A nuisance call is an unwanted and unsolicited telephone call. Common types of nuisance calls include prank calls, telemarketing calls, and silent calls. Obscene phone calls and other threatening calls are criminal acts in most jurisdictions, particularly when hate crime is involved.[1]
Unsolicited calls may also be used to initiate telephone frauds. Fax machines may also receive junk faxes via unsolicited calls.[2]
Caller ID provides some protection against unwanted calls, but can still be turned off by the calling party. Even where end-user caller ID is not available, calls are still logged, both in billing records at the originating telco and via automatic number identification, so the perpetrator's phone number can still be discovered in many cases. However, these do not provide complete protection: harassers can use payphones and, in some cases, caller ID (but not necessarily automatic number identification itself) can be spoofed or blocked. Mobile telephone abusers can (at some cost) use "throwaway" mobile phones or SIMs. Voice over IP users may send bogus caller ID or route calls through servers in multiple countries.
Even in these cases, with sufficient law enforcement and telco effort, persistent abusers can often be tracked down by technical means.
Call screening is another countermeasure against unsolicited calls.[3]
Most telephone companies have a department devoted to handling complaints regarding unsolicited phone calls. In criminal cases such as obscene or threatening phone calls, many police departments have dedicated resources devoted to dealing with such cases. In the United Kingdom, the communication regulator Ofcom offers a service to report on silent calls while the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) allows consumer to register on a do-not-call-list for marketing calls.[4]
On December 19, 2018, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that beginning December 19, 2019, phone providers will be required to impose universal, network-level filtering of all calls that "[purport] to originate from telephone numbers that do not conform to established numbering plans".[5]
^CAIN, RITA MARIE (February 1994). "Call up Someone and Just Say ?Buy??Telemarketing and the Regulatory Environment". American Business Law Journal. 31 (4): 641–665. doi:10.1111/j.1744-1714.1994.tb00845.x.
^Cox, K.C., Eick, S.G., Wills, G.J. and Brachman, R.J., 1997. Brief application description; visual data mining: Recognizing telephone calling fraud. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 1(2), pp.225-231.
^Izak, Rashad. "Phone Number Search". DigCaller. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
^"What is TPS". www.tpsonline.org.uk/. Retrieved 4 September 2018.
^"Implementation of universal network-level blocking of calls with blatantly illegitimate caller identification". crtc.gc.ca. CRTC. 2018-12-19. Retrieved 2018-12-19.
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answering. It is often a type of nuisancecall. It can be illegal under certain circumstances. Recordings of prank phone calls became a staple of the obscure...
Unsolicited telephone calls are a modern nuisance. Common kinds of unwanted calls include prank calls, telemarketing calls, and obscene phone calls. Caller ID provides...
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drop the call, generating an abandoned nuisancecall from the callee's perspective, or wait until an agent is available resulting in a silent call. This...
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reporting call progress), negotiating capabilities, and call control (such as hold, mute, transfer/forwarding, dialing DTMF keys during a call [e.g. to...
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remit. TPS does not stop other call types such as market research, debt collection, scam calls and general nuisancecalls. You can find out more information...
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used in describing the computerized services of call centers, such as those that direct your phone call to the right department at a business you're calling...
(PAC) called the Nuisance Committee. Temkin named the PAC in honor of his grandfather, a Jewish prisoner of war in World War II who formed a "nuisance committee"...
James, and his dog, Lolly, Brown operated a nuisance animal removal business, catching and releasing nuisance animals. The series was primarily filmed near...
known as G.711. The call is then transmitted from one end to another via telephone exchanges. The call is switched using a call set up protocol (usually...
message on the answering machine or voicemail of the other, and request a call back. This continues for a period of time, often with the two parties exchanging...
handle the extra load. A dropped call is a common term used and expressed by wireless mobile phone call subscribers when a call is abruptly cut-off (disconnected)...
unexpected move. 28 4 "A NuisanceCall" Steve Shill Matt Olmstead & Hilly Hicks, Jr. October 15, 2013 (2013-10-15) 204 8.08 A routine call becomes the suicide...
many false alarms that are likely a result of pocket dialing. These nuisancecalls can result in a drain on operators' time, particularly during summer...
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the Earth's surface; a noticeable delay is present while making a phone call or using data services due to the large distance from users. The amount of...
caller. Fear of making calls may be associated with concerns about finding an appropriate time to call, in fear of being a nuisance. A sufferer calling a...
cable operators are able to diminish the effects of heavy internet usage on call quality. This is done by way of QoS provisions present in the Packet Cable...
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