[VoIP] Fun with Pat and Jane

[Russ Price]

Steph Kerman wrote:
> I receive calls on a regular basis from a specific organization that 
> claims to offer debt consolidation.  So far, though I have gotten better 
> at it, I have not succeeded in learning their identity.  Each time I get 
> further into the dialog with them.  Of course, I am recording each of 
> these calls for quality assurance.  ;-)    And so that there is a record 
> of the time, date, duration and exact details of each call in case I 
> eventually am able to report them for violation of DNC regulations.   
> But these folks are crafty and as soon as you say the wrong thing you 
> are met with an immediate loop current interruption as they summarily 
> terminate the call.  Asking who they are or how to contact them is the 
> first big "no-no".   Answering with anything about your credit situation 
> that does not match their target produces the same result.  So far 
> they've probably called me 6 or more times.  I have no need for their 
> services but I am slightly outraged that they blatantly ignore the DNC 
> rules and play this anonymity game.  I wonder at what point if any they 
> would reveal who they are.  Perhaps they are just phishing for 
> identities to steal from the gullible.

I get similar calls, usually for extended car warranties (never mind 
that my car has 150,000 miles on it).  They always have vague or utterly 
nonsensical names in their CID info, and they come from a variety of 
different area codes (typically Michigan, New Jersey, 
Maryland/DC/Virginia, the Las Vegas area, and northern California).  The 
sales pitch is identical in all cases, and I just hang up and dial *60 
to blacklist that number.

When I look up these numbers on <http://whocalled.us/>, they often are 
also involved in credit consolidation and "you just won a vacation to 
Cancun" scams.  I guess the same shadowy organization is behind all of this.

When calls come from a blacklisted number, I increment the counter in 
the Asterisk database to serve as a hit count - and I have a Perl CGI 
that displays my CDR data (I keep it in a MySQL database) so I can look 
for patterns.  If I see two junk calls from the same hundreds group, I 
blacklist the whole block of 100 - and that catches more junk calls with 
bizarre CID names.

I'm not on the DNC list, but I get relatively few junk calls.  Certain 
area codes/prefixes tend to be egregious offenders.  One CLEC in 
Michigan (Lucre, Inc.) is, in my experience, a true junk call spamhaus, 
to the point that I'm tempted to plug every single Lucre prefix and 
thousands block into my blacklist - or, perhaps, a greylist that sends 
the caller into PrivacyManager, or a CAPTCHA of some sort ("Press 
<insert-random-digit> if you are a human.").

Unidentified callers get sent to PrivacyManager for an opportunity to 
key in their phone number (they never do, so they get dumped), and I 
have a macro to check for obviously bogus CID (I just got one today 
allegedly from 888-114-5564) and dump such callers.  Of course, it won't 
work well for international calls - maybe I should check to see if the 
name says "INTERNATIONAL" to be sure...

; Check for obviously bogus Caller ID data (e.g. 0+, 1+, NPA+0+, NPA+1+)
[macro-check4bogus]
; length must be 10 digits
exten => s,1,GotoIf($[${LEN(${ARG1})} != 10]?s-BOGUS|1)
; Must not begin with 0 or 1
exten => s,n,GotoIf($[${ARG1:0:1} = 1]?s-BOGUS|1)
exten => s,n,GotoIf($[${ARG1:0:1} = 0]?s-BOGUS|1)
; Fourth digit must not be 0 or 1
exten => s,n,GotoIf($[${ARG1:3:1} = 1]?s-BOGUS|1)
exten => s,n,GotoIf($[${ARG1:3:1} = 0]?s-BOGUS|1)
; if the CID tests OK, s-BOGUS does *not* get executed
exten => s-BOGUS,1,Set(BOGO=${MATH(${DB(bogus/${ARG1})}+1,int)})
exten => s-BOGUS,2,GotoIf(${BOGO}?4)
exten => s-BOGUS,3,Set(BOGO=1)
exten => s-BOGUS,4,Set(DB(bogus/${ARG1})=${BOGO})
exten => s-BOGUS,n,Zapateller(answer)
exten => s-BOGUS,n,Wait(1)
exten => s-BOGUS,n,Flite(You are using bogus Caller I D information. I 
do not wish to talk to you.)
exten => s-BOGUS,n,Wait(2)
exten => s-BOGUS,n,Hangup

Note that Flite will interpret "Caller ID" as "Caller Idaho" - so it's 
necessary to add a space ("Caller I D") to make it sound right.