Nomorobo.com

[tawd1992]

I searched, but couldn't find whether VOIPo supports the free robocall blocking service provided at nomorobo.com. You need simultaneous ring for this to work, but I'm not sure what else is involved. Can anyone confirm whether this works or not?

[VOIPoTim]

We have actually been working with them to get their service integrated. It should be an option in the control panel soon.

[wingsohot]

We have actually been working with them to get their service integrated. It should be an option in the control panel soon.

Tim, will this feature be available in resellers accounts as well?

[VOIPoTim]

Possibly. The way they handle integration is that the user has to register on their site and select a provider from the list so I'm not 100% sure we can get all the resellers added in, but we may be able to. Ultimately it would work now if you select a different provider from their list, but it'd just have bad instructions but they're just how to setup simring to a special number so if you know how to use sim ring already you could technically set it up already.

[Tooth]

We have actually been working with them to get their service integrated. It should be an option in the control panel soon.

Cool. Any estimate in when this service will be available in the control panel?

[VOIPoTim]

Hoping to have it wrapped up soon. Our developers are working with their developers still. It's very close though.

[Red Green]

Is their an ETA on this yet? Would love to have this feature.

[VOIPoTim]

Is their an ETA on this yet? Would love to have this feature.

We're still waiting for them to finish up the integration. In most current update, they said it should be by the end of this month.

[Red Green]

Thanks for the update.

[VOIPoTim]

Update...

We're almost done with this and doing final testing of our integration. The option to enable NoMoRobo will be available in vPanel in the very near future.

[VOIPoTim]

Hey Guys,

This will be available in your control panel under the BETA tab by the end of the day today.

Please let us know how it works for you if you choose to enable it.

[fbruno]

This is the best news I have received in many moons. Thank you, thank you, thank you for offering this mental health saving feature!

[VOIPoTim]

This is the best news I have received in many moons. Thank you, thank you, thank you for offering this mental health saving feature!

Thanks for the feedback.

Our goal is to always give you guys more features like this to make your phone service more useful, work better, etc so we were happy we could integrate this service.

[snic]

Hey Guys,

This will be available in your control panel under the BETA tab by the end of the day today.

Please let us know how it works for you if you choose to enable it.

Tried it. Still getting spam calls. I don't think Nomorobo has blocked a single one - all the calls ring 4 times and go to the answering machine.

Like many much-hyped ideas, it seems this one is also too good to be true.

[Tooth]

I have Nomorobo activated on my account and it seems to work pretty well. It seems that when a spam robo call comes in, it will ring my home phone one time and then stop ringing altogether. It seems that Nomorobo needs a few seconds to recognize the incoming call as spam before it can disconnect the call. It would be nice if these incoming calls didn't ring into the house at all, but this is definitely a better solution than having an incoming spam call ringing my home phone over and over during dinner.

However, I must note that Nomorobo doesn't block all spam calls. I've had the same spam number ringing into my house for two weeks now and Nomorobo doesn't block it. I logged into my Nomorobo account and reported the number so that it could be investigated and added to their spam lists, but it hasn't happened yet.

Lastly, Nomorobo successfully recognizes friendly robo calls -- such as appointment reminders from a doctor's office and prescription notifications from the pharmacy -- and does not block them.

Overall, I'm pleased with the service Nomorobo provides, but I wonder how much of a privacy/security risk this arrangement poses since every single one of my incoming calls are routed to Nomorobo servers for a "GO" or "NO-GO" evaluation.

[Ansextra]

I am actually beginning to have the opinion that it's better to just let the call ring through and then blacklist it afterwards. I have not heard one call go to one ring and hang up as Nomorobo is supposed to do. Spam callers still get thru. My assumption is that police charities and the like should be considered spam?

[fbruno]

The Nomorobo functionality has been working perfectly. Almost every robo call has been identified and sent on its way after the first ring. In the past month less than five such calls have made it past the service. So, I'm a happy camper at this point. Nomorobo is, for me, a welcome solution to annoying robo calls.

