OBiTALK Community

General Support => Day-to-Day Use => Topic started by: Gavo on February 21, 2013, 02:52:54 am



Title: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: Gavo on February 21, 2013, 02:52:54 am
Hello,

I want to block a particular call centre from calling me - to be precise it's 01612494497  (Manchester, UK). Not sure if it's possible as the call comes down the pstn. Is there any way my Obi110 can match the number and simply drop the call or answer and return an nu  (number unobtainable) tone or similar ?

Cheers

Gavin


Title: Re: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: zapattack on February 21, 2013, 11:35:49 pm
If you normally send the calls to VM, or you have an answering machine, you can put 2 seconds of NU tone at the begining of your recording. It may work.
North American calls use Special Information Tones which can cause most auto-dialers to drop the call immediately, but most human callers don't notice the strange tone and still leave a message.


Title: Re: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: ianobi on February 22, 2013, 06:11:16 am
Another approach is to send the call to the "bit bucket", or to somewhere for fun:

Physical Interfaces > LINE Port > InboundCallRoute:
{01612494497:},{ph}
This will leave the caller getting ringing tone, but will not ring phones connected to the OBi. Downside is your PSTN line is kept busy as long as the caller hangs on.

If you have any SIP providers set up on the OBi you can send the caller somewhere for fun at no cost to you. I'm using sp2, which can be a real provider or a "fake" SIP account using proxy 127.0.0.1

Physical Interfaces > LINE Port > InboundCallRoute:
{01612494497:sp2(9999@qxip.net)},{ph}
Caller hears a couple of rings, then music. No Obi phones ring.

Physical Interfaces > LINE Port > InboundCallRoute:
{01612494497:sp2(wbdemo@conf.zipdx.com)},{ph}
Caller hears a couple of rings, then advertising spiel. No Obi phones ring.

I'm sure that you can find other interesting places to send a nuisance caller to  :)


Title: Re: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: Gavo on February 27, 2013, 01:33:59 pm
Thanks Ianobi, going to have fun with this tomorrow.

Cheers

Gavin


Title: Re: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: giqcass on February 27, 2013, 02:55:34 pm
I just used this same trick on my OBi202.  I have a phone tethered to the Bluetooth adapter and I keep getting repeated machine calls from one number over and over again.  No answer when I return the calls and just a beep when I answer them.  I would like to say this works very well.  I of course had to put the code in
Voice Services > OBiBlueTooth 1 > InboundCallRoute:


Title: Re: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: Gavo on March 04, 2013, 05:58:02 am
Here's a thought - may sound completely nuts but excuse me :)

With a lot of call centres making those awful PPI reclaim calls they are often calling from overseas, my BT pstn line simply shows "international" if there any way of getting the number ?
For instance could you redirect any number marked International out via SP1 to call a SIP number registered to SP2 and in doing so reveal the CLI, match it and ditch it ?

Obviously you could ditch or simply not answer anything marked as International but it would be a neat trick to somehow filter these.

Cheers

Gavin


Title: Re: Matching a phone number and blocking it ?
Post by: ianobi on March 04, 2013, 07:51:45 am
Nice idea, but it's a non-runner. Forwarding/routing etc is all based on the CallerID shown as "Peer Number" in your OBi. Another SIP provider will simply detect exactly what the OBi detects as CallerID.

Note for our non-British readers: BT in this context means British Telecom not Blue Tooth. I'm always ready to provide an English to English translation service  :D