TELECOM Digest Editor wrote:
> Can anyone detirmine who this is? They have called one of my
> voicemail numbers for the past week, leaving a one second hang-up
> message. That's all anyone will ever get there (voicemail) but it is
> a nuisance to keep erasing all the hangup calls from 773-874-8589.
I got a spate of them recently but then they stopped. I'm usually at
work during the day but when I'm home a lot of crap comes in over the
phone.
Sometimes hangup calls like that are from a fax machine on repeat-try.
When I've had them, I put on a fax machine on the line and gotten a
legitimate fax sent to my number in error. (Since it's cumbersome for
me to rearrange the wiring I don't do it often.)
Other people who have had them complained to the phone company, and
the phone company reported back it was an errant fax machine. I think
the volume of such calls is so high today the phone company won't
bother anymore.
However, I suspect many of these are "spam" faxes going through all
numbers searching for a fax machine to tell you about stock or land
opportunities. Of course it could be an automatic dialer gone bad,
just dialing up everyone over and over again. Just because someone
owns such a unit and has an outward WATS line is no guarantee they
know what they're doing.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have a fax machine on one of my
internal extensions; the computer modems (which by default do not
auto-answer) and the fax machine (which can be set to auto-answer)
share extension 105. If someone wants to send a fax they ask me
(or whomever) to be transferred to extension 105, or if I answer
the phone and hear the familiar beep sounds, I just flash and dial
105 then disconnect myself. My problem here is that 773-828-4212 is
somewhere (only god knows) in Chicago; the voicemail picks it up
before any human (even if I knew where it was and had a human assigned
to pick up on it) can get to it.
Your suggestion would work for me if "Ms. T. Bernard" (see another
message in this issue) was calling direct into my Kansas number. Maybe
I should praise God she has not yet gotten around to calling into the
630 area. PAT]
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com