[VOIPoTim]

The Nomorobo functionality has been working perfectly. Almost every robo call has been identified and sent on its way after the first ring. In the past month less than five such calls have made it past the service. So, I'm a happy camper at this point. Nomorobo is, for me, a welcome solution to annoying robo calls.

Glad to hear it's working well for you.

No blocking method is going to be perfect since the marketers always will try to work around them, but we think Nomorobo is the best solution available right now. It blocks the vast majority from our testing.

BTW, here's a little more info on it: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nomorobo-partners-voipo-protect-subscribers-153929450.html

We were the first provider to directly integrate their service.

[Ansextra]

Glad to hear it's working well for you.

No blocking method is going to be perfect since the marketers always will try to work around them, but we think Nomorobo is the best solution available right now. It blocks the vast majority from our testing.

BTW, here's a little more info on it: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nomorobo-partners-voipo-protect-subscribers-153929450.html

We were the first provider to directly integrate their service.
Congratulations! I saw it on a few different news services!

[VOIPoTim]

Congratulations! I saw it on a few different news services!

Thanks, they were great to work with. We're very happy to be the first fully integrated provider.

[burris]

For a few weeks now since the Nomorobo has kicked in, we have had some peace and quiet.
For whatever reason, the telemarketers have been quite active lately.

Thanks for the feature..

[OC_Carl]

Thanks, they were great to work with. We're very happy to be the first fully integrated provider.

I knew I'd picked a winner when I signed on with VOIPO. Heard about Nomorobo being the FTC challenge winner, but just happened to discover a few days ago that my very own VOIP service was leading the pack!

Tim, have you really made one billion, five hundred forty-two million, one hundred twenty seven thousand, nine hundred twenty-five posts? Or do you get to set your own number because your the man with a plan?

Also, for the various and sundry forums I've participated in through the past many year, NEVER, EVER saw the CEO participate. Maybe a senior engineer or customer service type, but very impressive your participation. One does wonder though, with a fast growing business to manage, how do you have time for this and a social life?

Thank you for GREAT VALUE. I'm from the old school when AT&T WAS the 'phone company! Ever see Lily Tomlin do her Ernestine the telephone operator routine? Now THAT was customer service to complain about! Of course it was so funny, because it was so true!

Thanks again for great service, great value and leading edge technology.

[MisterEd]

Update...

We're almost done with this and doing final testing of our integration. The option to enable NoMoRobo will be available in vPanel in the very near future.

Hi Tim .... How close is the "Very Near Future?" :) Your last update was end of May. I am being bombarded with crap calls day and night and am on every "do not call" list out there. Unfortunately these callers use spoofed & random caller-id so NoMoRobo will probably be useless but if it even stops one more annoying call it would be better than nothing.

EDIT: Guess I should have read PAGE 2! Just saw a message it is available ..... yikes, better check vPanel.

[burris]

MisterEd..

Definitely activate it...you will be surprised. You will get used to hearing the phone ring once and then nothing. Music to my ears.

[OC_Carl]

It is working for us quite nicely. Activated Thursday, Friday phone rang once, then silence. Yet Friday night the school announcement came through just fine. How do they do that? Whatever they are doing, I hope the robots don't figure out a way around it.

Thank you VOIPO. Great job!

[MisterEd]

Frankly, while it may be a great idea it really is pretty useless because it takes seconds for a smart call-spammer to learn how to spoof a caller-ID. NOMOROBO used known "databased" numbers. 99% of the call I get come from obviously spoofed caller-ID's. They are non-existant numbers and change regularly. I get like 6 calls a week from "Credit Card Services" and every call is a different number, different state and different name. I get the same thing from many other services including chimney repair, home insurance and "you've won a free cruise". So for me, of course YMMV, NOMOROBO is useless. So far I got ONE "one ring" NOMOROBO intercept but have still received dozens of spoofed caller-ID sales calls.

