Confusing a fax machine?

[WizardStan]

Some autodialer has our office numbers. We keep getting random calls from a fax machine. You would think after the first round of calls they would realize that we aren't fax machines, but this keeps happening. With no way to block the calls, I'm trying to do the next best thing.


What I am hoping is possible is to get some kind of "hold on, I'll get to you in a second" delaying tone sequence that I can just play back through the headset to make the machine on the other end think there's a fax machine here, except not actually connect to anything, and keep the line tied up for as long as possible. Hours if I can. I don't know if such a tone sequence exists or if it can be recorded and played back though. There certainly doesn't seem to be a whole lot of information on the web about this.

 

[SNESFAN]

setting up a makeshift pbx (astrisk) running on a micropc... might be a fun project to do and you could do all types of crap with it... including call groups, voicemail to email, forward calls... stuff like that


it's kind of overkill for this situation like killing a fly with a bazooka, but could potentially make your entire system way better.


I have set one of these up for a field exercise with the army... wow'd the shit out of my commanders, got me a medal

 

[double7]

What kind of phone standard are your lines? If POTS i suggest to get a fax or modem to check the content for contacts to deal with. Holding the line would not help much here, nearly all of us here have free national calls. With modern phone lines you could have a chance in getting the callerid but usually those blind calls do not show the id. Next chance is to contact your phone company to find the source. If it's a national call suing did work here, after some passed public sentences the professional spammers got the point real fast, no phone spam for years now.

 

[Fzero]

I had the same thing ... but i resorted to a less technical means of solution.


I googled the number, found out the company who own the fax machine, obtained their phone number - then phoned them up and told them to "effing sort it out as its driving me mad keep answering my phone to this s%&£!"


They got onto it and stopped it calling me

 

[WizardStan]

If I had the phone number I wouldn't be trying to find hacks to tie up the machine. There's no number associated with the call.


I don't think it's possible to actually connect some kind of fax or modem to these phones. The intention I had of tying up the line also wasn't to incur additional charges, it was to simply tie up their fax machine for as long as possible so they don't hit as many phones. It's stopped for now, but it's only a matter of time until it happens again, then the office becomes loud with nonstop phone ringings for a couple of hours.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Once I kept getting phonecalls for weeks to my home from a fax.A loude whiney screeching sound was what you would hear upon answering the phone. I knew the sound cos i had a fax machine previous to this.I must say at first i was quite confused.Never thought of googling the number though.Oh well It stopped eventually or did i phone my phone company and they blocked it.Can't remember now.

 

[craigix]

You could write a little code to connect it to an old modem then just loop a series of commands, so it would speak to the fax machine forever.


Maybe just constantly asking for a BPS retrain might work.