telephone hacks

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Deter telemarketers with a humourous MP3

3:28PM Sarah Stokely | Well, you could join the Do Not Call register, or you could try playing your own evil hold music to those pesky telemarketers who just won’t take “no thanks” for an answer. Tipster Pooksterpup recorded this MP3 to play down the line to unwanted callers. It’s a cute send up of those annoying hold messages punctuated with helpful tips and soothing “your call is important to us” platitudes.I particularly liked the IVR sendup at the end: “You seem to be having some trouble ending this call and leaving with your dignity intact. Would you like some help with that?… I think you said yes, is that right?”This gimmick would be even cooler if you could automate it – I guess you could record it as your voice mail message if you really wanted to. Don’t call me baby [Melbourne Maniacs] More »
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Friday, January 11, 2008

Trick Automated Phone Bots into Never Calling You Again

2:20PM Gina Trapani | Automated phone bots keep interrupting your dinner with their pre-recorded marketing messages? Play the U.S. Special Information Tone signal for “vacant circuit” when you pick up the phone. Our brother site Consumerist says a reader who kept getting automated debt collection calls added the tone to the beginning of his voicemail greeting: The next time the robot called, it thought it was getting a dead line and dutifully erased the number from its system. Voila, automatons be gone. Some places have autodialers that don’t (or have been tweaked) to respond to SIT tones, but if you’ve got a persistent unwanted robot caller, it’s worth a shot. Of course, adding this to your answering machine greeting may confuse genuine human callers as well, but that may be worth scaring off the bots. Grab the tone as a WAV file from the Art of Hacking site. U.S. SIT (Special Information Tones) signal: Vacant Circuit (out of service or nonexistent phone number) [Art of Hacking via Consumerist] More »
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