Nomorobo for VoIP and such is free. I understand they have rolled out an app for smart phones on certain carriers and there’s a fee for the app. (There’s several similar apps for smart phones and the useful ones charge a fee.)
I signed up. I’ll try to remember to report back. Hopefully it won’t block things like prescription refills and the like.
Awww. I apparently use the one VOIP landline service not supported.
What is “VoIP and such”? What is the current acronym for people who have had the same land line for decades, plugging a thing that looks like a telephone into a wall jack? (Like mine.)
Since our last move, I keep getting a call from some charity. I answer the ring, “Hello,” and they ask, “Melisa?”
I may be getting old, but i don’t think I sound like a Melisa.
The first time, I told them they must have a wrong number, and they started on their heart-wrenching pitch.
Anyway, when I hear that now I just hang up, as charities are exempt from the Do Not Call List.
I also get a lot of those above-mentioned calls from “Microsoft” telling me i have a virus needing removal. As it is always from somebody with a strong Indian accent, I am tempted to string them along for a while, but that is unfair to the poor slob trying to make a buck.
I suppose at my age (89) I qualify as a vulnerable oldster, but I don’t send in those Publishers Clearing House envelopes that keep showing up almost daily. Or buy lottery tickets. As some comedian once said, “The odds of winning are about the same whether you buy a ticket or not.”
You’ve got to be kidding. “Stringing along” these fraudulent con men isn’t at all unfair. In fact, “stringing them up” wouldn’t be going too far. They are trying to misappropriate money, steal identities or ruin gullible peoples’ computers.
VOIP (voice over IP) means getting your telephone service over the internet. Do you have any internet streaming devices like Roku, Amazon Fire, etc? It’s sort of like that. With a streaming device, you plug the TV cable into the streaming device and you’re watching TV that came over the internet. With VOIP, you get a little box that you plug into the internet and you plug your phone into the VOIP box. Then your phone works pretty much like normal. You pick up the phone and get a dial tone, except now your call goes over the internet instead of that landline.
In some cases you can also plug the VOIP telephone cable into your wall outlet and then all the telephone outlets in your house will go through the VOIP (but there are a few steps you need to do.). You don’t need to do that, though. You can plug your telephone directly into the VOIP box and the telephone will work like normal.
The advantages to VOIP is typically that it costs much less than a landline and you get every telephone feature you could imagine. Caller id, dual ring, follow me, 911, etc. The disadvantages are that is more technologically dependent and may go out if the internet goes out, problems with the server, the VOIP box hangs, etc. But in most case it’s pretty reliable.
My daughter got a new cell phone. When she calls the house it doesn’t say Ivygirl is calling. It says some other person is calling.
I guess you are right. If I keep them occupied for a while, less chance they will reel in some poor sucker.
I used to have fun doing this with the Nigerian scam emails. They were so stupid they were funny. Anybody still get these?
Far be it from me to condone violence, but if certain individuals with the proper resources were to engage in a bit of ‘wet work’… Well, I wouldn’t shed any tears.
My favorite was the Jamaican scammer that called me and told me I had won some lottery. I just messed with him on the phone for fun till he hung up. Dude I’m sorry a Jamaican accent is so thick its almost impossible to hide. When I asked why he was calling me from Jamaica, he asked if I had heard of Jamaica, New York. I said yes but the phone doesn’t tell me the name of the city you are calling from it tells me the state, and in this case the country, he didn’t really have any good answer for this one.
POTS: Plain Old Telephone Service. Not very exciting, I know.
If you have a better than base POTS, you might be able to do Nomorobo. As noted, the key is being able to have your number also routed to Nomorobo’s. So that both will ring. A feature called “simultaneous ring”. Something that might be part of a higher level service package that could be thrown in with caller id and other goodies.
My VoIP provider, the aptly named VoIP.ms, has a wiki page and everything telling you how to set it up. Some cable companies are now promoting their Nomorobo friendliness to draw in [del]suckers[/del] customers for their overly expensive VoIP.
Well, I’ve yet to have Pfizer or McDonald’s call me up and claim to be someone they are not. You may think that all big business entities are somehow inherently immoral, but that’s not quite the same thing as having a guy from a third world country call on the phone and claim to be the IRS, telling you that you owe back taxes and have to pay them immediately with iTunes gift cards or face being arrested within the hour.
Nomorobo does not block “real” automated phone calls such as appointment reminders from doctors’ offices or snowstorm notifications from one’s town.
Their system isn’t 100% perfect but it’s made a tremendous difference in the quality of my life (I work from my home). If your telco is compatible, definitely sign up for Nomorobo!
It can, if someone has reported the number as a robocall.
And it will block “legitimate” calls from businesses sometimes. We had a lot of trouble last year with our washing machine - under a service contract with Sears. At the same time we were fighting with Sears to get that sorted out, another division of Sears was robocalling us almost daily exhorting us to renew the service contract. Nomorobo intercepted it each time.
I called it back a few times, which was how I knew who was calling. Several times I requested them to quit calling me, as - given the crappy service we were currently getting - we were not especially inclined to renew, thankyouverymuch.
They CONTINUED to call.
I finally reported 'em to the DNC list.
You’re wasting your time. Most calls are now automated and you will be talking to a computer. A dumb computer. A really dumb computer, but they do have “fuck you” programmed into their parsing vocabulary, I’ve discovered.
Worthless. They don’t look at the DNC list, they are immune to complaints, and Pakistan doesn’t prosecute for DNC violations.