what's a landline?
The latter might work for you, being that it is VOIP (and theoretically free) . But none of them seem to be quite "there" for my use.
You know, the phones that:
1) Are in all rooms at the same time
2) Can be used by more than one person at the same time
3) Ring through the whole house so you can hear it
4) Work when the cell towers are down
5) Work without batteries (unless cordless)
6) Have vastly superior voice quality
7) Have cordless handsets that are comfortable to hold and use
8 ) Work with fax and alarm hookups
9) Don't get lost or easily damaged
10) Don't cost $400 to $900 each (or tie you into a contract)
11) Are predictably where you need them when you have to dial 911
You know, those
999 not 911, bloody colonials
we introduced 999 in 1937, 911 didn't come into use until 1968 :p
I wish I had some magic solution to share with you, but I don't. I am not sure what has happened the last few years, but you are correct that it is crazy. Very few people have my land line number (or cell number for that matter), and I NEVER give it to any companies. On top of that, it has always been unlisted (yep, I PAY for it to be that way). Same phone number for at least 28 years.
In the past, I would get the occasional serial-dialing machine spam call; perhaps once a month or so. But now I am getting several calls a week. The situation is beyond annoying and unacceptable. It is an invasion of privacy and peace. For me, screening would be useless.... the damage is done the moment the phone rings. Similar rate on my cell phone; so now that doubles the annoyance.
I really think all such calls should be illegal, criminally, and enforced through use of some instant reporting mechanism.
Since that will never happen, what I would like to do would be to have something that answers the phone line(s) without it ringing and challenge the caller to answer a question or press a certain button. If they don't, it holds the phone forever, or enters into a machine banter to confuse their machines and make it harder for them to annoy anyone else. If they do answer, then it rings through as normal. Such a concept would be very difficult without it being arranged by the CO (the phone carrier). To do it without the CO at home would mean having a box in front of the connection to the rest of the house. And to do it on a cell phone, it would require sophisticated rooted software of some type.
There are things like this:
https://www.ringcentral.com/office/features/call-screening/overview.html
Or better yet: https://www.nomorobo.com/
The latter might work for you, being that it is VOIP (and theoretically free) . But none of them seem to be quite "there" for my use.
what's a landline?
the only reason there's copper coming into the house is to provide my (fibre!) broadband
<snip>
Since that will never happen, what I would like to do would be to have something that answers the phone line(s) without it ringing and challenge the caller to answer a question or press a certain button. If they don't, it holds the phone forever, or enters into a machine banter to confuse their machines and make it harder for them to annoy anyone else. If they do answer, then it rings through as normal. Such a concept would be very difficult without it being arranged by the CO (the phone carrier). To do it without the CO at home would mean having a box in front of the connection to the rest of the house. And to do it on a cell phone, it would require sophisticated rooted software of some type.
<snip>
I have an app called NoMoRobo that Xfinity (Comcast) turned me onto. There's an account set up at Xfinity that has my landline and cell numbers in it with the calls forwarded to my cellphone. When a robo call comes, it shows up in the app and the app kills it. On the other hand, I can see who's calling and if it's family or friends, I can pick it up on my cellphone. It freaks people out to call the house and when I answer then tell them I'm in another town.
It's not perfect, but helpful. There's some scumbag companies out there who are porting their robo calls through local numbers, like cell phones that show up somehow on my caller id as local. If I let it roll over and then hit redial, I get some poor schmuck whose phone has been hijacked.
NoMoRobo works for me. Probably a similar app for your VOIP set up if you call Customer Service and ask.
"landline"? I know not what that is.
Well, without an emoticon I cannot tell if you are serious or not. I <believe> you are old enough but am not sure.
For the pups out there, a landline is a telephone service hard- wired to a building. There are still two or three left in the US although I think one may have died, leaving only two of us who have them. I like mine a lot: I can use it without any spotty coverage, it works better than my cell phone, and anyone / everyone can have that number 'cause it never, ever makes anything ring when I do not want it to do so. When riding my bike, for example: I can make and recieve phone calls but <almost> everyone that has my landline cannot call me because they do not have my cell number.
Brian
Spent a few minutes looking around and there are some OK pieces of hardware that would work but all seem to have quirks that would be troublesome for us.
The best solution, strictly from a logical level, would be to have something that screened all calls through a huge data base of 'bottom- feeders' and let everyone / anyone else through. The best service does seem to be nomorobo but as I said, COX does not support it.
We have reached a state of OK in that all ringers are off, so a caller either has to talk to my answering machine, or when I get the chance and look at missed calls, I can call back whomever I choose. That will have to do for the moment.
But just to reiterate, I am really cranky about having to deal with any of this: my phones are devices I pay for, both the hardware and usage fees. And it really rubs my fur the wrong way that others are using my own purchased devices to torture me. Not my world, I just live here.
I'm getting a lot of 'IRS' calls on my landline. Sometimes I just listen to them for entertainment purposes. Also get a bunch of spoofed calls that mimic local numbers.
They are the ones I want to strangle. One would think that there is a way for the phone company (Verizon) to take care of this.
I'm probably going to change my landline vm to something that says if you don't leave a message you're going to be blocked. My landline phone can natively block up to 250 numbers.