but they ended up going out of business after the first year or two.

These days a lot of folks drop land lines entirely and just rely on their cell phones. That's not an option for us since we can't get a decent cell signal here at home.

VOIP providers are required to have e911 service which should give emergency responders your address just like the old wired land lines.

Of course, if my internet goes down for any reason, I lose my phone service too. My Comcast cable connection rarely goes down, but when the power goes out my modem and phone adapters quit working. I do have them all on a UPS backup power supply which keeps everything running for an hour or so. That covers the vast majority of outages. Worst case we have our cell phones for emergency backups too, assuming we can find a signal.

Thankfully, emergency calls are extremely rare. I have never needed to call

911 since I have had VOIP service. For that matter, I don't think I have EVER called 911. I certainly wouldn't avoid switching to VOIP for that extremely rare emergency.

Anthony Watson

[Ken Blake]

Sorry, that is not correct.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message , Paul writes: {}

{} As opposed to the LC display, I presume ... (-:

[trader_4]

He said zero a month and "something like 2.5 or 3 cents a minute". That isn't free. 500 minutes of usage, which isn't hard to do on a home phone line, would be $12 to $15 a month. At 1000 minutes, you're at $25 to $30 a month. There are many VOIP providers that are a lot less than that, ~$3 a month, The very popular and well known MajicJack being one example. I have Ooma, which is technically free, but I do have to pay taxes and fees that run $3.75 a month.

I don't exactly understand how these low cost providers do it at the low prices either. But companies like MJ have been doing it for a long time now and they are still around.

The operative word there is "should". With no way to test it, you won't know until you need to use it.

[Gordon Shumway]

You should be better educated on a topic before you propagate incorrect information. Nomorobo definitely DOES work on land lines, period.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per HerHusband:

CallCentric.com.

They make their money from me in the per-minute charge that I pay.

They offer monthly plans too... but I elected pre-paid per-minute with automated refreshes against my credit card.

I'm no VOIP connoisseur, but based on several years experience with them, I have to give CallCentric five stars.

[HerHusband]

Oh, OK, I missed the per-minute part of your post.

My service through 1-VOIP is monthly and includes 500 long distance minutes. I very rarely make phone calls, so we probably use less than 50 per month.

But the extra filtering services, additional phone numbers, etc. are worth the small extra cost to me.

It looks like a good price if it meets your needs.

Anthony Watson

[Paul]

"you might get random information appearing on the liquid crystal display of your CallerID box"

Paul

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Sorry, I was just teasing. LCD display, along with PIN number and HIV virus, are probably the commonest forms of PNS syndrome. In the case of LCD, it's probably because its predecessor, the LED display, _wasn't_ tautological (combined with the feeling lots of people have that abbreviations with only two letters are unsettling).

[Charlie]

Caller ID is almost useless in my area. Turns out that the telemarketers are using bogus unassigned local (in area) numbers more and more frequently. Blocking specific out of area area codes still works for some of the calls. I swear that the telemarketers are using the do not call list as a data base to call anyway. To add insult, the calls, when answered, may transfer to another number that is also hidden, or an overseas answering center.

[Tough Guy no. 1265]

On Sun, 29 Mar 2015 13:12:53 +0100, bill ashford wrote= :

I stopped using my landline for this reason. I use my mobile for everyt= hing. I have a =A35 a month fee which gives me 240 free minutes to mobi= les and landlines, which my landline didn't. It seems salesmen are less= likely to call mobiles as it costs them more, or they're not in the pho= nebook.

-- =

Do infants have as much fun in their infancy as adults do in adultery?

[Al Drake]

I have Vonage which I love. They have a feature called "selective call blocking" Vonage will by default block all calls that will not show their number. If you get a call where no message is left you can go to their site and see where the number came from. So many good features I don't think people even know about.

[Al Drake]

But you can only block 10 ex-wives. :(

[Jim Thompson]

I originally had JF Teck "Caller ID With Ring Controller". That device mutes the first ring while it reads the caller-ID, then allows or mutes any further rings if the offending number is found in memory. It has also has white-listing capability, which I never used.

The problem is that muting that first ring prevents the house phones from reading the caller-ID themselves.

You may remember a thread of mine from several years ago where I added my own box such that ring voltage was sent to the phones, but the phones had their ringers turned-off, thus "quietly" reading the caller-ID, my box then sent a ring signal on a separate pair to a local ringer.

Now I'm VOIP with Ooma, who subscribe to the Nomorobo listing, plus I personally block all 800 numbers... the silence is golden ;-)

For my cell phone I add spammers to my contact list, Zpam-1, etc., but set them to no-ring. It's rare that a spammer waits 9 rings to intrude on my voicemail >:-} ...Jim Thompson

[Ed Pawlowski]

I'd miss some important call that way. Sometimes the information does not show up, but it is a legitimate call that I want to take. Not sure why it happens, but it is sporadic. I ignored a call that said UNAVAILABLE but my wife picked it up. It was our son and his number usually show.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Many of the alleged calling numbers are bogus anyway. Some are not even in the US-phone-number format. Once I got a call allegedly from a number almost identical to my own (two digits off), so I called, and of course got some poor old guy who had no idea why his number had been used.

*Some* calls have been from the same number, but our "public" number is a Google-Voice number which forwards to the real number that we give out only to family and friends. Then we can block the number in Google Voice: callers get a "this number is not in service" message.

Got an Indian-accented call a while ago allegedly from Microsoft to tell me that my computer was spewing crap out across the internet. Since I was in a hurry (getting ready to go away on vacation), I didn't have time to string him along but simply told him he was a liar and scammer and to go away.

[thekmanrocks]

Percival P. Cassidy:

Those clowns'll tell you your TOILET'S ON FIRE and they're sending a certified plumber over to check things out, just to get private info from you.