Call Blocking Devices

Why are there no affordable, commercially available, flexible call blocking devices?  It would seem simple for an electronics company to create an answering machine that requires the caller to press a button, or series of buttons, on the caller's phone in order to get past the machine to make the recipient's phone ring.  Such devices have been available in the past, but each of them has been "discontinued."  For example, the "Screen Machine" was exactly what I would want, but it was "discontinued" without any explanation I can find.  I tried to find a used one on Ebay, but my search came up empty.

Surely the technology is there to create and market such devices.  But you just cannot find them.

I recently ran across an item called a "Telebouncer" on Amazon.  The price tag for this relatively simple device is over $100, which must be highly profitable for those in the supply chain. That has me scratching my head in wonder at the dearth of competitive products out there.

While the Telebouncer looks like it might be helpful, it doesn't appear to have the flexibility to allow me to insert my own outgoing message or allow me to set the number or code for the incoming caller to enter. (The Screen Machine did that.)  Thus, all a robocaller has to do is have its system include the single-digit code in its script, and the device becomes useless for everyone who owns it.  Since there are no competitors who use a different single-digit code, I expect this product will soon be obsolete - or if it remains effective, I expect that it will be "discontinued."

Do telemarketers (or their cohorts) own patents on these types of products, so that they can threaten manufacturers and sellers of such products out of existence?  Do they buy the rights to such products so that they can then be discontinued?  I am not a big conspiracy theorist, but something is going on here - something that smells really bad.

I agree with with healthynut, it is past annoying,  it is just sinister. Healthynut I have a suggestion for you , I have this and it works very well for me, and I am not suggesting or promoting "Google" but I have a Google Voice number (it's free) and completely customizable, you can send that number to the spam, there are all kinds of good things you can do with it I also have it on my cell phone as well. Check it out, itay be worth your while:) I wish there was a " do not text list" although I have found the do not call list a waste of time myself, I still think there should be hefty fines for both harassing and rude calls from these vultures. If anyone,knows,how to really stick it to these jerks, please post it.

If its a cell phone, check if your phone has a block list option in its settings. I was able to block "unknown" this way. As for texts, you can fwd the spam to 7726 to report it. This works for the major cell phone companies.

I don't have a landline, so I have no advice there. As to a conspiracy, its all about money all the time anyways, isn't it. :(

Give this a try:    http://digitone.com/

It's $100.00, but you only pay once and you don't need to dedicate a computer or modem like with some software solutions.

I have something similar, but  older and no longer available (telemarketers paying off developers to discontinue products?  I wonder, but no evidence)   and it does block effectively and can be configured to block everything from single numbers  to whole area codes (all 800-type numbers etc) as well as "no name" or "no number" caller id numbers.   Not perfect, but way better than nothing.

and still does for some telemarketing calls - but with the advances in VOIP calling, the telezapper does not work on computer generated calls.  

Most phone carriers offer blocking features - however YOU have to contact your own carrier to find out how it works.

Agree with everyone above. In  my case phonetray free works well. I have the computer on for 12 hours, off for 12 hours. I do admit that's not practical for most people & I would also like another solution. I edited the .csv file that runs PhoneTray & have blocked every area code except the one I like in. I don't have an Uncle Albert in Albany, or an Aunt Vicki in Vicksburg. Also, there are NO area codes in North America between 000 and 200. 300, 400, 500 & 600 also don't exist. Why can't these things be pre-programmed to block every area code that currently doesn't exist? Or, give you the choice to have one programmed to block every area code except your own? The difficulty in getting such an item shows why phone scams are so big & hard to stop (I didn't want to say 'unstoppable'). A true genius would make one of these things with a USB plug. Plug it into the computer & edit it to what you want.
    Last notes- Google Voice is great, but only in the USA. Creating a PBX system is also a good idea. But better for Voip than a landline. The block selection also seems to be better for cell phones than landlines. I'm considering that option (ditch the home land-line phone).Thank you to everyone who takes the time to comment on these things.

