my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » SIT tone on voicemail

Author Topic: SIT tone on voicemail Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 11-27-2016 12:48 PM                        For the past couple of weeks I have been getting a daily spam phone call to my "theatre office" number (which is actually my cell phone). I blocked the number on my phone but that apparently doesn't actually block the number completely -- it just makes my phone not ring and pushes the call directly to voicemail. Since I have a pay-per-use voicemail (25 cents per message) that means that the spam call is costing me 25 cents per day since I now get a daily voicemail message from that number consisting of three seconds of silence. I complained to Sask Tel about this and was basically told "tough luck", so now I've found my own solution. I re-recorded the outbound message on that voicemail ("Hello, please leave a message", etc.) and play a SIT tone as the first thing on my outbound message. So now anyone who reaches my voicemail hears "beep beep beep - Hello, please leave a message". Many autodialers listen for a SIT tone to determine if a number is out of service, so the SIT tone on my outbound message causes the autodialer to hang up immediately and I don't receive a 3 second silent voicemail and I don't have to pay 25 cents. Anyone who's really calling me can still leave a message as usual, of course. And it works. The spam call that I've been getting daily has now stopped. I should have done this a couple of weeks ago when it started and saved myself a few dollars.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 11-27-2016 02:43 PM                     Here in the US there is a service called nomorobo.com that terminates robot dialers after one ring. My nuisance calls have dropped to almost zero since activating the free service. I'm not sure if its available in Canada and it only works if you have the simultaneous ring feature common on VOIP lines. On the SIT tone fix: There is a device called a telezapper that sends SIT when detecting an off hook. The problem is that it generates the tones every time you pick up the phone and that can be annoying. Also, many mass callers have opted to ignore SIT and continue with the call. I wanted to add SIT to my outgoing message but I'd have to do surgery on my cheap answering machine since there is no line input.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 11-27-2016 03:23 PM                        No need for a line input or surgery. Just play the SIT tone on a speaker right beside your answering machine's microphone, then talk.  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 11-27-2016 11:16 PM                     Having worked for 'the phone company' for awhile some years back, I know the SIT tone trick has been a favorite of the phone-tech savvy for some time. I never used it, but, because I had two lines at home and knew some special routing code tricks, my favorite things to do to telemarketers was to dump them to either the "howler" (that annoying loud noise you get if you leave the phone off the hook too long) or I'd dump them to the coin-op intercept recording, which would say "Deposit 25 cents, please... Also, if the same number called me back within 30 seconds, they'd get sent to the "twilight zone" which was simply a 'dead air' termination, usually used for testing the presence line impulse noise or ground hum.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 11-30-2016 04:37 PM                     A funny thing about the coin intercept announcement from my past life. All of the COs had dedicated channels for recordings. One of our COs didn't have any coin service so the crew decided to be creative and record their own message. Years later coin service was added to that CO and the long forgotten announcement was still there. "Yo Bro, these calls don't be free. Ya gots to put some money in the machine." Needless to say management was not pleased.  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.