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Frank Kemp was working on his computer when his cellphone let out the sound of Mario — from Super Mario Bros. — collecting a coin. That signaled he had a new voice mail message, yet his phone had never rung.
"At first, I thought I was crazy," said Mr. Kemp, a video editor in Dover, Del. "When I checked my voice mail, it made me really angry. It was literally a telemarketing voice mail to try to sell telemarketing systems."
Mr. Kemp had just experienced a technology gaining traction called ringless voice mail, the latest attempt by telemarketers and debt collectors to reach the masses. The calls are quietly deposited through a back door, directly into a voice mail box — to the surprise and (presumably) irritation of the recipient, who cannot do anything to block them.
Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.
But consumer advocates, technology experts, people who have been inundated with these calls and the lawyers representing them say such an exemption would open the floodgates. Consumers' voice mail boxes would be clogged with automated messages, they say, making it challenging to unearth important calls, whether they are from an elderly mother's nursing home or a child's school.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 05 2017, @01:46PM (16 children)
Do these voice mail services record the telephone number that were used to make the call?
And time?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday June 05 2017, @02:00PM (15 children)
Yes, but since the bad guys routinely fake the incoming phone number, that's not much help. You can tell the FTC about it [donotcall.gov] if you like, though.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 05 2017, @02:39PM (12 children)
Because that always helps...
Occasionally, I have found that quoting statute to them that enables you to sue them in small claims court for harassment, $500 per instance, etc. does seem to chill them out. It helps if you've gotten them to ID themselves first.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:58PM
I don't think talking to the voice mails is going to help :/
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @08:57PM (10 children)
That's not true. IT ALWAYS HELPS. The issue is, that it may not help you personally or immediately. If you are on the DNC list, and somebody calls you, it is $50K per incident if the FCC goes after them.
By law, all telemarketers are required to "scrub" their lists of phone numbers against the DNC database. There are 3rd party companies that you can pay to have them do this for you, and then certify that it was actually done. If you tell the FCC that such a phone call was made, and that you were on the list at the time, they DO look into it. Especially if there are hundreds of violations and they can literally cripple a company and make it go away.
That's the truth. The companies have largely gone away, or operate legitimately. IIRC, there only about a half dozen outfits that are rogue operators that don't respect the DNC, and spoof all of their calls. Most of the calls are criminal and scammy anyways.
It DOES WORK. I promise you. Please take the time to complain.
That's just the FCC! ALWAYS create a complaint with your state's attorney general, because they can come down hard. Very hard. I know that AG's have caused more headaches for these outfits than the FCC.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 05 2017, @09:17PM (8 children)
Well, I've been on the DNC list since its inception, so god help those who are not. I still get tons of harassing promotions.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @11:15PM
You should pick just one or two of them, and go along for the ride. Even to the point of giving them a fake CC number or bank account number (with routing wrong).
The DNC does make a difference, I promise you. It gives them teeth to go after this outfits for millions. 20 unauthorized calls is $1,000,000 in fines. If you report it, they will take note. If enough people complain, then the DNC has the teeth to make the fines stick. The more info you give them, the better they can go after the people.
Only thing they can't do is go after the scammers very well, since those are actual criminals and make it difficult with jurisdictions.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:14AM (6 children)
You don't say "Put me on your DNC list." You say, "I'm *supposed* to be on your DNC list!" in your sternest tones, then enjoy the frantic apology, and you will never hear from that outfit again.
The real trick was to get on a master DNC list, such as via a major newspaper, since those get circulated to everyone. I used to get my share of junk calls, but then I got tired of the L.A. Daily News calling all the damn time, and told them to DNC me... and after that, over the next 25 years I could count my landline's junk calls on one hand.
