Even though there's a "do not call" registry in the U.S., far too many junk calls still get through. Now a small British phone company is fighting back, setting up what it calls "honeypot mode," luring telemarketers into a time-wasting labyrinth they'll not soon forget.
Last month, small business phone company Andrews and Arnold received an unusually high number of unsolicited telemarketing calls. That's when the company took decisive action, reserving 4 million fake telephone numbers that looked to telemarketers like legitimate customers.
Just to be sure that each phone caller they lured into the trap was working illegally, the phone company even registered each phone number with the Telephone Preference Service, a British opt-out registry that warns telemarketers not to call.
Once lured into the trap, a recorded message tricks marketers into delivering their lengthy sales presentations, wasting a lot of time and vastly increasing the number of useless phone calls they make with their auto dialer software.
Brilliant idea. We get so many junk phone calls on our landline here, we're thinking of joining the legions of people who've abandoned old-fashioned telephones altogether and gone completely wireless.
C'mon, someone, set up a vast bank of millions of fake phone numbers here in the United States! This looks like fun.
Source:
Via The Register