My weekend was ruined by a massive onslaught of obscene prank calls. My life in general would also be slightly improved if I could block the (less-frequent, but still annoyingly intrusive) calls from telemarketers and scammers.
There appear to be two broad categories of anonymous calls here in the UK:
[ul]
[li]Those for which the caller explicitly witheld their CLI (these are identified as ‘number witheld’)[/li][li]Those for which the telephone network delivering the call does not know the origin (these are identified as ‘number unknown’).[/li][/ul]
I can subscribe to a paid-for service to block the first category, but not the second (and this is generally true of other providers in the UK). The ‘number unknown’ calls would still come through and I would have to reject or ignore them on a per-call basis, or install a local call blocking unit.
I’m looking for a cheap, elegant solution - at the moment, this appears to be:
[ul]
[li]Subscribe to CLI display[/li][li]Buy and install a local call blocker[/li][/ul]
But I’m wondering if any of the DECT phones on the market now include blocking of incoming calls (and specifically, blocking unknown and number-witheld calls, rather than any specific calling number)
Alternatively, the ability to assign a silent ringtone to unknown and number-witheld calls would be an acceptable alternative.
Does such a phone exist?
I did some research in the real world and it looks as though the latest range of Panasonic cordless phones support incoming call blocking, but it’s not clear whether they require an explicit number as the block target, or if they can block witheld number or unknown number calls as general categories. Anyone?
Update (in case someone else is also asking themselves these questions):
I contacted Panasonic and they said that their incoming call blocking feature only works with explicitly identified callers and can’t be assigned to categories of call such as ‘number withheld’.
Meanwhile, I discovered that some of the DECT phones in the Siemens Gigaset range have a feature called ‘anonymous call silencing’ - which seems to do exactly that - from the point of view of the caller (i.e. scammer, hoaxer, telemarketer), the phone rings and rings, and we don’t answer. From our point of view, the phone silently displays a light in case we’re interested to know that someone is impotently trying to contact us - this seems ideal - it wastes the maximum amount of their time, and none of mine.
unfortunately, the computer that makes the calls doesn’t mind. ONly when you pick up is the call connected to a human.
I know about auto diallers, however, most of the nuisance calls I have been receiving lately have been handraulic ones. (In particular an idiotic fonejacker-wannabee teenager who called me more than 100 times on the weekend before last)
(ETA: with second place being taken by inept foreign scanners trying to persuade me to install malware)