Cellphone, OTOH... it's to where I don't answer any caller I don't recognise, and not a one of the junk calls comes from a valid number.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:11PM (5 children)
Yeah, landline was dropped about 10 years ago, so we're cell only. Used to be the opposite, land full-o-junk and cell was relatively quiet. I remember in 2005 threatening one for calling my cell phone and that shut them up where nothing else had before. Not so much, anymore.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:34PM (4 children)
I didn't get a cellphone til 2011 (and I still don't drag it everywhere like most folks do) but yeah, even in this relatively short span ... the junk calls accelerated about 2 years ago. Suspect Verizon is filtering known bad numbers as I'll get spasms, then nothing for a long time. (I'd block them myself, but my $12 retard phone lacks the feature.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:32PM (3 children)
Be tempted by the dark side: check out GoogleFi with their $199 Nexus5x, $0.01/MB pay for usage data, and all the privacy invasion you can stand to configure.
Verizon marketing acts like they are staffed by convicted rapists.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:43PM (2 children)
Last time I bought a Real Phone, Virgin Mobile basically hijacked my bought-and-paid-for hardware. (Original provider bought by Virgin, and my phone's ID is lost in a crack somewhere so I can't transfer it to another provider. Virgin is all roaming here at $60/hour.) I only want it as a phone that's not used much, don't need data and other crap, so went with the cheapest, dumbest one I could find. $12 phone, $15/mo. Prefer the flipphone anyway cuz it's not so susceptible to getting borked in the barn.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:26PM (1 child)
I was on a flip phone with Verizon, but they were charging me something like $50/month just for "cheapest voice" service I could choose back in 2012. We switched to T-mo and got no-contract, smartphones with data and unlimited talk/text for the same price as Verizon. Did that for 2 years, then I cracked my Nexus 5, so when looking for a replacement, I found the 5x through GoogleFi for cheaper still than T-mo and with better service. If I ever manage to keep one of these smartphones for more than 2 years, then the $9/month payment plan will go away and I'll be down around $25/mo for the smartphone.
My flip-phone from 2006 lasted until 2012, but the battery was getting weak and we moved from the "Verizon service only" boonies to a real town, so that's what started me down the slippery slope. It is nice being able to check traffic and weather radar, otherwise, yeah, I wish they still made good flip-phones. When it was new mine would run a week on a charge.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:34PM
There's a newfangled flipphone-smartphone hybrid out there -- that'll probably be my next one, by which time the prices will come down (was around $200 so not relatively terrible). IIRC it runs Android, and has a Real Dial Keyboard, tho not a full one.
My first was a $50 TMobile with a $30/mo. for 1500 minutes (more than I used) and I'd probably have kept it, except I moved back to MT and service was at best spotty. Verizon and AT&T have good and fair coverage respectively, but Sprint is mostly worthless.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:40AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday June 05 2017, @07:23PM
As much as I do report scams and telemarketers (is there really any difference) I a feeling that those electrons could likely have been put to better use if I were to have attempted to mine bit coins on a Raspberry Pi.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 05 2017, @11:37PM
Time for some pre-approved list of numbers?
Fake numbers should also not checkout when looking up their validity in the PSTN network?
Or something like this [youtube.com] ?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:48PM (15 children)
Hear me out: If this world actually made any sense, then I would have control of my services and devices sufficient to allow me to implement the following:
If I know you, I put you on the whitelist;
If you're a spammer, I put you on the blacklist;
if I don't know you, I require you to pay me $1 worth of bitcoin or something in order to reach me, which I'll refund if you're someone with which it is worthwhile to communicate.
However, the world does not make any sense; you are not given such obvious control over your own life; you live in a world filled with people who cut up their own sons' sexual organs to please the creator of the entire universe. Nobody cares about you at least not beyond how useful you may be for some other person's purpose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @03:04PM (10 children)
You use an iphone or what exactly is the problem here?
I have Android and Mr Number and
If I know you, you get a nice telephone sounding ring tone (not rickroll or some BS)
If you're a spammer mr number blocks you
If I don't know you, you get my default ringtone which is silence and if you leave a nice VM I'll call back.
