Annoyed By Automated Telemarketing Calls? Trick Them Into Never Calling You Again!

There are probably gadgets you can buy that already do this, but lifehacker has a post with a great telephone tip: Trick Automated Phone Bots into Never Calling You Again.

Automated phone bots keep interrupting your dinner with their pre-recorded marketing messages? Play the U.S. Special Information Tone signal for “vacant circuit” when you pick up the phone. Our brother site Consumerist says a reader who kept getting automated debt collection calls added the tone to the beginning of his voicemail greeting:

The next time the robot called, it thought it was getting a dead line and dutifully erased the number from its system. Voila, automatons be gone. Some places have autodialers that don’t (or have been tweaked) to respond to SIT tones, but if you’ve got a persistent unwanted robot caller, it’s worth a shot.

Of course, adding this to your answering machine greeting may confuse genuine human callers as well, but that may be worth scaring off the bots.

Read more here: http://lifehacker.com/343595/trick-automated-phone-bots-into-never-calling-you-again

Pretty cool idea, though you might want to mention the tone to regular callers so they don’t think you disappeared 😉