Healthynut, you're overthinking the problem if you imagine that nuisance callers are sharing beds with call management device makers. The chief disadvantage with a purely technological response, which I know I've argued before, is that our call blocking and their tactical shifting turns into an arms race in which the consumer is soon outgunned.

The Screen Machine gives a great example of this problem. Circa 2002 it was a thoughtfully designed entry among competing phone privacy gadgets. Ten years later, a lot of my pals no longer own a POTS phone or use a landline, the environment SM was built for. Too many legitimate and innocuous callers now use automated dialers and recorded voices to make its brute force challenge/response motif practical. I'd discussed this device six months ago in a somewhat related thread titled "Phone scams and elderly parents".

https://800notes.com/forum/ta-4acd8d4ce71ef1b/phone-scams-and-elderly-parents

As to where the thing went, I think its maker Spectrum Research went belly-up years ago. The specialty sales website Privacy Corps at some point buried its link to product info, but you can still read the promo copy under a red-lettered warning: "This product has been discontinued due to high failure rates and customer dissatisfaction."

http://www.privacycorps.com/pages/screen-machine-review.htm

I also understand that some users reported compatibility issues, which would be quite damning for any device interfacing with a decidedly non-smart phone. I managed to get two new ones for dirt cheap years ago and never had a severe problem. Milage may vary. You will note that other offerings on that site have also either gone to the trash bin or been sharply price-cut, supporting my "arms race" contention.

Calling Screen Machine "flexible" next to what you can do now with a VOIP account is laughable. Its three fixed passcodes were never really a secret, and their main function was to "Turing Test" callers and trigger distinct ring patterns. Its ominous "FM radio voice" canned warning to callers was clumsily written and can't strictly be enforced. To replace it with a custom greeting you have to plug in a POTS phone and use it like a microphone. It took me several tries to find the one phone in the house which delivered an almost clean output.

I had mine placed ahead of my message recorder in the RJ11 cable chain, which had its own set of mailboxes and codes for users to enter. What I found the hard way was that many of my welcome human callers were fooled into thinking I had some tricked out PBX or call management system. They would leave messages full of keypress tones like they were trying to navigate an Automated Attendant menu, then make multiple retry calls until they realized there was no "main menu" command. I had to be extra careful how I phrased things to be helpful in the greetings on both machines, but no amount of instruction was going to overcome the fact that I lacked a true device integration.

Now sure, at one time when I had nothing better and the nuisance calls came in hailstorms, I thought this gadget was the bee's knees. In retrospect my system was a pain to update and frustrating for "whitelist" callers. I somewhat felt their pain every time I called my own machine remotely to replay messages. I would need a pretty severe problem with illegal bot calls before I consider using SM again.

The better known TeleZapper didn't have half the SM's features, and it went from "legacy hardware" to "relic" even sooner. PhoneTray is more flexible but stuck between worlds, as again the market drift is away from desktop PCs and voice modems and toward a fully digital and portable telecomm environment that a resurrected Ma Bell would never recognize. Now the chanting is for certain Panasonic phones and Digitone devices. Those too will be overwhelmed, outmaneuvered, or made obsolete. Nuisance call center operators don't have to secretly invest in those gadget sellers to sabotage them. Plain old changes over time in how we communicate will do that work with no one's hands soiled.

Resident47-Thanks again! I read a comment somewhere on this site that "whoever has the best technology, wins". Very true words. I hope everyone continues to add to this thread, makes for a good read.

Since the question was asked in a posting above about how to block unwanted calls that come through a land-line system, I will state that for me, as someone with only a land line system, Caller ID is the best defense I have. If I see a phone number or name I do not recognize, I simply do not answer; when I check my phone log every so often, if such names and numbers appear, I delete them. It does drive me up the wall a bit to have to let the phone ring, yes, when I am "there" to take calls. One thing I am very definite about doing is keeping a log of the spurious names and numbers, reporting them to 800notes, and then to the FCC.