At home I have asterisk and the call routing is ridiculous so spammer numbers get called number NIS tones, real numbers from people I know get real rings, and everyone else gets instant voicemail. Basically the same thing. Home phones are dying out for years now, in my family only me and my MiL still have landline home phones. I had a lot of fun setting up and admining asterisk for a decade or so but its about time to pull the plug. People look at me weird for my basement data center burning hundreds of watts continuously but my legacy landline is like $250/year so its time I flush it. I'm gonna miss asterisk a bit. I might keep my voip phones around as an intercom, essentially, I donno.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @09:14PM (2 children)
I don't know why you are paying that much. I've got as much experience as you with Asterisk, maybe more, I dunno. The server doesn't really cost all that much money, and you know you can run Asterisk on very little WRT hardware. Sounds like you may only have a channel or two active at any one moment so you don't need call center performance.
You shouldn't be paying much more than $20/year max for the DID, perhaps another $10/year if you want real e911 service, and calling in the 48 contiguous states is ~2c/min at retail prices. How are you getting to the $250?
Besides that, the true problem is much simpler. Just block all anonymous calls by answering and asking for a name. Telemarketers and scammers don't even bother attempting to detect IVR/Fax, but just play the message. After the blocking though, we have the spoofing problem. Almost all VoIP providers, including carrier grade, do not correctly populate ANI anymore. So how do you effectively block anything when anybody can be anybody? That stuff in the movies is long gone, and most carriers can't tell you who called you and point you to the headers. I believe only the government has that capability, and it is not based on ANI, but mediation switches designed to suck up metadata for three letter agencies.
I'm going the other direction with Asterisk. My phone numbers are directly handled by Asterisk and I use cell phones as endpoints in my queues and ring groups. I have DISA providing calling card functions that allow my phone to place outbound calls on the PSTN still using the Caller ID I set, or a VoIP app that just puts an endpoint on any phone, tablet, or computer. My daily work at the moment is with WebRTC creating a SIP client in the web browser itself negating the need for a native app. I'm moving away from depending on cellular carriers and hope to get away from them completely at some point with WiFi being ubiquitous enough that I can turn off the cellular radio, or just use a nice tablet.
Solving the telemarketer problem on the PSTN requires that we FIX the PSTN. Mississippi is on the right track as they made spoofing calls illegal years ago. As soon as it is a fine in of itself to spoof ANI to represent a number you don't legally own, we can really being to lock it down.
In the mean time, I highly suggest you look into populating your domains with SRV records and setting up encrypted channels. If we ALL moved away from the PSTN to such setups, we'd be much better off. As well as more secure, more private, etc. If by default people are calling you on unsecured channels, well then you are basically still on the PSTN which is horribly insecure.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
I set up a voicepulse business IAX line like a decade ago and they converted the next month to SIP which was pretty annoying. I do pay as you go outgoing which yeah is just a couple cents and never adds up to much, and I'm unclear how much I'm paying for inward maybe $11/month
Maybe I can get cheaper but it certainly works well and I don't want the "$2/month webhosting" class of VOIP line, may as well just disconnect.
With the pay as I go it feels like I toss about $20 in there about every month but I donno. That would be the $250.
I have four channels available although I've never used them all, its their default service. I think I could pay more for 8 or 16 channels. It is business class service...
Agreed, but they tend to be consistent which is all I need. I'm pretty brutal so if I/we don't know you, you hit my voicemail I don't even ring. It takes me like 30 seconds to alter my dialplan to permit a new number to ring.
Yeah you're doing what Republic Wireless and Google Fi are doing as a service.
I periodically rebuild my infrastructure so if I don't drop landlines completely, I'll look into that.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:55PM
That's not what I was recommending. For ~$1/mo you can get a carrier grade line. For an extra $1/mo you can add e911 service to it. I've only ever used Flowroute, and I've put hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, calls through them. They're carrier grade. Nearly every time I've had a problem, it's been me and my Asterisk boxes. They're super nice and helpful. Maybe two big issues in like 10 years. Easily three 9's of service, and if my systems were better, probably four 9's.
