Thread: Nuisance calls purportedly from Telstra/Austel

Also, we have a 'Do not Call' register, and if we are registerd on it, (which I am), nobody except legitimate charities are allowed to ring.

Yeah... charities, research companies, political parties and educational institutions. Think you'll find that telco's and anyone who already supplies you with a service can slip through as well.

My son lives in Houston Texas and they average a call every 5 minutes tor around 14-16 hrs a day easiest and about the only way they have forund of counteracting this is every call is screened via answering machine. He tells me that around 60% of them are now recorded voicen and not even a real person. Which leads me to believe it is bots doing the calls and not people at all.

Years age we used to have around 10-20 spammers per day register for Woodwork Forums these were all done by humans. In December 2011 the security program which protected forums and blogs from spammers was cracked, hacked and broken by the spammers and in 11/2 days we had over 3000 new registrations before we managed to shut them down.

We now have a number of security systems in place and one that cannot (yet) be figured out by robots, Yet still we are turning away up to 2000 potential spammers per day. (98% of them are bots) When the protection was broken 2011 it left the way open for around 3.5 % of atte4mpted entries to get through 3.5%. Ath that time they said bots could generate around 100,000 trial registrations per minute and that there were many hundreds of thousands of these bots being used.

Makes the phone spammers/scammers look like childs play doesn't it.

My response to phone sales wait a few seconds if the line is silent hang up. We are on the Don't call register at home but not at the factory. That's not allowed. Average 4-5 calls per day at factory which unfortunately we have to answer. As soon as there is a spam related response at the other end I say "thank you, goodbye." and hang up. If they say they are from Telstra I ask for proof (we are on Telstra for everything) If they are not from telstra and are offering eceaper service I say "You have my number. Ring me back when you can offer me quarterly payments." then hang up.

Talking to them is a waste of time.

In the early days of phone spam I would just put the phone down and walk away. Did that one day and forgot I had. Went back to make a call and on the other end of the line was the same female just finishing a rendition of Over the Rainbow, she said and how was that for you. My response was "Wonderful..... Goodbye." She gets top marks for persistence and I guess boredom at her end.

My son has habded the phone to the babies (twins) when he had a spammer on the line. They lover gooing and garing into the phone. Got rid of spammers pretty quick and made for some fun for the twins.

Cheers - Neil

PS we are still cleaning out the spammers from Dec 2011 and to date have manually banned around 30,000 since the forums started. Both phone and internet spam is a blight and I hate it with a passion.

Originally Posted by ubeaut

Yeah... charities, research companies, political parties and educational institutions. Think you'll find that telco's and anyone who already supplies you with a service can slip through as well.

Yep. I re-registered the new number yesterday and read the list of 'allowed' callers. From the DNC register FAQs:

Will registering my number stop all telemarketing calls and marketing faxes?
No, registration won't stop all calls and faxes. Some public interest organisations (e.g. charities, political parties and educational institutions) can still call numbers listed on the register. This ensures these organisations can continue to provide valuable services to the community.
If you have an existing relationship with a business, it can still contact you, but you can advise them you do not wish to receive telemarketing calls or marketing faxes from them in the future.

Makes the phone spammers/scammers look like childs play doesn't it.

Amateurs compared with what you guys have to deal with on the forums, but still bloody annoying.

Both phone and internet spam is a blight and I hate it with a passion.

Me too.
Fingers crossed, but so far since changing my number/making it private, I've still had no annoying calls at all.