[infurl]

Unsolicited phone calls have become a scourge in modern times and so far there hasn't been a political or technical solution capable of stopping these low-life scum from wasting your time, however there are ways that you can fight back and gain some satisfaction. Ironically, the only thing that annoys a spam caller is if you can waste enough of their time, but that's tricky to do without wasting even more of your own time.

I did manage to keep one of these fellows on the line for about half an hour once. He was posing as "technical support" and he was trying to talk me through the process of installing some malware on my "Windows" computer. Since I wasn't doing anything important at the time, I played along with it until I got bored. Eventually in frustration he asked me what I could see on the screen now and I told him "Linux" and laughed at him for being such a fool. He was so mad he hung up and then he spent the next hour calling my phone repeatedly in the futile hope of annoying me.

Most of the time I have something better to do though, so here are some nifty technical solutions that might serve instead.

https://www.techspot.com/news/77583-lenny-chatbot-trolls-telemarketers.html

Lenny is a chatbot that was created almost a decade ago by an anonymous IT professional who was sick of fielding these tiresome calls day after day. So he set about designing an automated message system to troll telemarketers and scam callers.

Now if you really want to ruin the spam caller's day, you can spend a bit of money on a commercial time wasting service.

https://jollyrogertelephone.com/

Bonus video: not a chatbot, just a very funny comedian.

[8pla.net]

Lenny worked pretty well 

[Don Patrick]

Unsolicited calls were made illegal some 15 years ago in my country, at the penalty of fines. We have a national registry where you can list your phone number if you don't want to be called without permission, and every callcenter is obligated to end their calls with pointing out that this registry exists.

[infurl]

Unsolicited calls were made illegal some 15 years ago in my country, at the penalty of fines. We have a national registry where you can list your phone number if you don't want to be called without permission, and every call center is obligated to end their calls with pointing out that this registry exists.

Most countries have such a registry but regardless of the existence of the registry, listing your number on it, or the legality of the calls, the calls keep coming. The reason is because of the way the international phone system works and it has been easy for robocallers to circumvent any attempt to block them or trace them which makes prosecution extremely difficult.

The good news is that international telcos are finally starting to work together to develop a solution but how well it will work when it is eventually rolled out remains to be seen.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/standards/how-your-phone-company-aims-to-stop-robocalls

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/robo-calls-are-unstoppable-why-your-phone-wont-quit-ringing/2019/03/15/a4d553b8-44ef-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html

[Art]

Here in the USA, we also have a National "Do Not Call" registry but it can take up to 30 days for one's request to get processed into the system. The telemarketers often just change their phone numbers and cal you all over again. It's difficult to stop them.
One thing I've noticed is that once one of these telemarketers or Robocallers call my number, as soon as I answer, it usually takes a few (2 to 3) seconds for them to answer. I mentally start counting as soon as I answer their call. As soon as I get to three, I hang up! Done!
Sometimes we press the On/Answer then immediately press the Off/Hang-up button.

Lastly, we have Caller ID and usually, if we don't recognize the number or caller, we don't answer it at all.