I'm sure there are "webhosting" grade services out there, but that is the whole point of a carrier grade aggregator. They review quality continuously, and add and remove routes as required.
Trust me. You can get carrier grade, or business class, service without breaking the bank anymore.
I have unlimited channels both inbound and outbound. All they care about is if I paid. They used to have a virtual PRI service which was based on channels and unlimited minutes, but that went away a few years ago. So no busy signal BS, and your systems can always take the call.
You may wish to reconsider and look into it a bit more. I don't use anything less than carrier grade myself. I'm looking into creating my SRV records so that people could just call me at my domain, and that should result in an encrypted connection. Something the PSTN does not have.
Please don't cave and let the cellular service run your communications. That's in nobody's best interests :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 05 2017, @11:21PM (6 children)
Did you miss the part where those spam messages get delivered directly to voicemail, by agreement with your carrier?
It doesn't matter what type of phone you have as long as you have a VM box, you're just told you got a message, and you have to call and start listening in order to erase it.
The fact that executives believe enough people won't get pissed at this, and pour money into that scheme, is a very sad statement...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:16AM
Joke's on them. I have nominal voicemail, but it doesn't work. :P
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:54PM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:16AM
The main purpose of voicemail nowadays is a way of screening my calls. If I don't recognize your number you go to voicemail. If you leave a nice message I'll decide whether I want to call you back. 95%+ of spam calls don't leave a voicemail. Admittedly the ones that do are annoying as hell.
Of course, if they would fix the goddamn spam call problem so that if my phone rings, it's actually someone I would want to talk to, then maybe I'd disable the voicemail.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:54PM
It's hard to compose SMS or email on a cell phone with only a 10-key keypad, not a touch screen or a QWERTY keyboard. And forget about it on a payphone or other landline.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:19PM (1 child)
Oh, interesting, how does that even work? At home my VOIP provider doesn't provide my voicemail, they just terminate calls to my asterisk server that has its own voicemail. I've never gotten a direct delivered cell phone voicemail. I do the google fi thing, maybe google doesn't sign contracts with that class of advertiser.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:45PM
You're doing that "geek" thing again.
There's at least 200 million VM boxes out there, and someone clearly sees that as a big enough market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:42PM
yes, and you funded all of the things that enslave you. you probably even shill for free every now and then. stop acting like a mindless slave.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday June 05 2017, @03:56PM (2 children)
I quite like my clipped dick. I think it looks better than unclipped. It's smegma free all the time (I didn't even know that was a thing until recently). I'm not religious at all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:13PM
Either you face hard truths about what was done to you, or you make up a good story that implies you got the better end of the stick.
It's the human way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday June 06 2017, @02:08AM
Good for you, but mutilating other people's genitals based on personal preferences, religious beliefs, or generally for any reason other than to solve an imminent medical emergency is a violation of their fundamental right to control their own body; it should be illegal unless you have the person's consent. Even if you assume that those studies showing that MGM has some benefits (less smegma, somewhat reduced chance of HIV, etc.) are accurate, that still doesn't justify nonconsensual genital mutilation, especially since the problems can almost always be solved in other ways and depend on the individual's behavior. It's completely absurd that this barbaric practice of mutilating other people's genitals still exists in the 21st century, and in supposedly civilized countries no less.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday June 05 2017, @01:59PM (7 children)
Advertising is dying.
As it's dying, advertisers are trying anything they can think of to get what they have to say into your brain, because you are getting better and better at avoiding what they want to tell you. I'm guessing almost everybody reading this comment is using an adblocker in your browser, so poof goes most online advertising. If you watch TV, it's probably through a DVR of some kind where you can press a 30-second skip button and go right past the bit where they interrupt the story to sell something (or it's an illegal download/stream that didn't have the ads in the first place). And of course nobody is getting the newspaper or reading lots of print magazines anymore.
