6 to 8 times a day my landline phone rings. It’s caller ID’ed as “Support Int” and the number calling is 731-300-9221. There is never a voice (live or recorded) on the other end. Calling the number gets a busy signal.
What is this? How do I stop it?
its a either faked number or a b cell phone for telemarketers
Look up caller ID spoofing, and realize that you can never fully escape telemarketers.
Sorry.
:mad::mad:
Who is your phone provider? Almost everyone offers some sort of number blocking. At least, cell and VOIP providers do.
There is often an option to block a number on the phone. On my Windows Phone you select the number, press and hold, and a menu appears and one of the options is to block the number.
Yeah… but this is a landline.
As said above. Caller ID is 100% meaningless; it’s just 10 random digits chosen by the crooks who’re calling you.
Call the customer service number on your telephone bill and ask them what they can do to make it stop. Depending on the details your landline service may have a blocking feature they can apply to that caller ID.
Which will work perfectly until the actual caller decides to start using a different random 10 digits. But since you keep seeing the same 10 digits, it might be enough to block that one set. Then they’ll leave you alone and bug some other schmuck instead.
If you’re lucky.
Also, some land line phones can block calls right in the phone. My Panasonic KX-TGA652 does this, and it’s quite a few years old. I’d expect a lot of newer phones do this.
I’ve developed a good method of stopping this nonsense. I NEVER pick up the phone unless I recognize the caller ID as someone I want to talk too. This eliminates about 95% of the calls coming in on my landline, and the only effort on my part is walking to the phone and looking at the caller ID (if I feel like doing that much). I consider this as good exercise. Eventually callers like the one mentioned by the OP will give up and stop calling.
I actually would get rid of my land line, except that my wife (maybe the world’s most dedicated Luddite), isn’t quite ready for using a cell phone.
And I sort of enjoy letting the phone ring and ring and riiinnnnnng.
Does Nomorobo work in your area? It’s free for landlines and stops nuisance calls.
You invented call screening! 
and if you do answer it its probably "Microsoft windows support " that’s based in New Delhi …
Don’t know who it is, but if it’s a landline, and you have a PC (laptop or desktop), then I recommend PhoneTray Pro software. This software will intercept all calls that you designate as spam and works great.
I’ve been using it for years and I highly recommend it.
We just bought a new phone for our landline. On the package it states Number Blocking. However when you set the phone up you realize that blocking has to be done through the phone carrier. In other words you have to pay extra to the carrier to get the service. Caveat emptor.
Also NoMoRobo isn’t available for our carrier Virgin UK so we’re stymied there too.
[OP here] Within minutes of posting this I received another “Support Int” call that had a different phone number. An hour later another cal,l another number.
The numbers are now mostly randomized per call. In my area, I’m getting the robo-spam calls with numbers WITHIN my local area code and exchange. I even received two from numbers I recognized, but were spoofed.
The phone companies should fix the caller ID system so that spoofing a number is impossible, but that will probably never happen.
A better question and one for the FTC and FCC is why caller ID is even spoofable. It seems lousy to have to pay for a feature that is not 100% accurate.
This is “neighbor spoofing” and it seems to me to have brought things to a tipping point. Hopefully somebody in our government will take a break from threatening world peace and look into fixing this problem properly.
Even if I use nomorobo (very effective), many numbers get through…
If I want to block them from the phone company service then I have to go to my TV and use the remote control and menus to add the number to a list of 12 or so available slots for blocked numbers–utterly useless.
I use a call blocker device that has a red “block now” button that adds the number to its huge internal blacklist–useless if they spoof random numbers.
And now they spoof numbers like local businesses and even our local municipal offices (Would you ignore a call from “Town of Yourtown” or something like that?).
The tipping point is near.
Moderator Note
minor7flat5, political jabs are not permitted in General Questions. No warning issued, but do not do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Well, yes, I would. If it really is them, they can leave a message and I’ll get back to them. If they don’t leave a message, it must not have been important. Simple.