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Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

nytimes.com

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Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#101

Post by tjoff »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #100
tjoff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, half of the point is that you don't want voice in the first place...

Voice is by far the least of the problems with voicemail. - If someone leaves you voicemail, you don't necessarily know that that happened. - Checking your voicemail is effortful. - Any random idiot can dial your phone number and leave you voicemail. - Voice is harder to process than text. Leaving someone a voice message doesn't help with #4, but that's a very minor issue. It solves all of the first three.

I wholeheartedly agree with all your points (and that is exactly what I meant with accessible). But it being voice is also a major issue of its own.

You can't check voice messages in many situations where you can read and possibly respond to a text. Also, if you listen to music/podcasts/whatever there will be an annoying interrupt.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#102

Post by pbhjpbhj »

moomin wrote: post #18
extrapickles wrote: post #4

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.

>I can't see how they'll manage to argue these aren't calls in a court //

I'd have thought on the basis that a telephone call involves two parties in simultaneous communication, the caller and callee, and that a voicemail box isn't a party when a message is being left; the recipient collecting the mail does so of their own volition; the communication is not a phone call, it's asynchronous.

Whether that will wash probably depends on caselaw that I have no knowledge of.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#103

Post by pbhjpbhj »

smacktoward wrote: post #22
abalashov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I can tell you that's exactly what they are doing.

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?

I hear the crackling of my PC speakers a few seconds before the call rings on my mobile; similarly on our landline the phone lights up and shows the caller ID a second or so before it rings.

Also if you ring a phone in the same room as you [we have kids!] you'll often find you get a ring tone long before the callee's phone rings.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#104

Post by Retric »

majormajor wrote: post #70
crooked-v wrote: post #51

> The Republican National Committee, which is in favor of ringless voice mail, goes as far as to argue that prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail messages may be a violation of free speech. Absurd. The right to free speech does not include forcing others to listen to you.

Regardless of if it does or not, what's the likely end result? Spam voicemails become the new email, filtered aggressively, and increasingly ignored over time in favor of less-spam-prone methods. They're asking for something pointlessly unsustainable that would be no different from any of the other high-noise/low-signal-ratio channels they already have.

More likely IMO, is people just ignore / disable their voicemail in favor of text messages / email / etc in the short term.

Alternatively, carriers simply block voicemail for the first few seconds of a call which kills the perceived loophole. Because frankly this is an obvious feature that people will switch carriers for.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#105

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rhizome wrote: post #61
gech wrote: post #50

>They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing. There's no limit to how low pro-business thinking can go.

There is no "low" in business thinking. Capital is amoral.

True - for all businesses in which there is only capital involved and no people [or animals, or environmental concerns, or ...]. Capital may be amoral, but the people using it certainly are not.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#106

Post by function_seven »

thescribe wrote: post #89
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #46

Anyone else in a situation where you're receiving robocalls ten times a day? Hard to believe, but I can show screenshots as proof. I just counted. It's four times per day, like clockwork. Then there are various other robocalls that come in every couple days. So sometimes it's 4 per day, sometimes it's up to 7. It's mildly annoying, but is there any other option than to just ignore it or keep blocking the endless new…

I've gone as far as reporting the numbers to my state AG, but it clearly hasn't stopped them. I get them constantly. I used to hang up right away but these days I try to keep the robot on the line as long as possible to make it less cost effective to call me. Do we need the equivalent of Fail2Ban for phone numbers? Some app that allows you to flag calls, and past some threshold the whole network bans the number?

As far as I know, they just spoof the originating number. This makes reporting the numbers useless, as well as any kind of blacklisting. Imagine if you could send spam emails from any arbitrary IP address or domain you wanted to. Blacklisting would be meaningless in that case.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#107

Post by dqv »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #97
yusyusyus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way of doing this is looking at LRN database and hitting the voicemail access numbers for the carrier. Often times the pilot number will let you dial a mailbox directly.

LRM database? Could you please elaborate?

LRN database is kind of like the DNS of telephony. Since local numbers can be on any switch, LRN tells everyone which switch manages the number.

See: Location Routing Number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_Routing_Number

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#108

Post by 15155 »

kop316 wrote: post #72

Seeing this and some of the other people who get spam calls (I get them too from time to time), I am wondering if they allow this legally, why not do something to make the effort of it not worth it? https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ I am reminded of this, where the goal is to waste to telemarketers time as much as possible, and my thought is enough people used it, it would make spam calling not worth it. I would gla…

http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/

No affiliation.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#109

Post by khedoros1 »

mgbmtl wrote: post #83
ngoldbaum wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time now I've received many many more robocalls than real calls. It makes me want to turn off the phone features of my phone.

I did! You can do that with most providers. If they don't explicitly offer it, just tell them you want to switch to an tablet/iPad plan. I pay $15/month for a 3 GB data-only plan and $1/month for a VoIP number that routes SMS to email/app (voip.ms), for those 2 people I know who still use SMS.

> for those 2 people I know who still use SMS.

Interesting. I think I use SMS for more people than every other phone-based method of contact put together.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#110

Post by thaumasiotes »

tjoff wrote: post #101
thaumasiotes wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice is by far the least of the problems with voicemail. - If someone leaves you voicemail, you don't necessarily know that that happened. - Checking your voicemail is effortful. - Any random idiot can dial your phone number and leave you voicemail. - Voice is harder to process than text. Leaving someone a voice message doesn't help with #4, but that's a very minor issue. It solves all of the first three.

I wholeheartedly agree with all your points (and that is exactly what I meant with accessible). But it being voice is also a major issue of its own. You can't check voice messages in many situations where you can read and possibly respond to a text. Also, if you listen to music/podcasts/whatever there will be an annoying interrupt.

I get an interrupt when I receive text messages too. I want it; it lets me know that someone sent me a message.
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