Advertising used to serve an important purpose, namely answering the question "Where can I get _____?" Nowadays, instead of searching through advertisements, we do either "Google, who sells _____ around here, or who can deliver it in a couple of days?" or even now "Siri, buy me a ______." Its continued existence is an exercise in denial.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Monday June 05 2017, @02:26PM
I really like the direction it's going. I've seen a lot more "high quality" goods but typically made in smaller numbers. People who want higher quality goods seek out those goods themselves. There's no point in a company even trying to mass market a niche product. Companies whose products have no real advantage over competitors are probably freaking out. They can't win by spending more on marketing. They should have spent that money on making a better product.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday June 05 2017, @02:54PM (4 children)
Advertising is NOT dying; that's plainly absurd.
Proof: 1) The fact that the web is still around and so many journalism (or if you prefer, "journalism") sites exist and are highly profitable. Also, YouTube. All that stuff only exists because of advertising revenue. 2) The subject of this very article (straight-to-voicemail telemarketing). It exists, and apparently is a real and growing problem, which is why we're reading about it. It's only existent and growing because **it makes money**!!! If it didn't, we wouldn't be hearing about it, or experiencing it.
Advertising is alive and well, mainly because it somehow actually pays. Even this telemarketing crap. For the telemarketing, that means there's actually a bunch of idiots out there who fall for this crap and buy it. Probably a very small percentage, but with the cost-per-voicemail being tiny, thanks to lots of automation, it doesn't take many suckers to make it profitable.
I have a solution to some of this, at least the telemarketing stuff: we need a government program to run a sting operation where they copy one of these telemarketers, and sell the same thing, the same way. See who's dumb enough to actually buy in. But instead of actually selling them crap, they need to go after them in court for being suckers, and have them declared legally incompetent, and made wards of the state. People like this have no business managing their own money, as they've proven they're completely incompetent, and need a guardian. The vast majority are probably elderly, too, so these telemarketers are really practicing "elder abuse" (so maybe the government can prosecute them for that too, to pay for this program and then some). Now, with these people unable to blow their life savings on garbage, the very worst advertising industries will be shut down.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 05 2017, @05:01PM (3 children)
Well that's sort of half-right. Advertising of the sort he's talking about is dying. You are sort of correct that advertising in the broader sense is alive and well. Cord-cutting, on-demand, and DVR are killing off traditional TV commercials. Advertisers are responding by pumping up how much of the hour is devoted to paid spots. That, of course, accelerates cord-cutting more.
Meanwhile, product placements are growing in popularity because they're not interruptive. The DVR doesn't help you skip those. Netflix lets you binge all you want without commercial breaks, but the commercials are part of the show; on one end of the spectrum you have a show like Good Luck Chuck that was a never-ending ad for Best Buy, and on the other the show Eureka that would have the main characters gush about their new Subarus.
Then you have search-ads. You've already indicated you're interested in something by searching for it, so it's far less annoying that interrupting a sports broadcast to market maxi pads. The conversion rate is far superior, too. That's why Amazon has been eating Walmart's lunch the last 5 years.
Out-of-home (billboards, subway ads, etc) is in trouble, too, because Millenials don't drive, and when they're walking around taking public transportation their noses are in their phones the whole time.
In short it's most accurate to say advertising is radically transforming. But now that technology has reached saturation in the public it will not take long for advertising counter-measures to proliferate if advertisers choose to make themselves as interruptive and hateful as they have been in the past.
