[Hidden-tech] Ways to reduce junk phone calls?

Wed Sep 23 13:06:59 UTC 2020

For me, most of our business is in Western Mass or Southern Vermont, and 
any new customer that wants to reach me will leave a message. I'm 
diligent about adding any legit numbers into my phone so I'll get their 
calls in the future, but all others go to voice mail. Most messages I 
get are the tail end of a robo call, "...ant to be removed from our call 
list, please press 9." I just hit delete.

Also, Verizon now has a thing where, if you do accept calls from numbers 
not in your phone book, they will set the caller ID to "POTENTIAL SCAM" 
above the actual number, where the person's name would go, if that 
number appears to be a scammer to them. Easy to ignore, although the 
phone still rings.

Mik

---
Mik Muller, president
Montague WebWorks
239-R Main Street, Greenfield, MA
413-320-5336
http://MontagueWebWorks.com
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On 9/22/2020 6:55 PM, Shel Horowitz via Hidden-discuss wrote:
> Unfortunately, those of us who rely on new business sometimes coming 
> over the phone don't have that option. While 90% of those types of 
> calls are junk, the other 10% are legit. I have found that if there 
> are a lot of random numbers on the screen, it's usually junk. Also, I 
> don't think I've ever gotten a call from 339 area code that was legit. 
> But just today, I was phone-banking North Carolina for the democrats 
> and one of the numbers I was given was a 339. Also many of the junk 
> calls have names attached and look legit. I have actually experienced 
> multiple occurrences of not only someone I knew in the next town and 
> MY OWN NAME AND NUMBER showing on the ID of spam calls. Obviously, if 
> someone is pretending to be me, I don't answer. And some numbers 
> become familiar and I know I can ignore those.
>
> Shel Horowitz - "The Transformpreneur"
> ________________________________________________
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>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 2:52 PM ed--- via Hidden-discuss 
> <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net 
> <mailto:hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>> wrote:
>
>     I'm not sure how "creative" this is, but assuming you have
>     caller-ID on your
>     landline, you'll note that most robocalls have a phony phone
>     number; it's
>     generally a city or town, and the return phone number appears to
>     be valid
>     (i.e., the correct area code and telephone exchange). The giveaway
>     is that
>     the caller is identified as a city or town. Don't pick up your
>     phone for
>     these calls. The robodialer recognizes when it's reached a phone
>     answering
>     system, and doesn't leave a message. You'll still get the rings,
>     but not the
>     annoyance or distraction of actually interacting with an automaton
>     or human
>     who has been connected by same.
>
>     The VOIP suggestion below might work well, too, assuming you have
>     really
>     good Internet service (bandwidth).
>
>
>     Ed Bride
>
>
>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: Hidden-discuss <hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net
>     <mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net>> On
>     Behalf Of James Triplett via Hidden-discuss
>     Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2020 2:15 PM
>     To: Val Nelson <val at valnelson.com <mailto:val at valnelson.com>>
>     Cc: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>     <mailto:hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>
>     Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] Ways to reduce junk phone calls?
>
>     On (21/09/20 18:38), Val Nelson via Hidden-discuss wrote:
>     > Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2020 18:38:45 -0400
>     > From: Val Nelson via Hidden-discuss
>     > <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>     <mailto:hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>>
>     > To: Hidden-Tech Listserv <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>     <mailto:hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>>
>     > Subject: [Hidden-tech] Ways to reduce junk phone calls?
>     > Reply-To: Val Nelson <val at valnelson.com <mailto:val at valnelson.com>>
>     >
>     > Hi HT community,
>     > I'm increasingly bombarded with junk phone calls. Multiple a day.
>     > Especially in the last month.
>     >
>     > Any creative ideas to reduce that? They are all mostly on the same
>     > topic of selling business visibility online. Argh.
>     >
>
>     We've basically eliminated robocalls with the following:
>
>     1. Move (called porting) our "landline" number to a VOIP service,
>     such as
>     voip.ms <http://voip.ms> .
>     2. The VOIP service has an automated attendant function, which
>     answers the
>     phone
>        and says, "Marketing calls not accepted.  If you're human, press 3"
>     3, If, and only if, the caller presses '3', the automated
>     attendant "dials
>     out"
>        to a second secret number, which then rings our phone.
>
>     To my surprise it works perfectly, even human callers at call
>     centers don't
>     seem to be able to get past it.
>
>     The VOIP service (which we got originally to save money) costs
>     around $6 per
>     month per line.
>
>     cheers,
>     James
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