A coworker of mine changed his voicemail message to start with the tri-tone that plays for a disconnected number (bah dah deet) followed by a normal voicemail greeting. The auto dialers delete the number from their list when they hear the tri-tone. It did confuse legitimate callers that were trying to reach him though.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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Oh, I like that! I just use the dial tone so they think they disconnected, but they end up calling back a few times before they stop.
I don't know if it's a universal thing, I've never bothered to research further. On my several-year-old Oneplus phone (Android), if I single-press the power button, it mutes the ringer and vibrate but the call doesn't end or reject (I could still then go and answer or reject the call normally, it doesn't affect the user interface, just the ringer/vibrate). That's how I've been "rejecting" unknown calls for a long time. A simple, elegant solution that doesn't give the caller any hints.
That makes them think you aren't available, but if you have any kind of voicemail it means they know it's a real number so autodialers will probably still try later. I think this request is how can we fool the spammers (automated or otherwise) to think the number is totally invalid so they stop calling it.
That is difficult since there's probably some indication from the phone company other than just a voice message that indicates a number is invalid/unallocated.
That said, muting is the way I do it, but now most autodialer systems are configured to call twice in a row to get around the Do No Disturb settings on most cell phones, so it is more annoying now.
I don't get many spam calls but I thought this was what everyone did.
I could do it on my Android 8? Phone. With its notification led, and card slot, and headphone jack... I miss that thing
That solidifies my suspicion that it's a standard Android feature... I also don't get many spam calls, and only distinctly remember performing that action on this most recent phone.
Based on OP's comment "...I always assume that rejecting the call outright will also be detected as a deliberate action and therefore a person is on the other side...", I figured maybe they didn't know about that feature and/or have an iPhone and they somehow don't behave that way.
I also miss the old days of Android... I got a smartphone specifically to play Pokemon go in 2016 lol, up until that point I was still rocking one of those Casio Gzone indestructible flip-phones. Walked into WalMart, bought the cheapest LG whatever phone I could find (Android 5 I think?), caught a bazillion Pokemon. I remember buying multiple batteries for longer sessions, because you could just pop the back off and replace it on the go.
I think it's down volume on my pixel 5 to mute an incoming call.
the voicemail app YouMail has that as an option
I used to answer unknown numbers, back in the age of human callers, "Michael Dorn, FCC" which usually ended the call tho one guy did reply "Mannnn you ain't Worf!" Before hanging up.
I don't think any of that matters in the age of robo dialing and computer calling. For example, I answer my work calls with my name and company. The robo calls don't even recognize that as a response and say silent until I say "hello?" Which triggers the next part of the program's responses.
What I want is a way to answer the phone like a fax machine. Just press a button and the call gets answered and immediately starts playing that fax machine sound.
I'll bet that would stop calls. Surely they have something that can tell if they're calling a fax machine over and over.
It's kind of weird we don't have the option to create multiple voicemail boxes. How hard would that be?
Google bought up GrandCentral years ago and turned it into Google Voice, where they could freeze the feature set and ignore the product and any possible innovation. Multiline autoringing and speech-to-text on voicemail was it, forever. If innovation had stayed on the table, we could have had rule-based personal phone trees, maybe with different greetings and options based on known/unknown/masked caller ID.
25 years ago, I pressed 7 and got to hear the duck quack. We didn’t know at the time that it was a golden age.
GrandCentral was a great service.
I think I still have my google voice number.
If i dont know the number i dont answer, if they ring again and its spam i block the number. I also only answer if its from my country.
You could record it and set it as your voicemail message, and just tell your contacts that it's legit.