It's a more or less positive development, because when you want something is when you're open to suggestions, but when you don't interrupting you with irrelevant crap is stealing your life away in small quanta at a time. I could imagine scenarios where doing the latter could become criminalized.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday June 05 2017, @05:07PM
In an ideal world, purchases are demand-driven rather than supply-driven. In other words, you buy things because you need or want them. TV ads and the like are almost all about supply-driven purchases: "We have gazillions of widgets, and want to sell them to you!" regardless of whether you need or even want a widget. I mean, compare the number of car commercials to the number of people genuinely looking to buy a new car, and you'll see how ridiculously out of whack it is.
And you are right that search ads are far less annoying than TV and print ads are. At least the ad is for something there's a good chance you're looking for.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @09:42PM (1 child)
Just a minor correction, but Chuck was an ongoing advertisement for Buy More the fictional store he was in. To me, that could've been an Office Depot as easily as a BestBuy, as it could perhaps a Fry's. It was fairly generic to me.
That being said, the whole show was long advertisement for Subway sandwiches. I have to admit, while I hate advertising in almost all of its forms, I was amused by how hard they tried. The Subway sandwich itself could've asked for membership in the Screen Actors Guild.
There was even an episode, almost erotic, where the manager professes his love for the Subway sandwich. I'll admit it, I had feels in the scene, and was able to relate to that man's love for a meatball sub :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:32PM
That's true. I had forgotten that. Burn Notice was the same for yogurt.
If they're gonna do something like that, work it into the story and characters organically at the very least. Everything shy of that is groan-worthy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 05 2017, @11:19PM
Another example of the "pirated" version being a superior product to the original.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday June 05 2017, @02:19PM (9 children)
First time I get one of these I'm changing my voice message to "Don't bother, I never check voice mail anymore. Send a text". I'll then change my password to something I have no chance of remembering.
As it is I have voice mail anyway. I spend more time listening to "you have x new messages. Message 1. Received xxxx from phone number xxxx. etc etc" than I do listening to the actual message. Well except for that one guy who leaves messages like "Oh, hi Snot, it's me. Mike. I, um, how you doing? I've got a cold, but Nyquil seems to be fixing it. How's your dad doing? Well, the reason I called is, um, do you ."
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 05 2017, @03:05PM (3 children)
Know what you mean. More and more, I don't like or want voicemail. Text is better. Is there cell phone service that doesn't come with voicemail? I have not found any.
Can I opt out of voicemail? Not have the service? It seems not. Why not? I can think of one reason: $. Why else is the interface so damned slow? Burn up your minutes so you are more likely to go over. People who are on an unlimited plan get stuck with the same dog slow interface as everyone else, because it'd be too costly to differentiate there.
In the days of landlines and answering machines with mini cassette tapes, only took one scumbag telemarketer to go on and on about some fantastic offer you can't afford to miss, to fill up your machine and make it unable to take any more messages, so that maybe you miss the real messages you can't afford to miss.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday June 05 2017, @04:07PM
Do you people not have visual voicemail? I haven't seen a modern smartphone without it. They'll even transcribe your mail into text (poorly), for an extra fee, but the free service works well usually and lets you skip all the overhead. It downloads the voicemails when you have data service and you can listen to it whenever. The only problem is that it's still voicemail, so it's still slow since it's just people flapping their lips which is much slower to listen to than it is to read text, but at least you can actually see the number they called from (and a name if it's in your contact list), the length of the message, you can skip around with the slider, you can immediately pause or delete, etc.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @09:55PM
Visual voicemail is just some patent encumbered crap that any moron with two brain cells would've found obvious. Just more USPTO bullshit that it was even approved as a patent.
