I too have received the 215 area code number on my cell phone. I Googled and found your site. Will the *67 work with callers who have their numbers blocked and those calls that show up as UnKnown? Someone used to have the home number I currently have and I'm getting call after call and telling these idiots to Google my number and see that I'm not who they want does no good. Most of them seem to have never heard of Google in the first place. One number listed as UnKnown or Private keeps calling and the caller is abusive to me and I have no way of knowing how to report them. Will the blocking of UnKnown or Private showing up on the caller ID work?
Thanks for your great site.
Bob
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: *67 is intended to _deliberatly_ block the calling party's number. On your caller ID display it will usually shown either 'private' or 'withheld' but not often 'unknown'.Two ways to avoid that type of call: *77 is known as 'blocked ID blocker'. People who _deliberatly_ block their caller ID -- even if due to telephone company shortcomings the number would not be available anyway -- can be dodged by using *77 (by itself, just dial that into your phone, wait for a response, then disconnect). In the future, callers who dial *67 before the number will be told 'party does not accept blocked ID calls; please hang up, make your number available, and dial again.'
The second method is by subscribing through your telco to *60, which allows a repertoire of up to ten numbers _you never ever want to hear from_. Dialing *60 -- once you have subscribed -- gets you a recorded message of instructions on what to do. To summarize those instructions, you can either dial in the ten digit fully qualified number _or_ you can add 'the last call recieved, whether or not the number is known_. In that case, the system will not tell you the number being added -- since _that_ person also has privacy expectations -- but it will tell you that a 'private entry has been added to your list'. Later on, you are permitted to delete (from your list) any of the fully qualified numbers you originally had blacklisted or you can delete the entire batch of 'private entries'.
If you use *60 and wish to add numbers to your personal Do Not Disturb list, after you enter the number to be added, the system goes away for a few seconds; it has to 'ping' that number to be assured that it is a good number. First time around at least, when using *60 be sure to listen completely to the instructions given. PAT]