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by smhenderson 2378 days ago
I do the same. My guess is that a robot is waiting for enough sound before it starts it's pitch. So if you answer, don't say anything and little noise is passing into the receiver on your phone they don't detect enough sound to start.

Just a guess because a lot of others I get just start babbling away as soon as I hit answer. I guess those detect the pick up and don't rely on an actual voice answering.

1 comments

Yes. I almost set up a "phone center" with the OSS asterisk package on a raspberry-pi. Basically the raspberry takes the call and waits for a few second silently, before forwarding the call to your phone (and only then it starts ringing). This way, robocallers hang up and your phone never rings.

Instead of waiting, you can also send control sounds to make the robocall believe the call has ended.

Brilliant idea. I'm bookmarking this in my "I want to try this Real Soon Now" pile of ideas.

If you ever do get around to trying it please post back to HN! Promise I'll do the same...

Thanks, Happy Holidays!