[TriLUG] Phone calls

[Aaron Joyner via TriLUG]

Tired of phone spam?  Try this one weird trick!

[Spoiler alert / executive summary: join your local LUG, fall down the
rabbit hole of VOIP telephony for a few months, then enjoy 20+ years of no
spam.  This probably isn't a net time savings, but it has positive
externalities.]

I have a local DID (a "phone number"), which has been hosted by a variety
of online providers over the years.  Most recently I transferred it to
https://www.unitelgroup.com/ in 2021 and have been very happy with them.
They make a SIP endpoint available, and charge
bargain basement pay-as-you-go rates (eg. ~$1/line+$2.99 in fees / month,
then $0.0045/min. for incoming calls, ).  They end up billing me $25 about
every 6 months, and looking back over 50 months of service they've invoiced
me 7 times, which works out to $3.50/month on average (I think the fees
have crept up slightly over time).

I run Asterisk on a local server which registers that SIP endpoint and
receives calls to the number.  Its extension configuration plays a brief
"Voice Assistant" style menu, which I'll paraphrase for the internet as
"You've reached the home of Aaron Joyner, press 1 for Aaron, 2 for...".  It
receives between 1 and 4 calls on most days, which last 18 seconds with no
one ever pressing a number, the assistant times out, and it hangs up.
About once a month a human will actually call the number and press a
button, and then Asterisk rings the few SIP phones I still have kicking
around, as well as my cell phone, passes through the caller ID, and I
usually decide to answer it.  I used to play around a lot with Asterisk
back in the early 00s, but I mostly ignore it these days.  Revision control
indicates the last time I touched the SIP configs was in 2021, when I
migrated the number to Unitel.  The last time I touched the voicemail
config was in 2018.  It Just Works.™  I've been tempted to upgrade to the
new Ubiquiti UniFi handsets, but I've had the same Cisco 7960 handsets for
>21 years, and they've been remarkably bulletproof.

I've never had a spam call make it from my number, through this setup, to
my phone... and I give this number to any business or online website who
asks me for a phone number.

I briefly debated including the number in this message, but given the reach
of the list and modern email clients on phones that make phone numbers into
very easy tap-to-call touch targets, that seemed unwise . :)  If you want
to try to find the number and give it a ring to hear the recorded message,
it isn't very difficult to find online.  Remember, please only use your
powers for good, or for awesome.

Aaron S. Joyner

On Mon, Mar 10, 2025 at 8:05 PM Steve Litt via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> James Jones via TriLUG said on Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:37:26 -0500
>
> >Brian
> >
> >***** Telephone SPAM is a scourge upon the developed world.
> >Agreed.
> >
> >Thanks for the thoughts. The phone was originally a pots (copper)
> >number started in 1992, but for the past 10 years the number is now a
> >vonage system.
>
> Somebody mentioned asterisk. Perhaps you could program your asterisk
> system to instantly say "Hello", wait three seconds, and if nobody says
> "Hello" back, drop the phone call without ringing the bell.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
> http://444domains.com
> --
> This message was sent to: Aaron S. Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws>
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