Can't imagine how the FEDS gave this their prize as it is so obvious on how to get around it. I guess I answered my own question ... it's the feds. So for me ...... bleh. Pretty useless. I'm glad to hear others get calls from folks in the database that can be intercepted but I am still being bombarded. You can't beat these folks other than to send all calls to VM.

As an aside, some local idiots who constantly call with real numbers, I just forward their calls to either the local PD or the NYC FBI office. Sometimes I make appointments with them and give them the local PD address for my home address. Maybe if I waste enough of their time they will go away. If I had 3 days to type I could tell you all kinds of funny stories of things I do with "Credit Card Services." They are nationally known and have been shut down a couple times but just pop right back up like the weeds in my back yard. I also enjoy "funnin'" with the Nigerian spammers.

[MisterEd]

I dumped NOMOROBO. It's not helping me at all with all the spoofed caller-id calls (which are 90% of the problem here) plus MANY calls are ringing through anyway (not even sure if they are "bad" calls that are supposed to be blocked) but when I look in my call log they are not there. So something is messed up. Not sure if it is a NOMOROBO issue or a VOIPO BETA issue. In any case, it's useless for me so I disabled it and, generally speaking, NOMOROBO itself seems to be pretty useless just because of the fact most of the sales & robo calls are spoofed caller-ID calls. This might not be true for the boonies of America :) but out here in the NY/NJ/CT megaopolis the robo and sales callers are smart enough to use spoofed caller-ID. Of course YMMV but that has been my experience.

[burris]

I dumped NOMOROBO. It's not helping me at all with all the spoofed caller-id calls (which are 90% of the problem here) plus MANY calls are ringing through anyway (not even sure if they are "bad" calls that are supposed to be blocked) but when I look in my call log they are not there. So something is messed up. Not sure if it is a NOMOROBO issue or a VOIPO BETA issue. In any case, it's useless for me so I disabled it and, generally speaking, NOMOROBO itself seems to be pretty useless just because of the fact most of the sales & robo calls are spoofed caller-ID calls. This might not be true for the boonies of America :) but out here in the NY/NJ/CT megaopolis the robo and sales callers are smart enough to use spoofed caller-ID. Of course YMMV but that has been my experience.

Unless Miami is considered the boonies, this program is working quite well here.

On occasion a call gets through, but maybe it's one that's allowed due to the type of call.

In any event, when I do get a call that I don't want, I simply block it on my call history page.

[VOIPoTim]

I dumped NOMOROBO. It's not helping me at all with all the spoofed caller-id calls (which are 90% of the problem here) plus MANY calls are ringing through anyway (not even sure if they are "bad" calls that are supposed to be blocked) but when I look in my call log they are not there. So something is messed up. Not sure if it is a NOMOROBO issue or a VOIPO BETA issue. In any case, it's useless for me so I disabled it and, generally speaking, NOMOROBO itself seems to be pretty useless just because of the fact most of the sales & robo calls are spoofed caller-ID calls. This might not be true for the boonies of America :) but out here in the NY/NJ/CT megaopolis the robo and sales callers are smart enough to use spoofed caller-ID. Of course YMMV but that has been my experience.

We see a good amount of calls blocked by it so it's working in general. Unfortunately no method of blocking is ever going to be 100% and it's always going to be somewhat of a cat and mouse game with telemarkters getting more creative to find ways around it.

It's just a tool to use to help reduce and block them, but no tool will never get 100%.

[Ansextra]

We see a good amount of calls blocked by it so it's working in general. Unfortunately no method of blocking is ever going to be 100% and it's always going to be somewhat of a cat and mouse game with telemarkters getting more creative to find ways around it.

It's just a tool to use to help reduce and block them, but no tool will never get 100%.The biggest issue I've had (other than the internal blocking mechanism seems to work better after I filter the call) is that Nomorobo seems to block people using Skype. I had to remove it from one of my lines because I have a regular Skype caller.

[MisterEd]

We see a good amount of calls blocked by it so it's working in general. Unfortunately no method of blocking is ever going to be 100% and it's always going to be somewhat of a cat and mouse game with telemarkters getting more creative to find ways around it.

