Experience has shown that simply presenting incoming callers with a set of options, no matter how simple, will deter them from calling you. In the vast majority of situations, a telemarketer will simply hang up rather than make a choice and press a key.
This will also immediately foil all autodialers that simply belch a message in your ear and hang up.
Example usage of Zapateller and PrivacyManager
| Code Block |
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[homeline]
exten => s,1,Answer
exten => s,2,SetVar,repeatcount=0
exten => s,3,Zapateller,nocallerid
exten => s,4,PrivacyManager
;; do this if they don't enter a number to Privacy Manager
exten => s,5,GotoIf($[ "${PRIVACYMGRSTATUS}" = "FAILED" ]?s,105)
exten => s,6,GotoIf($[ "${CALLERID(num)}" = "7773334444" & "${CALLERID(name)}" : "Privacy Manager" ]?callerid-liar,s,1:s,7)
exten => s,7,Dial(SIP/yourphone)
exten => s,105,Background(tt-allbusy)
exten => s,106,Background(tt-somethingwrong)
exten => s,107,Background(tt-monkeysintro)
exten => s,108,Background(tt-monkeys)
exten => s,109,Background(tt-weasels)
exten => s,110,Hangup
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I suggest using Zapateller at the beginning of the context, before anything else, on incoming calls.This can be followed by the PrivacyManager App.
Make sure, if you do the PrivacyManager app, that you take care of the error condition! or their non-compliance will be rewarded with access to the system. In the above, if they can't enter a 10-digit number in 3 tries, they get the humorous "I'm sorry, but all household members are currently helping other telemarketers...", "something is terribly wrong", "monkeys have carried them away...", various loud monkey screechings, "weasels have...", and a hangup. There are plenty of other paths to my torture scripts, I wanted to have some fun.
In nearly all cases now, the telemarketers/charity-seekers that usually get thru to my main intro, hang up. I guess they can see it's pointless, or the average telemarketer/charity-seeker is instructed not to enter options when encountering such systems. Don't know.