voicemail without ringing

Fusion Voice service, features and help.
8 posts Page 1 of 1
by gandc » Tue May 07, 2019 2:15 pm
Has anyone else received voicemail messages that show up without the phone ever ringing?

I have a Sonic DSL line with phone service, with voicemail enabled. I have a fairly basic phone hooked up. It normally shows "NN new calls" on the screen if I've missed any calls (and lets me scroll through the caller ID info), and then I check voicemail online via member tools.

I've been getting calls from one source, or at least they always leave the exact same recorded message (some generic robocall -- "blah blah business credit blah blah"). I get a 31-second message, always the same, in my voicemail, but my phone never registers a missed call.

This isn't really a big deal -- just another robocaller -- but I'm curious why it's not showing up on caller ID on my phone.

If someone from Sonic sees this: my account is the same as my forum user name, and I left the most recent message in my voicemail -- from 352-353-xxxx (undoubtedly fake) on 2019 May 2.

I vaguely remember seeing news a while back that someone had figured out to game one of the big mobile phone company's voicemail systems, so that they could leave voicemail without ringing the phone. I guess some telemarketing scammer figured it might be 1% more likely to make them money or something. Any chance there's something similar going on here?
by cmeisel » Wed May 08, 2019 2:05 pm
I'm of course not sure if this is what you encountered but not only is it easy to spoof messages, it is also easy to have your call go directly to voicemail without ringing. You can even download apps in the Apple and android stores that can do either one of those things are both.
by gandc » Thu May 09, 2019 10:57 am
Out of curiosity, I looked around at some of those apps that let you send calls directly to voicemail. The details are a little sketchy, but from what I can tell, they only work with the big mobile carriers. I presume they've found some tricks to call into the carrier's voicemail system and route a message straight to voicemail, but who knows. Maybe they've figured out how to do the same with Sonic's voicemail system?
by cmeisel » Thu May 09, 2019 5:14 pm
I tried it with an app called "spoofcard" and sonic goes straight to voicemail immediately (not just with sonic but also other voip providers i tired). one way to prevent this is to run the communicator app on your mobile, that still "picks up" the call and rings...
by gandc » Thu May 09, 2019 9:00 pm
Thanks for checking that out. I'm still curious about what spoofcard (and any other similar software) is doing behind the scenes, but that definitely answers my original question.
by virtualmike » Thu May 09, 2019 9:03 pm
cmeisel wrote:"spoofcard"
This one looks like a "one call at a time" app, and there's a fee for the calls made using it, but I'm sure there are "enterprise" versions that allow making zillions of calls per minute. <sigh>
by gandc » Thu May 09, 2019 9:18 pm
For my particular use -- a small business phone line -- any calls that go straight to voicemail are 100% guaranteed to be telemarketers (at least so far). So I guess they're doing me a favor: I don't get interrupted by the phone ringing, I just need to delete messages from my voice mailbox occasionally.

This specific robocaller is a little weird, in that they've been leaving the exact same message (31 seconds long), a couple times a week, for several weeks now.

Oh hey, I just thought of something... I don't use nomorobo (I don't get that many telemarketers/robocalls/etc, and I worry about missing a call from a potential customer). But for someone who has it enabled, would this direct-to-voicemail thing bypass nomorobo entirely?
by Omen_1248 » Thu Jun 20, 2019 6:51 am
[quote="gandc"]For my particular use -- a small business phone line -- any calls that go straight to voicemail are 100% guaranteed to be telemarketers (at least so far). So I guess they're doing me a favor: I don't get interrupted by the phone ringing, I just need to delete messages from my voice mailbox occasionally.

This specific robocaller is a little weird, in that they've been leaving the exact same message (31 seconds long), a couple times a week, for several weeks now.

Oh hey, I just thought of something... I don't use nomorobo (I don't get that many telemarketers/robocalls/etc, and I worry about missing a call from a potential customer). But for someone who has it enabled, would this direct-to-voicemail thing bypass nomorobo entirely?[/quote][quote="cmeisel"]I'm of course not sure if this is what you encountered but not only is it easy to spoof messages, it is also easy to have your call go directly to voicemail without ringing. You can even download apps in the Apple and android stores that can do either one of those things are both.[/quote]
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