| Caller ID block is a service you can get through your phone company It prevents anyone from calling your house unless they send caller ID information. This alone may prevent some solicitors from calling, but others will simply send 000-000-0000 as the number and O (out of area) as the name. Call Soft will display this information as "Unknown" and put 000-000-0000 in the number column of the history list. Not all "Unknown" will be solicitors, but during Call Soft's testing, about 9 out of 10 were. Other Solicitors will send some name like "PINK HEART" or something disguising their real name.
|
|
|
| How to put a stop to it:
|
| You can choose to simply hang up, or play a greeting then hang up. Here are two ways to do it.
|
|
|
| Method 1 (recommended):
|
| · | Don't let your main greeting take a message, i.e. choose the option "Wait for caller input" on the mailbox properties dialog window. Create a greeting that says something like "Press 1 to leave a message".
|
| · | Create a sub menu named "My Messages". Make it's access code 1 and choose the option take message.
|
|
| · | Most telemarketers use a computer to dial your number. The computer listens for someone to answer then say something like "hello". It can distinguish between an answering machine message and a real person because your answering machine message will continue to talk i.e. not say "hello" then wait.
|
| · | The telemarketers computer will not understand the "press 1 to leave a message", and since the main greeting is set to wait for caller input, Call Soft will simply play the greeting wait a few seconds then hang up. However, if the call is a friend, he can simply hit 1 and leave a message.
|
|
|
| Method 2:
|
| · | From the history list, right click on the solicitor's name and select "Block xxxx From Calling Again" where xxxx is the solicitor's name.
|
| · | Select "Use this number to identify this caller".
|
| · | Choose a name to appear in the history list like "Pink Heart Solicitor"
|
| · | If you want to create a personalized but ugly greeting for them, create or choose the greeting you want to play.
|
| · | Click the "Hang up" or "Play greeting then hang up" button.
|
| · | Click OK.
|
|
|
|
|
| Anti Telemarketer Tone SIT (Special Information Tone)
|
|
|
| · | What is it? This is a tone which tells the telemarketers' "call progress detection" equipment that they have a disconnected number. This results in a disconnect from anyone using automated equipment. After approximately 3 attempts from each of the major telemarketing operations, your number is theoretically removed from their master list.
|
| · | How it Works: It is possible to confuse the telemarketers' software with a false SIT tone. This tells the predictive dialing software that yours is a non-working number.
|
| · | How to use it with Call Soft: Create or edit any phone book entry you have flagged as a telemarketer. For the personal greeting select Anti Telemarketer Sound.wav.
|
|
|
|
|
| See also:
|
| · | Phone book entry.
|
| · | Mailbox properties
|