Blocking Withheld numbers

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alasta

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#1005525 14-Mar-2014 12:50

gundar: Before you do this, consider that the police and hospitals remove caller ID too, so in the event a family member is in trouble (or your bestie needs bail posted), you may miss a critical call. While you'd also be missing calls from the IRD, they always get their money anyway, so avoidance is not any long term solution.

Possibly the best approach is to take the call and if it's not relevant just say - "I don't have the time to take this call, I'm busy [piloting a plane|delivering a child|commiting and act of violence] please send me the details by email" and follow that with your secondary (spam) email address. If the caller is after a quick buck, they won't go to the trouble of writing an email.

The problem is that if you're right in the middle of doing something that you need to stay focussed on then even taking 30 seconds to pick up the phone is seriously disruptive. I work on the assumption that if an anonymous call is important then the caller will leave a voicemail message.

NikT

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#1005531 14-Mar-2014 13:02

I believe recent Samsung devices have the option to automatically reject private numbers.

My number is generally private for a number of reasons, but it's only a few seconds' work to change that if need be.

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Geektastic

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#1006651 16-Mar-2014 11:57

alasta:
gundar: Before you do this, consider that the police and hospitals remove caller ID too, so in the event a family member is in trouble (or your bestie needs bail posted), you may miss a critical call. While you'd also be missing calls from the IRD, they always get their money anyway, so avoidance is not any long term solution.

Possibly the best approach is to take the call and if it's not relevant just say - "I don't have the time to take this call, I'm busy [piloting a plane|delivering a child|commiting and act of violence] please send me the details by email" and follow that with your secondary (spam) email address. If the caller is after a quick buck, they won't go to the trouble of writing an email.

The problem is that if you're right in the middle of doing something that you need to stay focussed on then even taking 30 seconds to pick up the phone is seriously disruptive. I work on the assumption that if an anonymous call is important then the caller will leave a voicemail message.

Moi aussi, but recently I have had a number which have not done so. I find it intrusive and disturbing.

coffeebaron

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#1006727 16-Mar-2014 14:36

Geektastic:
coffeebaron:
Geektastic:
coffeebaron: I do this on WXC

If we had a landline type phone anymore I would agree, but we only use the mobiles now.

I think the telecom regulator in the UK made all the comms companies (fixed and mobile) offer the 'do not route blocked ID' option IIRC although it would be over 10 years ago now.

You can get smart phone app that will do that.

Called?

I used to have one on my Symbian device from Killer Mobile called call / SMS filter. It had the option of playing a message. Not sure what's available on other smartphones, but sure there'll be something. Of course it won't work if phone is off / out of coverage.

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JimmyH

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#1006773 16-Mar-2014 16:57

I would love to do this, but the outfit I am currently contracting to withhold the number on all their outbound calls - and not taking their calls isn't an option.

I would also love a home line solution with the equivalent of an app that would help deal with telemarketers. Say you get a call from a telemarketer, and if the number is blocked it goes to voicemail. If the number isn't blocked then once you take the call and discover it's a telemarketer you can flag it as such and the details go back to a database. Then any further calls are black-holed, both for you AND for any other user of the app. Enough users and any telemarketer who started calling would find, within minutes, that many of their calls would no longer go through.

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