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Any Way To Thwart Neighbor Spoofing?

Started by chilirock, February 21, 2018, 03:34:20 PM

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chilirock

I'm wondering if anyone has come up with a good way to stop unwanted "neighbor spoofing" calls. You know these are the calls that look like they are coming from your neighbor, 1-XXX-YYY-ZZZZ where the 1-XXX-YYY part of the incoming call is the same as your own number, only the ZZZZ is different.

I am using Google Voice forwarded to CallCentric (for CNAM and e911). Google Voice doesn't have any means for setting up call filtering or rules based on number patterns. I tried setting up a Call Treatment in CallCentric to route incoming calls to their "Telemarketer Block" function. With this setup, the phone attached to the Obi never rings, the caller hears ring back, and the call eventually gets picked up by Google Voicemail.

CallCentric never picks up the call in this configuration, and therefore can't apply the Call Treatment. This isn't the end of the world for us since 99% of the phone calls that we get with the same 1-XXX-YYY as our number are spam. So if we were to receive a legitimate call, we would eventually get the voicemail message. The downside is that we would never get the live call this way.

What I wanted to happen was for the call to get picked up by CallCentric and apply the Telemarketer Block function. Then if it was a real person, they would have to select the defined code and it would ring through to the Obi.

Is there an Obi approach to this problem using digit maps or call routes? Has anyone come up with another solution that doesn't involve a separate third party, e.g. RoboKiller or Nomorobo?

Taoman

The key to getting effective CC call treatments when forwarding from Google Voice is to use CC's IVR function. The reason the telemarketer block doesn't work as expected is because it uses early media which GV ignores. The CC IVR does not use early media so it works well.

So make your own Telemarketer block with an IVR and then route to it in a call treatment.

For instance, my CC IVR telemarketer block looks like this under Menu Audio:
Press
1 (one)
To leave a voicemail message

Then under "Key Pressed" I just have key 1 do a special forward to CC voicemail.
All other keys are No Action
Last Route is also a Special forward set to Busy tone/Line disconnect

Then just route to your IVR from a CC call treatment based on desired criteria. Very effective.

chilirock

#2
@Taoman, I took your advice with one slight adjustment. I wanted successful calls to ring my phone, to not always be routed directly to voicemail. I setup a new IVR requesting the caller dial "1" to be connected. If the caller dials "1" then I forward the call to my default CallCentric extension "100" which rings the phone connected to my Obi.

That allows me to receive live calls if the caller successfully dials the "1" to connect. If the caller doesn't dial a number, or if they dial a number other than "1", then like you I setup the Last Route to forward the call to a "Busy tone/Line disconnect", thanking them for their call of course ;) I'm assuming most robo calls won't have the ability or won't dial a "1".

Thanks for your help. I don't think I would have thought of this approach on my own. I don't know why CallCentric doesn't treat the Telemarketer Block like an IVR call. If they did, then all of this could be handled with a simple Call Treatment without the IVR. I sent them a suggestion for the change.

chilirock

I thought I would add to this thread based on my experience with the recent migration of Google Voice from XMPP to SIP. After the transition, Google Voice now seems to support Early Media. I tested this by reverting my previous configuration of Call Treatment/IVR solution to just handle the call with a simple Call Treatment alone.

I can confirm that Google Voice calls forwarded to CallCentric are handled properly with a simple Call Treatment and asks the caller whose number matches my same area code (XXX) and exchange (YYY) 1-XXX-YYY-ZZZZ to enter a code to be connected. Nice benefit of the GV transition to SIP.

lhm.

@ chilirock

Can you share how you configured your call treatment? I would like something similar.

TIA

Luke

chilirock

#5
@lhm,

Create a new Call Treatment under the Call Treatment tab. I configured mine with the following attributes. Obviously you could change any of the settings for 3 - 6 to suit your needs.

1) One destination > Extension = 100 (default)
2) Call coming from Caller ID = "This number" = 1234567xxxx where 234567 are your area code and exchange. The "xxxx" should remain as "xxxx" which act as a wildcard to match incoming numbers
3) Called Number = "Any number"
4) Status is = "Any"
5) Spam probability = "Any"
6) Telemarketer Block = "Press [rand digt] to connect

Forcing the caller to press a specific number stops automated telemarketer calls since they don't seem to be able to know which digit to press. Real callers that have the same area code and exchange that match callerID rule in #2 will be able to press the correct digit to connect the call. Seems to work really well for us.

Time_Lord

Best thing I ever setup on the obi

I have GV forward to Call centric so I get callid with name, and then the Call Centric IVR rules process the neighbor spam calls.

Oddly enough the amount of neighbor spam calls, to me anyway, have dropped off dramatically in the last month as I don't see many in the call logs on Call Centric.  Maybe the FCC has finally gotten some of the spammers off the phone?

-TL

zsak23

Because I have many legitimate callers within my exchange I have found the following additional setup at Google Voice Legacy Settings help.

Google Chat unchecked and CallCentric checked on the Phones tab.  Under the Groups & Circles tab All Contacts group is sent to Google Chat.  I add any legitimate caller to my Contacts. 

This way legitimate callers go directly to my OBi and unknown callers to CallCentric.

SteveInWA

Google Chat is dead.  It will be removed from your configuration very soon, as part of the conversion to the new Google Voice platform.  Do not try to manually reconfigure it.