Problems with Electronics

Toroid

Founding Member
I've been getting this voicemail message for years in an Asian language. Today I let it play through and the screen said Insert Sim. It froze the phone and none of the buttons would respond. I removed the battery and that seemed to fix it. Twice in the last several weeks the screen has gone blank and I had to call the provider. Without taking to anyone their automated scan of my cell fixed the problem.

a0014
 

August

Metanoia
I've been getting this voicemail message for years in an Asian language. Today I let it play through and the screen said Insert Sim. It froze the phone and none of the buttons would respond. I removed the battery and that seemed to fix it. Twice in the last several weeks the screen has gone blank and I had to call the provider. Without taking to anyone their automated scan of my cell fixed the problem.

a0014

If you have had that message for years was it an unfinished part of your original set up programme when you first got the phone ?
 

Toroid

Founding Member
If you have had that message for years was it an unfinished part of your original set up programme when you first got the phone ?
I don't think so. In the states we have a huge problem with robo calls and scams. They showed on a news documentary that people create simple programs that can call a multitude of landlines and cell phones at once. Most people don't answer their cells if they don't know who's calling. We can register our numbers on the national do not call list which makes it illegal to solicit the number.
 

August

Metanoia
I don't think so. In the states we have a huge problem with robo calls and scams. They showed on a news documentary that people create simple programs that can call a multitude of landlines and cell phones at once. Most people don't answer their cells if they don't know who's calling. We can register our numbers on the national do not call list which makes it illegal to solicit the number.

I never answer if I do not recognize the phone number. I don't get many calls anyways so luckily I am fairly free of this pestering. So if you register on that 'don't call' number that message can be deleted off your phone ?
 

Toroid

Founding Member
I never answer if I do not recognize the phone number. I don't get many calls anyways so luckily I am fairly free of this pestering. So if you register on that 'don't call' number that message can be deleted off your phone ?
If the source can be identified we can report them. There was a guy on the news that legally went after several of the companies and they paid him off rather than going to court because they would lose.
 

August

Metanoia
If the source can be identified we can report them. There was a guy on the news that legally went after several of the companies and they paid him off rather than going to court because they would lose.

Great way to make some extra cash . :)
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Predictive dialers. I admit to being part of the problem at one time. I didn't deal with them specifically but had to integrate them plenty.

You load the thing up with ranges of #s you want to call, the time ranges and frequency and the caller id you want to display when doing so. This is why you get lots of calls from numbers that are from the same exchange(s) as you. They're not but the type of trunking - 'outside lines' - they use allows them to publish whatever the hell they want.

The machine is looking for a human voice and they have become better at distinguishing a live voice from a recording. When it hears one it does whatever it's been told - play a message or transfer the call to a live agent. That's why you hear a slight delay before whoever it is that wants to tell you about your extended vehicle warranty come on the line. From their p.o.v it's an incoming call also.

A live voice is a success. A hang up just means do it again. I prefer the third option. It's a device with a finite amount of resources. I just pick up, listen and put the phone down. Takes it a minute or two to time out. Makes me feel better. Doubt it does much.

If there were a way - and there isn't - to prevent people from publishing spurious caller id all this would be greatly reduced. In the PSTN - regular old telephone network - there actually are guardrails around that sort of thing. Not perfect but enforced enough to notice. These are all internet resolved calls, not PSTN. An internet address could be a traditional looking 1+ten digit number as easily as a fully qualified domain name. SIP trunking in volume at fractions of a penny per channel with no governing authority or control really I am aware of.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
I've been getting this voicemail message for years in an Asian language.

Early at the start of this year I was getting one or two calls a week from a New York phone number, a different number each time but with the same New York area code, which I never answered...They left a voicemail every time that was spoken in Chinese but I never listened to the entire message since I don't understand that language lol, and after about 4 weeks it stopped...

...
 
If I don't recognize the phone number, I never answer. Fortunately, I don't receive many calls, so I am largely free of this annoyance. So the notification on your phone can be removed if you register on that "don't call" number?
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Broadband changed an awful lot. At one time the only may to make a phone call was to route it via the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) because that was literally the only network in town. I've lost track of the whozits over the years but some of the basic functions of the Bell network are still there, like BellCore (or whatever they call it now) that kept track of, basically, the North American Numbering Plan where our country code is 1 followed by NPA NXX xxxx. Being issued a valid telephone number from that authority is essentially the same thing as today registering your network address/website name with the internet service provider(ISP). Alienexpanse.com is a 'dialable number' in oldspeke.

Primary Rate Interface circuits have become the commonly accepted interface standard to deliver telephony service. Still is in a lot of places. When those first showed from the PSTN I could literally publish any outgoing Caller ID I wanted. After some time that changed, but it took years.

Now here's broadband. An entirely different network exists that can carry real time phone calls just like the PSTN. Time sensitive, real time traffic like voice and video have special network requirements - upon which I made a fortune explaining all that fifty million times to dubious IT people. The accepted standard in use for this type of traffic on an IP network - and we know that's what the interwebs is - is Session Initiated Protocol (SIP). Calls are resolved by Session Border Controllers - specialized routers - and the network addresses can be about anything you want within reason, not strictly numerical. Look at the endpoint names in use of a Zoom call, for example. Or, for a long time you could have an 'internet phone number' that could have a familiar 1+ten digit NANP address. The free ones let you call other internet-only addresses and were strictly internet-resolved. Great for deployed families, that sort of thing. But the ones you pay a small fee for are to allow non-internet PSTN calls, 'outside world' calls that have a paid connection to the PSTN.

Along come Predictive Dialers (PD). Those are the annoying things that call you. You design 'campaigns' on those things. For example, if they are calling within a certain area code (NPA) and exchange (NXX) they can generate outgoing Caller ID as that same NPA NXX plus random four numbers. Unlike the PSTN and good old PRI, Internet-resolved calls are the wild west and they can publish whatever the hell they like. And they do. That's why if you call that number that's bothering you back it's never the PD that called you, and why blocking that # never works. You pick it up because you think it might be local and that's the whole point.

OK. So your phone rings and it's a PD. The way the campaigns are set up usually considers a human voice to be a success, as is a simple hang up. The first means it's trying to route the call to a contact center agent, which is what the pause you hear is. From that agent's p.o.v it's an incoming call and the app they use is telling them what campaign made the call so they know how to answer the phone in heavily accented English. In either case, even a hang up, it's a success because it's just going to keep bothering you. Means someone's there. A failure is a null condition - neither of those things. So when I get a call I just pick the phone up and put the handset down saying nothing. Sometimes, because I got old phones, I just unplug the handset for a few minutes so it doesn't even hear background noise. That is occupying a resource - it's a glue trap - the PD wants a success and to keep going, not get stuck. It'll time out in a few minutes and (if you haven't unplugged the handset) you'll hear reorder....beep beep beep beep beep.

So that's what the old phone guy does with those things. It doesn't eliminate them but I get far, far less than I used to.
 
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