All out invasion from overseas telemarketers...

December 21, 2006 10:38 AM

I made the unfortunate mistake of ordering medication from an overseas pharmacy; it was for a drug that I'd originally been prescribed in Europe, which was not available in the US (then.)...

My mistake wasn't that the meds weren't genuine. The error is the aftermath: a half-dozen calls a day from telemarketers offering to "refill my prescription." It appears my phone number has been sold, over and over again, and now there's a feeding frenzy. I'm already on the national and California do not call lists, and asking the folks who call me to take me off this list does nothing. Here's a twist, though: in the past few weeks, my calls have been coming from overseas; I'm guessing they're from India or Pakistan, by the accent, but obviously I can't tell for sure. And I bet, being from overseas, the "do not call" laws don't even apply. I find this kind of interesting, since telemarketing jobs are already insanely low-paid in the US. In any case, the weirdest thing of all is the Caller IDs from these international calls: 0110404224113 (the latest three calls.) I can't even figure out what country code this is - and I thought I'd throw open the question: who's calling me - and from where?

posted by soulbarn to computers & internet (10 comments total)

011 indicates that the number is part of the north american numbering plan.

I can't tell what 04 or 040 means.

It is trivial for a telecom service provider to spoof caller id, so don't spend too much time trying to track them down.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:55 AM on December 21, 2006

Romania's country code is 40.

011 is the international access code, and there's probably an extra 0 after 011.

40 would be the country code, then 4224113 is the number in Romania.

But this is just a guess. Its been years since I spent any time with dialing rules.
posted by printdevil at 10:58 AM on December 21, 2006

The country code is Romania ? and, no, the do-not-call laws will not help you.

However the call itself could come from anywhere, as caller-ID spoofing is not unheard of.
posted by Pastabagel at 10:58 AM on December 21, 2006

Then again, if they are out of the country (which would seem most likely, even if you didn't have caller ID info), then disguising the country of origin with caller ID spoofing would be unnecessary.
posted by winston at 11:04 AM on December 21, 2006

Are they calling your home phone or cell?

Maybe you can get your phone company to block international calls to your number? If it's a home number, you can use a gizmo like this to block numbers and "prefixes"
posted by delmoi at 11:43 AM on December 21, 2006

> 011 indicates that the number is part of the north american numbering plan.

A common misconception.

011 is not part of a directory number, at all, ever. (Not at the front, anyway).

It's a *dialling prefix* that says "here comes a 1, 2, or 3 digit country code, and then a local number for that area". So, not only does it not mean that, it specifically means the opposite.

But it should never be followed by a 0, unless some remote switch is misconfigured: all country codes start with 1-9.

As other replies note, that's probably a bogus CNID string, supplied by a customer with a direct ISDN PRI connection.
posted by baylink at 1:01 PM on December 21, 2006

This documentary film, "Bombay Calling" will answer many questions in an entertaining way.

This gadget got rid of telemarketers for me.
posted by Listener at 1:01 PM on December 21, 2006

The "Telezapper" is a piece of junk. it won't work on actual humans that are calling up, and most telemarketers set their autodialers to ignore the tones that it presents anyway. Save your money.

They're calling from overseas? Just scream at them and tell them to go fuck themselves. Sadly I've found that is about the only way to get rid of obviously overseas telemarketers. We were getting countless calls from the scammers at the "International Domain Registry" and they were very pushy, rude, and insistent. I finally had to say "Listen, you fucking scammers, don't EVER fucking call here AGAIN" with a few other choice words. It worked. They haven't called back since.
posted by drstein at 3:44 PM on December 21, 2006

No one has mentioned WhoCalled.Us yet? Wow. Well, there it is. It's a clearinghouse for telemarketing numbers that people have had calls from.
posted by SlyBevel at 6:41 PM on December 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

whocalled.us is nice, but I didn't think that it did foreign/non-US phone numbers.
posted by drstein at 8:16 PM on December 21, 2006