It's just a tool to use to help reduce and block them, but no tool will never get 100%.

I absolutely agree with you. But HERE in my area maybe my calls dropped from 4-6 per day to 4-5. Very insignificant change. The spoofed calls are so obvious most with really sill CID's. I'm surprised NOMOROBO doesn't automatically block anything with those totally abnormal CID's. My "incoming routing" list is humongous and frankly is the NUMBER ONE reason I stick with VOIPO as no one else offers the ability to block a seemingly unlimited amount of numbers.

The vast majority of my calls are from drug dealers (seriously) and "Credit Card Services." I usually get at least 10 per week from them with the identical pitch but with varying phone numbers mostly marked "CELL PHONE" or some other dumb thing. There is one caller-ID with the same name but with probably 50 different numbers over the last year. It's just crazy.

When I have free time I take the calls and play with the callers. I setup appointments and give them the local PD as my address. I wouldn't care if they called once then stopped but they call over and over and over with the same pitch so I figure I'll just waste their time when i have time to waste.

[VOIPoTim]

The biggest issue I've had (other than the internal blocking mechanism seems to work better after I filter the call) is that Nomorobo seems to block people using Skype. I had to remove it from one of my lines because I have a regular Skype caller.

You might want to contact NoMoRobo support about it and they could shed some light on it. I'm assuming that some telemarketers may be using Skype too and a Skype number got caught in the mix somehow.

[OC_Carl]

NOMOROBO used known "databased" numbers. 99% of the call I get come from obviously spoofed caller-ID's. They are non-existant numbers and change regularly.

Can't imagine how the FEDS gave this their prize as it is so obvious on how to get around it. I guess I answered my own question ... it's the feds. So for me ...... bleh. Pretty useless. I'm glad to hear others get calls from folks in the database that can be intercepted but I am still being bombarded. You can't beat these folks other than to send all calls to VM.

From what I've read "NOMOROBO" technology is more than just looking up a number in a database to pass through a call. But as other have basically said "for every road block, a detour can be found". The trick is to keep setting up roadblocks on the detours. VOIPO in partnering with NOMOROBO at least is headed in the right direction, imho.

If NOMOROBO applies the "continuous improvement" model to their service, all of this is certainly better than nothing. At least some of us heave a sigh of relief. To bad you weren't one of us.

[MisterEd]

^^^ There is no way ANYONE will ever be able to decipher a "legitimate" phone number that has been hijacked or spoofed. 90% of my "bad calls" are just that. Actual ROBO (taped message) calls are one thing. Maybe they can compile a list of those from user reports, but spoofed "real" residential numbers, even randomly generated ones that start with a real number ... no way. I have already got 2 of them today and it's been a "quiet" day. Just google "spoofed calls" and you'll find dozens of "services" that will provide any phone number you like, including, if you're unlucky, your own. Absolutely no possible way to defeat that.


Here is an interesting 2yr old article about my favorite. Despite the fact this "organization" has been busted and arrests made they are still calling me and many other many times a day. I get them on 3 phone lines & 2 cell numbers. Every time with a different local area code phone number. Over 2.6 BILLION calls made (and I think I got half of them) sometimes 2-3 times a day across all my numbers.

http://business.time.com/2012/04/06/2-7-billion-robo-calls-later-why-wont-rachel-from-cardholder-services-just-go-away/

[rcc344]

I made the mistake of enabling Nomorobo. It immediately started to block calls from a family cell phone. Disabled Nomorobo and the blocking continues. I opened a ticket to see if Voipo can manually disable the blocking. The Nomorobo WEB site is useless in helping. There is an email address to ask that a number be passed.

What happens is that I receive a 1/2 ring then my Voipo phone is silent. If I take the Voipo phone off hook, the caller is there and I can connect. The caller hears rings that are not sent to the Voipo phone. I want Nomorobo nomo !

