Spam, advertising, and telesales

[the_s_guy]

So, who'd be interested in a little beige box for telephones which automatically killed 99.9% of telemarketing calls, political party calls, stalker calls, and calls from people you don't personally like, without even making the phone ring

Comments

[femcure]

*dances around waving both hands in the air* Me, Oh Me! Me! Me! Me!

[the_s_guy]

The fun bit?

This is realisable. I could probably kickstart this for under a hundred thousand dollars - design, engineering, manufacture, distribution, advertising, the works. Start selling it for fifty bucks or thereabouts, dropping in price as volume goes up. Then using the profit to create Version 2, which will have REAL stopping power.

I could even go on to create and distribute Version 3, specifically designed to utterly wreck the cold-calling industry, or at least making it waste its resources when trying to call numbers in particular countries.

[redqueenmeg]

Yes, definitely, especially with the kill button.

[the_s_guy]

Heh. I thought that might appeal. Sometimes, you just want a big red button to press, thump, smack or punch when you can't reach down the phone to do the same thing to the caller.

As a bonus, hitting the button might simply block Creepy Stalky George or Boring Bill, but for commercial telemarketers, it will set events in motion which will actively make them wreck their own business. So you're not just blocking them, you're destroying them simply by making their business model suddenly unprofitable across your entire city, state, or country.

I figure I'll have the only product able to offer that particular little service in a shiny red button.

[brownkitty]

Suddenly I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of telemarketers were crying out in protest into the void.

In other words, hell yes I'm interested! Would they work on cell phones too?!?!?!?!?!

[the_s_guy]

I've got a version designed in my head for those cellphones capable of running third-party applications, yes. There's also PABX and Asterisk versions for companies, and depending on the co-operation of the particular telco or service provider, there might be able to be a 'virtual' version which would work on any cell or landline without needing to download or buy anything at all.

Obviously these versions wouldn't have the tactile satisfaction of the big red KILL button, but they'd provide the same end result.

[femcure]

I think you would have to also take in account the guy just like you working for for the telemarketers, creepy stalkers, bill collectors. How hard would it be to hack?

[the_s_guy]

I've been working on that question for a couple of months, and have come up with a range of anti-hack design choices. Although nothing's _completely_ impossible to hack, these will be surprisingly difficult in a number of unexpected ways.

Especially as there's about three completely different implementations of physical security and another three in mathematical, and if any of them come up with odd readings, there is absolutely no indication - the device will appear to continue operating absolutely normally, but data coming from it (along with details of its serial number, account holder and phone number) will not only be completely filtered out of the data feed, but stored for a very long time on some very secure backtracking systems

[exp_err]

Will it work if the person with the box doesn't want to disallow calls with caller-ID blocked? Would the box-owner be allowed to set preferences to minimise either false positives or false negatives?

[the_s_guy]

Whups, missed this update.

In answer to your questions: yes.