BBC fooled by my tarpit

I was surprised when someone from the BBC emailed in asking about buying one of our numbers as they had called it and heard (after a loop of announcements)  that the number is for sale.

I was all excited and explained that it was for sale and we had other numbers for sale.

Then I get "Well that hardly explains why the NRSA[sic] threat with suggestions of terrorist activities and pretend 'I'm slightly deaf' announcements should be on the line." and "I will delete the number and suggest you consider listening to the messages and see if you think they are an appropriate was[sic] for a rebuttable[sic] business to behave."

He sounds cross to me. So I listened to the message again as suggested. We start :-


"You have called the wrong number, this number is not actually in service. However, this message will continue as we are trying to catch out junk callers..."

That is 100% clear, and nobody should be at all fooled by that. Apparently someone from the BBC was. Sorry if it confused you - hope you listen more carefully in future.

More than happy to work with you guys on a story about the annoyance of illegal junk callers...


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  2. The BBC seem to have been plugging this story for some days:


    ( I think it's just now disappeared from their "most popular" list )

  3. "I will delete the number", I read that as "... from this list of numbers that I have".

    Did he explain why he was calling, and where he got the number list from?

    BTW, thank you for running this tarpit, I'm enjoying the lack of PPI calls to my mobile.

  4. @stevetravels: How does RevK's tarpit stop PPI calls to your mobile?

    1. @RSchu It puts the callers' costs up, and particularly it makes each tarpitted call cost the caller's human time rather than just machine time.

      The ICO and police are probably far more effective than the tarpit at stopping the biggest scammers. But I'm assuming that there will always be new people to try their hand at old tricks, and hopefully things such as this tarpit are making them find that the costs are more than the rewards.

