Ring Ring - Who's There? No One I Want To Talk To!

“Private Caller” Please Do Not Call!

Many of us, I’m sure, have subscribed to the “National Do Not Call Registry”.  Having done so we are not supposed to receive calls from telemarketers.  Unfortunately the registry still allows calls from politicians and charities and survey companies and organizations we may have done business with in the past.  What the registry doesn’t block is irritating calls from “Rachel of Credit Card Services” and all those charlatans who want to sell us senior citizens a walk in bath tub or a devise to let the world know we “have fallen and can’t get up!”

We have “caller ID” on our phone which displays the number of callers not only on our phone but also on our television screen.  As such, we can tell at a glance the origin of incoming calls.  Many of the calls we are receiving are coming from “private caller” or “out of area” so we immediately ignore those calls.  Most of the time those calls are from a telemarketer so to combat those persistent creeps several years ago we installed a phone call zapper.  The device blocks calls from telemarketers and tells predictive dialing computers that our phone is disconnected.  Our phone will usually ring three times and then abruptly the caller will be disconnected when the little zapper does its job!

How do these calls continue to clog up phone lines?  Well, I am not an expert but I think by disguising the origin as “private caller” or “out of area” allows some of the calls to come through.  In addition, I understand that there is now a service that for a small price one can purchase a personalized “caller ID” that will alter the origin of the call and thus one can spoof the recipient and have that person conclude they are receiving a legitimate call.  In fact, some phone carriers offer this service for free!

We have taken our phone zapper service a bit further too.  If we see a phone number on our screen that we want to ignore, our phone carrier allows us to block that call.  It is a simple process.  One pulls up the carrier on the Internet and proceeds to the “call blocking” feature.  Thus when someone calls, the following recorded message will be heard:  “The person you are calling is not available at this time”.  Having used this service from our carrier has eliminated a number of calls and frankly we have used it to block calls from certain people – we all have “certain people” we do not want to hear from I’m sure!  Frankly, I wish there was a way to alter the recorded message to: “You have reached someone who does not want to converse with you today, tomorrow or any time in the future. So please lose our phone number and disappear into the quagmire from which you emerged!”  And that’s a message originating from the sensitive side of my personality!  Zap!