Live data from Hacker News

Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

nytimes.com

31–40 of 227 posts

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#32
post #23
post #10

People still use voice mail? I don't believe I've encountered one in at least a decade...

I changed my message to say please don't leave me voicemail but they did anyways. So I got rid of it and I like not having it

You can always set your voicemail number to something funny. I used to set it to a French ski resort automated weather report telephone - that's annoying and an expensive international call to boot, so people quickly stop trying (not that you'd notice if they didn't).

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#33
My phone already alerts me to "spam" phone numbers for incoming calls, this will become just another spam control issue based on audio analysis / transcription of the message content. Regulations would be awesome but considering how poorly enforced even simple things like "do not call" are, well established spam control techniques probably where this will end up.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#34
post #18

The article doesn't describe how the technology works. Due to the slow speed (100 voicemail/min) its likely what they are doing is initiating a call far enough for the phone system to busy out your phone, then very quickly placing a second call that the phone system sends straight to voicemail as your phone is busy. Once this call starts to hit voicemail, the original call is dropped. I doubt phone companies let peop…

If that is how it works, I can't see how they'll manage to argue these aren't calls in a court.

Even with the carrier/country specific techniques everyone is mentioning, they all involve calling, so they should fall under existing law too.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating. It never occurred to me until now that there might be a window in the call process between "line is flagged as busy" and "phone rings." I assume we're talking about a very narrow window here, right? How narrow? Is it something that has always existed, or something that crept in because of the transition from phone-as-mechanical-device to phone-as-software?

As long as it's a fairly consistently timed window (and I assume it is), it doesn't matter if it's just a few milliseconds. On a related note, I'm still surprised to find that telephone operators haven't fixed the scenario "someone calls me and I just miss it, I call them back while they're trying to call me for the second time, and we both get a busy signal". As a naive outsider, seems like it wouldn't take much to…

>As a naive outsider, seems like it wouldn't take much to just connect those two calls.

Who would you charge for the call?

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#36
post #17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where abouts are you? Here in AU, it seems everyone uses voicemail for their mobiles.

Sweden. A text message is faster and infinitely more accessible for the recipient.

Heck, a voice message over the chat client of their choice is faster, infinitely more accessible, and still voice.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#38

The article doesn't describe how the technology works. Due to the slow speed (100 voicemail/min) its likely what they are doing is initiating a call far enough for the phone system to busy out your phone, then very quickly placing a second call that the phone system sends straight to voicemail as your phone is busy. Once this call starts to hit voicemail, the original call is dropped. I doubt phone companies let peop…

But the first call would ring then.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#39
post #31

I never got the appeal of having voice mail in the first place. Send me a text, call again or wait for me to call back.

i dont answer phone calls from numbers i dont recognize because 90% of the calls i receive are telemarketing

if they dont leave a voicemail i assume it's not important enough for a phone call

Post reply on HN