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I have been getting calls that immediately start with, "Thank you for choosing Marriot Hotels!" for a couple years now. The message goes on to say how I am getting this great offer because I am a valued customer. On a couple occasions, I stayed on the line to get a human, they ask yes/no questions (are you over 28? do you have a valid credit card?). I just replied with questions of my own, and they immediately hung up. I can continue to ignore the calls, but they are always from a random local number and I get nearly twice as many of these calls than I get legitimate calls.
I did a search and found this has been around for a while and Marriot is aware:
http://news.marriott.com/2015/05/marriott-international-responds-to-continued-phone-scam-updated-oct-20-2015/
I have deliberated about posting, but I don't see the FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] as being able to act unless I can provide them something more than the spoofed phone number. Providing the number(s) probably won't help as they are spoofing the caller ID. I know that this is a long shot, but is there anything anyone can suggest beyond creating a spreadsheet of phone numbers, dates, and times to log these calls? Would that even be useful?
It seems that something is fundamentally broken with the current phone system, if this spoofing is even possible. But that is a side topic here, the real question is, what can I do, if anything, to get the data the FCC would need to shut this down?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by marknmel on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:25AM (3 children)
This is a problem. The telemarketers try real hard to catch you, so that generally is at supper time - to maximize their catch. I had enough and implemented Asterisk as a small home PBX on some fairly power efficient gear. I have a number white-list for friends and family, blacklist for 800,866,855,etc, and for everyone else - I use an auto attendant. ie. Press 1 for me, 2 for the Mrs.
Most telemarketer rigs can't deal with the keypress and need to abandon the call. I'd say that over the last 10 years since the system has been in use, less then 5 telemarketers have actually broken through and pressed a key - and those are local businesses that don't have a contractor for telemarketing. One of my best geeky projects ever, and it has a huge WAF. :-)
There is nothing that can't be solved with one more layer of indirection.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:45AM (2 children)
Wonder if the asterisk is suitable for a Raspberry Pi? Or is there cheap pre-packaged telephone "private PBX" systems out there which serve as base stations serving several wireless phones - that have whitelist/blacklist and configurable answering protocols like asterisk?
I get so many telemarketers on my phone that I end up sending them *all* to voicemail, then later return only those I recognize. ( I am retired and not in business to speak of, so not that many people call me that I really want to talk to anyway. 99% of the time I answer a live call, I wish I had not done that. )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Informative) by marknmel on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:33PM
Happy belated Pi day.
Asterisk is fast enough on a Rpi, as long as you don't need to transcode - for instance G711u to GSM.
I don't generally transcode - but I do end to end G711u. I use a voip carrier and ported my number there, but for a time I used POTS with a SPA3102. It worked generally well. I believe there are distributions pre-built, just flash and boot.
There is nothing that can't be solved with one more layer of indirection.
(Score: 5, Informative) by shipofgold on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:42PM
http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/ [raspberry-asterisk.org]