Cold Call - New Tactic

[Wallace]

I do have a brand new, unused, trueCall standalone unit. I purchased it for my parents specifically so they could keep the familiar landline telephone instrument. In the end events took over and it never happened. I could have used it myself, but prefer the combined mobile/answerphone/blocker.

 

[Trev]

I have a truecall and just let withheld numbers through for the reasons above. Spammers don't seem to use withheld numbers anyway, at least I have never had a spam call for a withheld number.

 

[Wallace]

Me neither, but I had to switch off the call blocking feature to enable calls from healthcare professionals to get through.
If anyone knows a way to use it to block unknown numbers, or at least numbers not in its directory, but let ‘withheld’ numbers through, I would be grateful if they could let me know how.

 

[Black Hole]

If anyone knows a way to use it to block unknown numbers, or at least numbers not in its directory, but let ‘withheld’ numbers through, I would be grateful if they could let me know how.

I think you might be able to do that using a trueCall and their Internet Control Panel - the specific handling of different classes of inbound CLID is reasonably fine grained.

 

[Black Hole]

Been plagued with calls to my landline getting past my defences the last couple of days, spoofing (or using) random mobile numbers. So far they've been recorded messages "your Amazon Prime account is about to be closed" or some such thing.

Today I've had three so far:

One standard Amazon one;

Another a recorded message claiming my BT line is about to be disconnected;

The third from a live caller (with a call centre hubbub in the background) claiming to be from BT. I asked him to prove he was from BT and he tried to persuade me I was Mr Hubbard from some other address in my exchange area. I told him he hadn't passed my security checks and hung up. As if BT would call me from a mobile number!

There is nothing I can do to block these except to allow through whitelist only.

The penny has dropped: the first two were the preliminaries for the third. Hopefully they now know they would be wasting their time trying again.

 

[MartinLiddle]

I have a BT8500 Advanced Call Blocker and it screens unrecognised numbers. The caller has to say who they are and I then accept or decline the call; works fine for me and has virtually eliminated nuisance calls. Recognised numbers get straight through and my GP practice now uses a local number so doesn't need screening.

 

[Black Hole]

The caller has to say who they are and I then accept or decline the call

That's called "whisper" in trueCall-land.

 

[Wallace]

Yes, my phone is a BT8500. But in our case, we are receiving calls from clinics/hospital and they are withholding their numbers.

 

[Deleted member 473]

So, we already have panasonic wireless phones. Can you accept or reject a call at any of them with truecall?

 

[Black Hole]

Yes, it sits between the phone line and the DECT base station (or any other wired phone).

 

[Deleted member 473]

I might look into that. We had another call blocker but I gave up when it was blocking 1000 different numbers.

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[Deleted member 473]

Our GP and hospitals still withdraw their numbers. You can tell them to add 14170 to the start of your number but they don't always do that.

 

[Black Hole]

I might look into that. We had another call blocker but I gave up when it was blocking 1000 different numbers.

A trueCall is about £100, but worth it in my opinion. And then there is a modest subscription for access to the Internet Control Panel.

Via the ICP, wild cards can be used in the Star (white) list and Hash (black) list, so my strategy is to send all calls not whitelisted to the messaging, and then whitelist not only known contacts but also whole areas I have connections with.

 

[prpr]

You can tell them to add 14170 to the start of your number but they don't always do that.

Perhaps they can't get it to work because it is actually 1470.

 

[Black Hole]

I knew about 141 prefix, I didn't know about 1470 prefix.

 

[Luke]

Yes, my phone is a BT8500. But in our case, we are receiving calls from clinics/hospital and they are withholding their numbers.

One option to try is that when you give the number they are to use to contact you then you included 1470 at the start of the number you give them.

 

[Ezra Pound]

My landline phone is a BT8500 Call Blocker (Powered by TrueCall), I use Allowed Numbers (Whitelist) only, but you can have Allowed Numbers + Announce for non whitelist where the caller hears an 'Hello' recording made by you and is asked to leave a message, the phone then rings and the user hears the caller's message, they then have options to block or accept the call, accepting the call also adds the number to the white list

 

[Black Hole]

My landline phone is a BT8500 Call Blocker (Powered by TrueCall), I use Allowed Numbers (Whitelist) only, but you can have Allowed Numbers + Announce for non whitelist where the caller hears an 'Hello' recording made by you and is asked to leave a message, the phone then rings and the user hears the caller's message, they then have options to block or accept the call, accepting the call also adds the number to the white list

That's called "whisper" in trueCall-land.

 

[Trev]

Notwithstanding my current practice as detailed in post #22, I previously found that the Treucall "Press 7(or whatever) to get through" worked just fine for me. People who withhold their numbers, such as doctors, know what to do, but auto diallers fail this test. Can't remember what they call it.

 

[Black Hole]

Can't remember what they call it.

Shield.

Good point, I had forgotten about that. I'll think about using that method as a second line of defence, so that unstarred mobile numbers are challenged to press a key.

What I would like, which doesn't seem to be implemented, is a means to divert non-star callers to answering (as I do now) but only allowed to actually leave a message by pressing a key. That would stop my recording time being filled up with recordings of robocall announcements (or more commonly "one of your telephones is off the hook, please replace the handset" - as it does when it fails to detect the line has been dropped).