[nobaloney]

Nomorobo seems to block people using Skype. I had to remove it from one of my lines because I have a regular Skype caller.
Then NoMoRobo may be useless for me as well; our business is International and many overseas callers call us using Skype-Out and one of our Toll-Free numbers (much cheaper for us than buying phone number in foreign companies and forwarding to us over SIP or POTS).

The reason is simple. NoMoRobo looks to see how many incoming calls come from the same number at the same time (they don't publish their threshold numbers, but they do allude to the method); if there are more than a threshold amount, NoMoRobo knows the call is from a robocaller. But Skype-Out of course has only a limited number of outgoing CID numbers to use on outgoing calls and if there are a lot of calls likely uses the same number many times.

Jeff

[sronsen]

It looks like it's been a while since anyone has added to this thread. I've been using NOMOROBO for the past 5 weeks on my two VOIP.ms DIDs. During that time, I've gotten three unsolicited marketing calls, one clearly being a robo call which I reported to NOMOROBO and which I haven't received again. The other two calls had a human caller and were from a single, clearly spoofed number. In fact, the spoofed number is that of a company with which I do business and infrequently receive calls, so NOMOROBO is right, in my view, not to block these calls. I've added a filter in VOIP.ms to block these calls until they go away. I'm assuming that the company who's number they're spoofing is large enough to do something about someone disturbing their customer base.

I am unaware of any falsely blocked calls. I have received several robo calls from doctors and pharmacies which is what NOMOROBO promises. As for issues with Skype, I don't use is or have any known friends or associates doing so either.

Addressing some other concerns, I have a VOIP.ms filter for Invalid or non US/Can CallerIDs coupled with an IVR routing for my friends who have blocked caller ids. It's unlikely robo callers will jump through the hoops necessary to ring my phone. Since this is available from most VOIP vendors, I can't fault NOMOROBO for letting such calls through.

I read somewhere that the one short ring one hears when NOMOROBO blocks a call stimulates a pleasure response somewhat akin to the kick one gets when their garden bug zapper scores a hit. Maybe, but I wish NOMOROBO could read the caller ID before the actual ring and block the ring too. Unfortunately, that's not their choice. The "system" apparently needs a ring to transmit the caller ID. Look at your caller ID display and note that you do not see the incoming number until well into the first ring whether using voip or a traditional land line. I think that cell phone lines may behave differently.

In summation, I'm very pleased with NOMOROBO's implementation and its integration with VOIP.ms. No, it doesn't block all unsolicited marketing calls (only 95% +), but if I could figure out how that could be done, I would have applied for and won the FTC competition. I would suggest that you try it. It's free and only takes a few minutes to setup. If you find it to be problematic, it takes even less time to remove it. The more users, the more analysis of calls and the greater accuracy in identifying spam callers.

[burris]

Works very well here, and I do get the CID before it hits the Nomorobo tank. Then when I have time, I also block it on VOIPo.

[Mike_TV]

Did something change this week? It was working fine with the single ring for a year or so. I'm getting completed calls for carpet cleaning and other companies this week. Something is weird.

[VOIPoTim]

Did something change this week? It was working fine with the single ring for a year or so. I'm getting completed calls for carpet cleaning and other companies this week. Something is weird.

No changes on our end that I know of.

[Mike_TV]

No changes on our end that I know of.

I'll watch it for a few more days next week and see what happens. I've confirmed that I have Nomorobo turned on and enabled in the Vpanel. Thanks.

[MisterEd]

I decided to give NMR another shot. Is it me or does it affect the VOIPO call quality? Only had 2 calls so far. Anyway .........

It seems that what NMR does now is allow a call to be passed if the blocked caller types in a random number provided by NMR. If you want to test out NMR rejection call your home FROM this number: 203-583-3042.

How can I call FROM this number you asK? :D Do what the telemarketers do. Use a spoofed number. You can do that from here (2x per day). http://bluffmycall.com/free/ I can see having a lot of fun with that service.

[burris]

I signed up for Nomorobo in the very beginning and it works very well. One ring and the call goes into the bucket. I get a few calls each day like this.

[GreenLantern]

following up on this old thread. any way to get a reseller listed with nomorobo?