OT: Inventive solutions to telephone spam?

Anyone got any inventive suggestions for dealing with telephone spam?

Of late, I've got several calls from some idiotic crew saying they've been instructed to ring people living in a council or ex-council house (it isn't and never has been); some f*cking recorded message extolling the delights of holidaying at Euro Disney; and 3-minute messages on the answerphone encouraging me to ring a premium rate number to enter a Sunday sweepstake in which everyone's a winner. Yeah, right. Needless-to-say, 1471ing produces a "number unknown".

I'm ex-directory and rarely give out my number so I don't know where they've got it from.

I've had a look of Ofcom's website but they seem like a toothless bunch. Apparently, spamming has to happen at least three times before they'll consider doing nothing (so if Ofcom presided over Nuremburg, you couldn't be charged with genocide unless you'd wiped out three distinct races --- or the same race three times?) and it's less serious to spam a "rugby club bar" than an "individual who is vulnerable as a result of their age" (in much the same way that it's less serious to sink a cleaver into the head of some brain-dead Ofcom moron than into the head of a decent upstanding citizen --- yeah, actually I can see that distinction now).

I looked at the Telephone Preference Service too but since they're a fully-funded front organisation of the direct marketing industry and their website's homepage contains the following bullsh*t...

"Before you apply however, you should be aware that registration may preclude you or your business from receiving information of value - thereby cutting you off from worthwhile business opportunities."

... I assume that handing them my number will mean they record the date when their parasitic members can legitimately bombard me with crap on the basis that my annual opt-out has expired.

I'd call my phone company except that Ofcom say it's nowt to do with them (no, it's probably *my* fault for having a phone) and, anyway, ntl's commitment to sense and decency can best be summarised by the following exchange I had with customer services after some drunken yob kicked in one of the junction boxes on a Saturday night:

ntl: We can't repair your phone line at the weekend, unless it's an emergency. me: What constitutes an emergency? ntl: If you were a minister of religion, for example, and you needed your phone because you might get an urgent call to give someone the last rites. me: But what happens if there's a gas explosion and I need to call the fire brigade to pull me from the wreckage of my home? ntl: That wouldn't constitute an emergency. me: Let me get this straight. You'd fix the phone line so that some superstitious paedophile could come round and mouth platitudes over my slowly cooling corpse but you wouldn't fix it so that the Fire Brigade could save my life before that became necessary? ntl: Well, we have to respect people's religion, don't we.

And while we're on the subject of spam, since throwing the junkmail from American Express and RBS Advanta in the bin every other week for the last ten years has not taught these chumps that I don't want their credit card, could I perhaps suggest to them that, in future, I will arrange for a waste-paper merchant to send a skip truck for each mailing and bill them for the cost rather than burdening the council's recycling service and loading the expense on to council tax payers? Didn't the last Tory government introduce a legal principle that the "polluter pays"?

Reply to
mike
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I registered with TPS a few years ago because I was getting lots of unwanted spam calls. Since then I get almost zero unwanted calls..

Recommended :-)

Reply to
Troy

You assume wrong! It might sound like bullsh*t, but if you register it works - and AFAIK it doesn't expire after a year...

I had a marketing call recently; when I asked where they'd got my number from because it's listed by the TPS they apologised and hung up immediately. I actually recieved a letter of apology a few days later!

Oh, and if anyone's interested the MPS works just as well...

Dave

Reply to
Dave

get any cold calling now.

immediately.

I've had a similar experience. I only once had a repeat call from the same company, I sent details to TPS and they dealt with it.

I can't recommend it highly enough. I intend registering for the fax service since that's the latest irritation.

If only there were such an effective service for internet spam ...

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

In message , mike wrote

I have a two methods. I've got caller display enabled on my line and have programmed a 'white list' into the display unit to identify the majority of calls that I want to respond to

I let the answerphone pick-up all other messages. The spammer _usually_ hangs up immediately on getting the recorded outgoing message.

This one is extremely annoying as the recorded message is repeated over and over until the time-out on the answerphone. (thinks: I must reduce the default time for incoming messages). For me this type of advertising is counter productive - I now regard Disney as a crap organisation and I would never use one of their resorts.

I had one recently where I was informed (via an automated message) that I had won one of the major prizes. The prizes: a 42 inch TV, a car, a cruise, £6000, or a DVD player. I guess that someone must regard the player as a major prize but I've seen them stacked high at boots sales - new for £18. To claim just ring extension 4444 (on a number withheld phone call) or the automated claim line at £1.50 a minute with an _average_ call time of 6 minutes. I assume that the average is calculated from thousands of calls that last less than a minute before people realise they are being conned and the £50 calls where someone manages to win the £18 DVD player.

My caller display indicates that many of the recent spam calls are international so I doubt if a British regulator can do anything at all.

It now common practice for my circle of friends to collect the reply paid envelopes that come with this shit and stuff them with advertising from other companies - and then post them back.

And this government backed down on taxing households for more than one refuse sack per week because they realised that the majority of rubbish that gets dumped in landfill each week is the mail spam that gets delivered to us. My local council excludes 'junk mail' from the recycling schemes it's operating.

Reply to
Alan

following exchange I had with customer services after some drunken yob

A small cost on your phone bill will get you a "Number Withheld" barring scheme that most, if not all, providers have. It works well here from Telewest.

Reply to
BigWallop

In article , Mary Fisher writes

Same experience here also, its the only way to go (apart from getting rid of the phone!)

Reply to
David

I'll second that. Been registered for 7 years now and I reckon to get two or three per *year* now.

I always ask if the company is party to the Telephone Preference Service, they invariably hang up.

Reply to
wanderer
O

I will add, been registered about 4 months and was getting lots of silent phone calls, none since the beginning of May.

I am pleased !!

Dave

Reply to
Dave Stanton

Indeed, and when we had an NTL phone line it was free. It's a ripoff 10 squid a quarter with BT! Grr...

Still at least the BT line actually works... :) :)

Lee

Reply to
Lee

TPS costs nothing and is nothing to do with BT.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

I've been registered with TPS and MPS for a while now but still get annoying calls esp in the wee small hours. To be frank I've got fed up with filling in TPS complaint forms ... now I just give the spammers verbal abuse.

Reply to
BillV

That would stop both my children phoning me from their work places where call id is withheld...

Reply to
BillV

That may have some nasty side effects. Like a hospital where your SO or child is laying prostrate after loosing an argument with a bus not being able to get through...

The hospital don't want to release the number so the line doesn't get clogged up by plonkers ringing in on how to deal with the common cold.

Having said that the only calls that we regulary get as "withheld" are from a company calling to offer me work, the local hospital and surgery present their public number.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

We are registered with them as well. I would also recommend it, but we found that whilst it reduced the calls significantly, it didn't stop them completely. We wanted a total ban on "withheld numbers" ;)

We also use CallerID to tell the phone to silent ring for numbers which aren't in it's memory, the answer phone gets those.

Lee

Reply to
Lee

I'll third it. Works a treat.

Reply to
Huge

I don't see why people/companies/agencies can't use presentation numbers, if anonymity is so important.

Lee

Reply to
Lee

Trouble is they have to be geographic numbers connected with the outbound trunk. Organisations prefer 0870, 0845 etc. due to the revenue/flexibility benefits.

Reply to
Toby

A significant number are Unavailable, which is not blocked by anonymous call rejection.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

I reckon that if we miss withheld numbers and they're important they'll ring us back. No cost to us.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

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