Well, not exactly wireless, but we have been getting a lot of calls from a mysterious number that shows up on caller ID as being from 307-459-1039 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I have developed a solution and here was the best place anywhere to disseminate. The calls would call at all hours and no one was ever on the other end of the line. I thought we were just the unfortunate recipients of a computer gone wild until I saw an article by Rob Pegoraro from the Washington Post reporting that this same number has been calling houses all over the Washington Region.
Once the calls started to wake us up I knew I had to find a solution. When I had Sunrocket VoIP service, I remembered that one of their features was to have a “blocked caller list” that would automatically send calls from certain numbers to voicemail. I figured that our current home phone provider, Comcast, must have a similar feature with their Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) product. However, twenty minutes of searching their help forums yielded nothing. I didn’t want to give up because this seems like a feature that MUST be there so I initiated a tech chat with “Sandy Sue”.
After I explained my predicament with Sandy Sue she sent me instructions to dial *60 from your CDV home phone. A voice response unit (VRU) guides you through a process to activate and then add numbers to a call screening list. Calls from numbers on your list never ring your phone. (Although I don’t know if they receive an error message or are sent to voicemail.) With these instructions, and less than five minutes, we have not been bugged by those annoying call since.
I also use Packet8 for my office line. Packet8 has a similar feature, however it is activated from the customer web portal under features. I am sure that many other VoIP providers have similar features. If you have a different service, send me an email or post a comment and I will list the “solution” here.
