Do any of these ring a bell?
- “Hello, I’m Rachel from Card Holder Services…” (Note 1)
- “Hello, I’m Kevin. … May my crew power wash your home? … How about sweeping your chimney? … God Bless!” (Note 2)
- Caller ID shows your name and phone number as the source of the incoming call. (Note 3)
- The phone rings, you answer, and there is no one on the line – just silence. (Note 4)
The “National Do Not Call Act” was set up in 2004 and has failed to make a dent in SPAM phone calls. In 10 years the FTC has imposed $117 M in fines but taken only 101 offenders to court – that’s just a drop in the bucket. Part of the problem is that it is left to the consumer to file a complaint, using an awkward web site rather than an automated mechanism such as dialing, say, *99 during the call. It is estimated that less than 1% of consumers have filed a complaint.
If you saw the movie “The Imitation Game” about breaking the Enigma cipher during WW-II, you may remember that Alan Turing convinced Winston Churchill that it would take a machine to defeat a machine. The same holds true for defeating robo calls. Now there is such a mechanism, it has recently been adopted by many of the carriers and is easy to activate. Lastly, it is both free and effective.
In the 1960’s the telephone systems converted to electronic switching using computers rather than electro-mechanical switching gear. Along with Touch Tone there were additional services made available, such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Return, Call Blocking etc. There is a little-known service “Simultaneous Ring” where you may associate additional telephone number(s) with a specific telephone number. For example you could associate a vacation home’s number with your primary residence. A call to the primary residence number will also ring at the vacation home number. Accepting the call at either location terminates the ringing at the other. The patent pending service developed by Telephone Science Corporation has been implemented by most of the carriers. You set up a simultaneous ring which points to the service. They know the identities of the robo caller and telemarketer accounts – the real ‘switching’ phone number, not the Caller ID number – which may be different as explained in note 3. If the call is recognized as a robocall or telemarketer the service instantly answers it and instantly hangs up. Your phone never rings.
In addition it is reliable in that it will NOT interfere with legitimate mechanized calls such as school closings, reverse 911 calls as used by the town’s Emergency Operations Center during storms, notifications that your prescription drug order has been processed, medical appointment reminders etc.
To activate it, first you need to go to www.nomorobo.com. Once there
- Select the type of service you have from a list, such as Land line/VoIP or Wireless. (Actually, only VoIP appears to be implemented at the time of this writing, analog wired and wireless are in the works but not yet available. DSL as from Frontier is NOT analog so it IS supported.)
- Select your carrier such as Comcast/Xfiniity, Uverse, Frontier, MagicJack etc.
- Enter your e-mail address. You do not create an account; you do not have to provide a password.
- Click the Sign Up button.
Note that at this time you do not specify your phone number. NoMoRobo.com doesn’t need or want to know it.
You will get an e-mail telling you if your type of service is supported by your carrier, and if so it will include a link to instructions specific to your service. For example, for Comcast/Xfinity, you need to use your web browser to log into your Comcast account, find the Account link in the menu bar, then click Preferences, and within that page click on Advanced Features. This takes you to the same place that you set up Voice Mail, number of rings before Voice Mail kicks in, etc. One of the advanced features will be Simultaneous Ring. Select or enter the number to be protected (i.e. your home number) and the 10-digit number NoMoRobo.com provided for intercepting the call. Ignore the number of rings entry field, it isn’t needed. Click SAVE and you are done. If for some reason you decide to discontinue the free service just go back and delete the Simultaneous Ring entry. Reminder: This is done at your service-provider’s site, not at NoMoRobo. Having provided the type of service you have so they can send instructions, they no longer need to know about you.
I’ve been using the service for some time, as have my relatives, and it really works.
Notes
1) Violations of the Do Not Call List can not be enforced if the call is not originated in the United States. So many of the robocalls comes from off-shore. A U.S. area code as the Caller ID does not mean that it is really originated in the U.S. Rachel is a robot/recording. [Robert, Bill, Tom, Susan – pick one] from [Microsoft Support, Microsoft Technical Services, Microsoft Security Services, Microsoft Research – pick one] maybe human but they aren’t employed by Microsoft or a company contracted by Microsoft. They are most definitely off-shore, the accent gives them away. Microsoft doesn’t call you to tell you that there is a problem with your Windows computer. If you are still running XP it is probably true.
2) There are various exceptions to the National Do Not Call List – political vote or fund-raising campaigns – of course, charity and religious organizations, etc. Perhaps Kevin is a Pastafarian? He does say “God Bless” at the end if you stay on the line that long.
3) Computer generated calls using a service hardware or software such as MagicJack. It can change the visible Caller ID phone number and display name on the fly. This hiding of the real value is legal; for example a corporation may have many fax machines, but only want to publish a single machine’s number for inbound traffic. Thus the ability to change the Caller ID may be legitimate, but the spamming is not. I may talk to myself but I never call myself.
4) The robocallers use a mechanism called “Predictive Dialer” (Do a Google search for details.) As an agent wraps up a call he/she presses a key and perhaps a dozen calls or more are made simultaneously. They all ring, he/she gets the first to answer, and the other numbers are just silent if answered. According to a Wikipedia entry, the U.K. has outlawed this practice but is having the same difficulty enforcing as we are with the National Do Not Call Act.