TIPS Political ad auto-recording coming in on multiple channels simultaneously ...

[Halea]

Greetings All:
Lately we started to see machine generated calls (political ads, statements and such) hitting our production PBXs in NY and in CA where one incoming call to one specific DID appears on multiple incoming channels. Sometimes it's over 2 channels, but sometime it's on as many as 4-5 channels. Since the CID of the call(s) always change (fairly stable first 3 digits and variable last 4 digits) we can't blacklist it/them easily! The real issue is that - you answer one and hang up, another one shows up within a split second or several lines ring off the hook simultaneously - and our employees get distracted. Worse, sometimes such calls can saturate our limited incoming channels.
My question is twofold:
1) Is this something on our PBX(es)? I am doubtful because they have been very well configured stable machines running IncrediblePBX-2021 for quite some time with no problem whatsoever. Our DIDs have been with us and the same provider forever. And We never experienced anything like this in the past.
2) Is there a configurational scheme that we can use to avoid those nuisance calls? Or at least reduce them to one channel as opposed to multiple simultaneous channels?
TIA

 

[KNERD]

Maybe start off finding out who the numbers are registers to the carrier, and complain to them?
How's their STIR/SHAKEN look like?

P.S. An IVR works great for robocalls

 

[kenn10]

I've been hit by as many as 6 simultaneous spam calls on one number at the same time. I implemented an IVR where a human has to push a digit to get through. I know that is not good for a business but that's the tradeoff to cut out the robocalls. The spammers are the scum of the earth so that's about all we can do until the AI gets smart enough to listen for a digit to press and then do that.

 

[Halea]

Thanks for your feedback. During a casual call with our upstream DID carrier we were told about far reaching implications of this issue. Apparently nowadays malicious actors are even causing denial of service attacks on telephone lines to either force the receiving party to listen to their message or simply disrupt their operations. Reportedly the upstream carriers are now involved in the effort of preventing this issue.
Apparently some industries/businesses, like the health care providers have been at the fore front of this effort and set up working groups to figure out possible solutions. This document which is already a few years old depicts such efforts.
In the meantime we went for the IVR solution like @kenn10 suggested. It provides some relief from disruptive calls but it also adds up time and effort to our callers to reach our staff (which in some situations can be quite impactful). But the incoming channel bank saturation remains our concern. Of course we can increase that but like everything else it's additional cost.

 

[phonebuff]

There is a call screening / whitelist module that has been around for a long time. If the caller is known it's connected, if it's unknown then it is screened, and in most cases SPAM calls are not connected.

@wardmundy I can't remember the module name, but I seem to recall you blogging about it on NerdVittles.

 

[wardmundy]

There is a call screening / whitelist module that has been around for a long time. If the caller is known it's connected, if it's unknown then it is screened, and in most cases SPAM calls are not connected.

@wardmundy I can't remember the module name, but I seem to recall you blogging about it on NerdVittles.

SPAM Blocker & CNAM Cornucopia for Incredible PBX 2021 – Nerd Vittles

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