I had a Screen Machine, but stopped using it due to some of the reasons mentioned earlier.   It confused some of my welcome callers.  Too, we wanted to hear the robocalls aimed at reminding us of our doctor appointments, but they didn't work well with the Screen Machine.

The older Tele-Art TelAssistant gadget permits one to designate phone numbers to block, but it is not flexible enough to permit blocking entire area codes.

Both Screen Machines and TelAssistants have long been discontinued and I bought them a super low clearance prices years ago.

More recently, I installed a Digitone Call Blocker 10 (see http://digitone.com ), which permits blocking individual phone numbers as well as entire area codes.    The Call Blocker 10 regenerates the caller ID information so it will display on telephones connected to it.  I couldn't find any other blocker which preserves the caller ID information.   The other products "swalllow" the caller ID info.

The Call Blocker 10 lets you set up a White list or a Block list and has several other features.  I have owned it for only about a month and am still evaluating it.   I like it so far.

Resident47, you say "the chanting is for certain Panasonic phones and Digitone devices."  Do you know of any Panasonic phones that allow a user to do what I want - have a pre-recorded voice answer all calls and then redirect the caller based on the caller's touch-tone input?  Can you specify which product(s) allow that?  I know one could invest four or more figures in a PBX phone system or something like that, but I'm looking for a sub-$100 system.  Thank you for the previous response.

I don't honestly recall any model numbers, only that those names come up often in 'blocker du juor' discussions. It rather sounds like you want automated attendant functions. A dozen years ago my employer found a device slightly larger than an ordinary phone message system which was essentially AA In a Box. It had multiple mailboxes with their own greetings, easy navigation via phone keypress, a generous LCD display for management, and too many other features to list. A few months after he bought it, AT&T found its small maker and rebadged it.

I haven't seen anything quite like it since, but then I haven't looked very hard. Its name and original street price both escape me, but I bring this up to try to define your application. I don't know how complex a device you'd need, or if you've abandoned the challenge/response idea from your initial post.

You might want to peruse Lone Stranger's occasional input on call management. LS generally carries a pennant for software PBX and Google Voice, with appropriate caveats for each. It's hard to pin down a definitive thread, but this should get you started:

https://800notes.com/forum/ta-1a77502c40e6fcf/google-voice

Sometimes that's true. My statement about being outgunned has another meaning. One of my running themes is that nuisance callers frequently operate whole blocks of phone numbers, not counting any spoofed numbers. Most of us lowly citizens have what, one or two numbers to defend? They also change, rotate, and abandon numbers more easily than is practical for you and me. This is one reason I shy from hardware-only blocking and am nonplussed by boasts of any given volume of block slots.

My other theme is that our gadgets need to be part of an overall strategy in which we first ty to disable the caller at its source, using mostly the legal tools within TCPA or FDCPA as they apply. I write enough about that elsewhere that I don't want to drag this thread off topic. But sometimes the aphorism could read: "Those who ignore the rules lose."

There is one other idea for Canada, or the USA. Subscribe to call forwarding on your home phone & set it to permanent forward to a MagicJack phone number. Magic Jack Plus plugs into your modem & that's a problem. I have both MJ's & I can tell you that after a while, with Magic Jack Plus, you get junk calls. So it would have to be plugged into a computer. Not a fantastic solution, but 3rd party software for MJ will let you do some great things. Since MJ is only $20. a year, it offsets the cost of getting call forwarding. One thing I like with MJ is that voice messages can be sent to your email inbox. See a number you don't like? Well, as the Cybermen say "Delete, Delete". I do understand that it's not a fantastic idea. Not much better that PhoneTray, but it's another idea.

"Now the chanting is for certain Panasonic phones and Digitone devices. Those too will be overwhelmed, outmaneuvered, or made obsolete."


I believe that will be the case too Resident47.