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Anything you can do to waste the time and annoy telemarketers the better. Even if it's just letting it ring instead of sending the unwanted call to voicemail, t

Anything you can do to waste the time and annoy telemarketers the better. Even if it's just letting it ring instead of sending the unwanted call to voicemail, those seconds of letting it ring are seconds not being spent to scam someone else. Telemarketers and spam are a problem with an easy solution, but the money to the phone company and everyone in between apparently is just too good to give up.

amelius 3y ago
"Please stand by while I get my credit card information ..." (leaves phone off the hook)
squarefoot 3y ago
> Even if it's just letting it ring instead of sending the unwanted call to voicemail It doesn't work like that. They have let's say 10 operators and a dialer that calls say 25 numbers from a ring buffer of say 10000 numbers; the first 10 to answer within x rings are diverted to the available operators, and remaining numbers are pushed back on the list tail, then when operators become available, other groups of numbers are called and diverted to them, and again those who don't answer are pushed back in the list. If you don't answer, they'll lose only a few seconds max. The best way to fight this crap is to have them actually waste their time, so that whoever is paying those operators will lose money and get nothing in return. Of course, AI will render this completely useless since they won't have anymore real people to pay, however I would anyway keep wasting their time, if not because that would keep one of their exit phone lines busy, which means one less call to a potential victim.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  I used to just pick up and go silent and mute. Then I realized they have a counter technique. When they hear hello, they have someone pick up. I’m moving to hello… (go mute)
  - gaius_baltar 3y ago
    The timings between the events (telemarketer calls, victim answer, telemarketer plays automated random greeting, victim replies, telemarketer transfers call to human operator, etc.) can be used for an effective blocking. Like a more advanced Lenny, play an audio captcha that an human call would hear but that will also get lost to a telemarketer and, when call arrives to their operator, the victim's system is already playing random funny stuff to burn up their time.

amelius 3y ago

"Please stand by while I get my credit card information ..." (leaves phone off the hook)

squarefoot 3y ago

> Even if it's just letting it ring instead of sending the unwanted call to voicemail It doesn't work like that. They have let's say 10 operators and a dialer that calls say 25 numbers from a ring buffer of say 10000 numbers; the first 10 to answer within x rings are diverted to the available operators, and remaining numbers are pushed back on the list tail, then when operators become available, other groups of numbers are called and diverted to them, and again those who don't answer are pushed back in the list. If you don't answer, they'll lose only a few seconds max. The best way to fight this crap is to have them actually waste their time, so that whoever is paying those operators will lose money and get nothing in return. Of course, AI will render this completely useless since they won't have anymore real people to pay, however I would anyway keep wasting their time, if not because that would keep one of their exit phone lines busy, which means one less call to a potential victim.

nashashmi 3y ago
I used to just pick up and go silent and mute. Then I realized they have a counter technique. When they hear hello, they have someone pick up. I’m moving to hello… (go mute)
- gaius_baltar 3y ago
  The timings between the events (telemarketer calls, victim answer, telemarketer plays automated random greeting, victim replies, telemarketer transfers call to human operator, etc.) can be used for an effective blocking. Like a more advanced Lenny, play an audio captcha that an human call would hear but that will also get lost to a telemarketer and, when call arrives to their operator, the victim's system is already playing random funny stuff to burn up their time.