Telco sets honey pot for nuisance marketers

A small telco has decided to turn the tables on irritating unsolicited calls by setting up a block of dummy phone numbers that play messages to trick marketers into lenghty and pointless sales pitches.

The wheeze is the work of Andrews

The wheeze is the work of Andrews and Arnold (AAISP), a small business provider, and was prompted by a deluge of unsolicited calls to its office lines over the past month.

The firm has reserved a block of four million VoIP lines for the prank. All are registered with the Telephone Preference Service, so any unsolicited marketing calls they get are likely to be the result of illegal use of autodialler software.