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I hate telemarketers

(This may slow them down)

Oh how I hate telespammers. They're the scourge of the earth. They're the most lowly form of scum, except for email spammers. They won't take a hint, and the more you try to avoid them, the harder they try to annoy you.

Tonight I came home to half a dozen new messages on my answering machine, and half of those were from telemarketers "following up with me" on my "recent inquiry" about "how to make lots of money" { on the stock market, selling magazines, sucking cock, in the international drug trade, shearing sheep }. Well, finally I had enough and decided to take matters into my own hands.

My first thought was to record a message that included "take me off your lists, you bloody telemarketing bastards." But I've tried that in the past and it did no good. My second thought was, "isn't there some technical means available to do this?"

Many have heard of this "telezapper" thing that's supposed to "trick" the telespammer autodialers into thinking your number is not in service. Problem is, they cost like $45. If I had $45, I'd be spending it on advertising morons.org on FARK or Portal of Evil or i-mockery or maybe on groceries. A little tone generator box hardly seems worth $45.

So I did a little research online and found out about Special Information Tones. You know those 3 tones you hear right before the recording of the british lady telling you that you suck because you misdialed, right before she snootily says "If you BELEIVE you reached this recording in ERROR, please CHECK the number and dial AGAIN." She sounds like my fucking sarcastic 9th grade geometry teacher. What a cunt she was!

Back to Special Information Tones. These three tones actually mean something, believe it or not, and they're not just there to get your attention. The exact pitch and duration of the tones indicates why a call did not complete. All these telemarketing stopper toys do is to play these tones when you answer the phone. Hardly seems worth $45.

So I did some more hunting and managed to dig up an instance of the SIT that means "number not in service" and took it from its original form (44khz, 8 bit mono) and encoded it as an 16kbps 11,025hz mono mp3. That took it from 44kB to 2kB, making it much less of a bandwidth threat.

So here's what you can do to get these bastards to stop leaving spam on your answering machine.

• Download and save sit.mp3 (2410 bytes).
• Get your answering machine ready to record your greeting. Figure out what you're going to say.
• If your answering machine is digital and doesn't start recording until it "hears" something, you'll want to make some kind of noise when you're ready to play the mp3, otherwise the machine may truncate the first few ms of the tones.
• Play the tones. Aren't PCs grand?
• Record your message. Maybe explain to your callers why the tones are there and tell them to visit morons.org! And of course, tell telemarketers to go to hell.

That's all there is to it. In addition to this measure, I also block all incoming calls that block caller ID. You might check to see if this is a service available from your telco. Now when someone calls, if I don't know the name or number, or it comes through as "Unknown Number", I just let the machine get it.

Remember, your milage may vary, and you can bet telemarketers will try to find some way to circumvent this- they just don't get the hint that when someone goes to that much trouble not to be bothered, they really don't want to be bothered. They can't accept the idea that someone may really not give a damn about their fabulous offer.

---Nick