[kjs3]

I had a neighbor at one point who kept a compressed air horn next to his phone (back when phones were things that hung on walls or sat on tables), and every time he got a telemarketer he'd blow it in the receiver until they hung up. Funny for a while, but got old fast.

[tracker1]

Should be able to rig up a noise emitter into the line that can work without suffering from the noise yourself.

[mindslight]

Or what about just incorporating this into the telemarketer aggravation bot? Reduce the volume, they'll have to turn their headset up to continue to conversation, then blast them with a bunch of highly clipped distortion.

Although most of the spam calls I get are bots on the other end - political, police shakedown, lazy leadgen for some company (eg cable TV), etc.

The ones that are actually human are generally outright scams targeted at old people ("microsoft", "medicare", etc). After playing along for a bit, I ask them if their parents know that their job is to scam old people all day and if they consider that success. That usually gets them pretty riled up.

[kjs3]

I ask them if their parents know that their job is to scam old people all day

Oh, hey! I'm not the only one whose done this. A couple of other good one:

- "How did you get into this line of work? Are your parents frauds too? Is it a genetic thing maybe we can weed out? Who do your parents rip off?"

- "When you see your family on the holidays, do you tell them you're a professional fraud, or do you actually have a sliver of shame? Do you have like sibling who think your cool for ripping people off?"

- "What does your god think of how you make a living?"

Get cussed out some, but most of them are obviously fine with it, usually via some variation of "hey gotta pay bills, just doing my job". The 'smile and dial' crowd self selects for zero-ethics worldviews. The god one did get me a death threat, which is nice. I'm sure they added me to a bunch of call lists as 'revenge'. Worth it.