I have voicemail completely disabled on my cell phone so that I can properly use it as a endpoint in my Asterisk servers. The one thing Asterisk provides, is really good voicemail. You want to get rid of the envelope, meaning the number and person calling? Easy. You want to use your own email instead? Easy. My voicemail is blissfully simple. I check my inbox and can sort by automatically tagged "voice-emails". The recording is attached. If you go with an easier distro like FreePBX, they even have a UCP where you can login to control your phone and review voicemail directly in the browser. Kind of like visual voicemail, but not a phone ;)
You CAN turn a cellular carrier into a dumb common carrier that does not provide any of those services anymore. It just requires setting up Asterisk, a DID or two, and configuring your phone for awhile. Then YOU are in control of your communications and voicemail, not the carrier. Don't like the carrier anymore? Fuck em. You can bail really easily and go the next carrier. If your life has WiFi all around you all the time? Don't even need a carrier, and Asterisk will always at least answer your phone, present your message or IVR, and take a message that somebody called while you were unavailable.
I haven't had a cellular phone contract in several years now. Just pre-paid burners I attach to my system for awhile and then ditch. My service I provide myself is apparently blissful compared to wholly depending on a carrier.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 05 2017, @11:23PM
Depends on your provider. I can, but without it I still get notifications that someone tried to reach me.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Monday June 05 2017, @04:21PM (1 child)
Actually you don't have to set up voice mail in the first place. The last time I upgraded my phone I just didn't set up voice mail. When my phone rings I either recognize the ring tone, or can check to see who has called then call them back if I want to. Voice mail is a big waste of time. Actually talking to someone or getting a text is much better.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @07:41PM
I set up mine but kept getting garbage. I cut it down drastically by going back to the default "The number you have dialed, 877-382-4357, is not available. Please leave a message after the tone. *beep*" However, some scammers were very persistent, so I just let my box fill up. No new messages now. An interesting correlation is the amount of junk mail I get went up a few weeks after I changed messages and again once my box filled up.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:33PM (2 children)
And then end up receiving a call every hour, and once you do pick up, the caller says something to the effect "I heard your voicemail greeting. How do I send a text from a landline again?"
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
I don't know anyone without a cellphone anymore.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday June 08 2017, @02:52PM
Having a cellphone doesn't imply it being especially convenient to compose a text message. My previous cellphone had a 10-key keypad rather than a QWERTY keyboard or a touch screen. Each new text message defaulted to multitap rather than T9, and any incoming call or text message would cause the outgoing text message I was composing to disappear, even if it's "why haven't you replied yet?".
Nor does having a cellphone imply having unmetered use thereof. My current cell phone is on a plan that charges 0.10 USD per outgoing minute, 0.10 USD cents per incoming minute, 0.10 USD per outgoing text message, and per 0.10 USD incoming text message. Sometimes one minute of voicemail at 0.10 USD can contain the same information as two or three text messages at 0.10 USD each. For longer calls, I use my roommate's landline with its unmetered incoming and local outgoing calls.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday June 05 2017, @02:21PM (1 child)
Here, where I live, it is illegal to make a sales call to someone you do not have a business relationship with, unless the specifically opt in. Of course, some call centers ignore this. I mean, how is some Swiss citizen going to punish a call center in India or Pakistan? Others just cheat. "This isn't a sales call, we're taking a survey", or some other transparent excuse.
So now they've found a way to deposit voicemail without ringing your phone? Through a "backdoor"? If this continues more than a few months, then the phone companies are obviously complicit. Obviously, you should complain to the regulators, but you should also complain to the phone companies. This is clearly *not* the intended functionality of voicemail, so their systems must be broken, so complain until they get fixed.
Companies like this, and the companies that pay them to make the calls, are scum. Notably, in the US at least, politicians have exempted themselves from their own laws prohibiting advertising calls. We already knew that professional politicians are scum.
The one remaining mystery: How can this pay off? I don't know anyone who likes these calls; I don't know anyone who has ever bought anything because of one of these calls. How can it actually pay off?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday June 05 2017, @02:57PM
The one remaining mystery: How can this pay off? I don't know anyone who likes these calls; I don't know anyone who has ever bought anything because of one of these calls. How can it actually pay off?
