On Sun, 19 Jun 2011 19:41:30 -0700, (Dave Platt)
wrote:

I ended up doing something vaguely similar, recently, when we switched
my wife's business line from a dedicated AT&T landline to a VoIP
connection.

Note that business to business telemarketing calls are exempt from the
do not call rules:
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/alt129-qa-telemarketers-sellers-about-dnc-provisions-tsr#exempt

We terminate the incoming VoIP call at a small home
server running Asterisk, which has some blacklisting capabilities
built in, and the potential for more via dialplan scripting.

Android cell phone blacklist software (with huge blacklist of numbers
included).
http://www.everycall.us/product/call-control-android/
Same with OOma VoIP:
http://ooma.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/194/~/personal-and-community-blacklists

My current recipe:

(1) Any blacklisted number (the prolific "ADA" phonespammer being the
lead among them) - the call is rejected with a "congestion"
response. Phone never rings - from the telco's point of view the
call is never answered, and the caller hears a fast-busy.

[2] Calls which provide caller-ID, from any of the area codes near
ours (most of my wife's clients) or a couple of distant cities...
rings the business phone / answering machine immediately.

[3] All others - answer, robo-voice "Please wait to be connected",
wait 10 seconds, ring the business phone if the call is still alive.

Rule (3) seems to deter most sales-slime... they hang up rather than
wait.

Nice. That should work. The basic idea is if unidentified, to waste
their time. Since telemarketers don't like to sit on hold, they just
leave. However, they often come back. I was just hanging up on one
idiot caller, who would just wait about 30 minutes, and call again. He
eventually went away when I asked for the name of his telemarketing
organization.

On a customers system, I plagiarized a script I found on the net, that
was designed to irritate telemarketers.
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+AEL+Telemarketer+Torture
It was fun for a while, until a very important caller got stuck with
it.

I later had it making Strowger switch sounds before ringing.
http://www.seg.co.uk/telecomm/step1.wav
Those with a clue thought it was cute. Those too young to remember a
step CO, were confused.

I've also got a couple of three-digit codes programmed in, to add the
most recent caller to the blacklist, or remove if in error.

Also nice. List management is not fun.

The total number of nuisance calls she has to deal with is down by
around 90% since the old land-line days.

I must be leading a charmed life. I get very few unsolicited calls on
any of my 4 assorted numbers. The few that I get are from exempt
organizations, my long lost college, a few clueless head hunters, and
desperate usenet readers needing help with their wireless. I guess
being mean and nasty pays.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558