It's not a mystery; it works because there's enough suckers out there buying their crap to make it profitable. Because it's all highly automated, it doesn't cost very much per voicemail to send out all this spam, so it doesn't take that many suckers to make it profitable. Most likely, the vast majority of suckers are elderly people, so you probably don't know anyone who's ever bought this crap because you don't hang out with 80+ year olds.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BananaPhone on Monday June 05 2017, @02:40PM
Hello Cell phone provider, please disable my voice mail feature.
Oh you won't?
Ok, my greeting will be telling people not to leave a message because uses it for advertising.
(Later, BananaPhone creates script to call cell phone and leave multiple large messages to fill up Voice Mailbox.)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Fnord666 on Monday June 05 2017, @03:17PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:21PM (2 children)
I don't understand why it is that the government has so much power in this area; could it be because the government established monopolies around the flow of telecommunications data? I THINK SO!
Tell me, where was your kind advice when we were all dealing with email spam all these years? Well, you never even thought about the government, because it was just a technological problem, not a political problem.
If you need government to step in and establish a technological problem through political means, then you done fucked up!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday June 05 2017, @05:14PM
The reason the government needs to be involved is that tracking down the bad guys involves an amount of data sharing between phone carriers that they probably aren't willing to do on their own. Because trade secrets and NDAs and such.
I should also point out that email spam hasn't gone away. It's just gotten less annoying because the filtering tools have gotten better. The classic anti-spam plan checklist [craphound.com] still has a lot of applicability.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday June 05 2017, @05:15PM
Note though that spam is an ongoing problem. Apparently the government free way to deal with it is just put up with it?!?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Monday June 05 2017, @03:31PM (3 children)
In case you were confused about how it works, the article is sparse in details but it appears to be a special feature of modern voice mail systems. I am not too voice mail savvy, so I thought that voice mail was just a digital answering machine that would pick up after x number of rings.
When I search how to leave a ringless voicemail, I do not find any technical details but advertisements for paid services to enable leaving a ringless voicemail. Does anyone know if this "feature" is available to the layperson or only specific commercial entities can perform ringless voicemails?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+leave+ringless+voicemail&ia=web [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:35PM
This isn't exactly new. About 8 years ago when I was with Sprint (*shudder*) I found out that through their voicemail system I was able to record a new message and then specify which number to send that voicemail to.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday June 05 2017, @06:16PM
I thought I had heard a rumor a handful of years back that you could hold pound or star when it started ringing to bypass to voicemail, but never tried it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 05 2017, @08:08PM
Your post got me to doing a little research. Whats disappointing is every hit is some snake oil advertising company looking to sell you a great new way to develop leads! Plus a lot of them are work at home scams. Something to do with "ringless voicemail drops".
So that leaves me with almost no technical detail. I then searched for "ringless voicemail drops tmobile" and I stumbled on this post: http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34874 [vicidial.org]. The way it is explained by someone is the call center tries to call your phone with two different numbers at the same exact time. This causes both lines to see a busy signal and one line grabs the voicemail. apparently that is illegal according to the FCC, the ringless purveyors claim it is legal. But take this with a grain of salt as no one has an answer.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:38PM
"It was literally a telemarketing voice mail to try to sell telemarketing systems."
phew, i thought it was a metaphorical telemarketing voice mail for a minute there...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday June 05 2017, @09:25PM (1 child)
In each case it's been a scam which says something like "I'm getting back to you about that $250,000 line of credit." or some such bullshit.
Clearly a scam.
Yes, I'm on the DNC list. No, scammers don't care. They're trying to defraud you. Do you really think they care about FTC rules?
That telecoms allow this to happen is their way of boosting profit from the scammers and from you:
1. Scammers likely pay a fee to send bulk voicemail messages;
2. Calling your voicemail uses some of your voice minutes allotment
Extra revenue on both ends for the voice carrier. Dickheads.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:09PM
On many carriers, calling your voice mail doesn't count against your minutes. And most non-basic plans have unlimited minutes ... which once again means it's the poorest who get shafted.