Interesting People mailing list archives

IP: Fighting back at a fax attack

From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:39:51 -0400

Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 06:13:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Ole J. Jacobsen" <ole () cisco com>
To: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Fighting back at a fax attack

A couple of weeks ago, one of the voice lines in the house started ringing
repeatedly. Each time I answered I heard the familiar 1100 Hz CNG "beep,
beep, beep" as emitted by a fax machine waiting for a response. After a
couple of hours of this nonsense, I finally had enough. Armed with a patch
cable I went into the garage and cross connected the offending line to
where the real fax machine is. I created the short letter below, dialled
*69, and managed after several tries to get through to the sending fax
machine (which was mostly busy calling me and other "customers").

  "To whom it may concern,

   For the last several hours, your fax machine has been calling (415)
   821-nnnn repeatedly. Please note that this is not a fax number and
   please remove the number from your automatic calling list. These calls
   are extremely annoying!"

It worked. The calls stopped. I'm now a beliver in *69.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
The Internet Protocol Journal
Tel: +1 408-527-8972
e-mail: ole () cisco com
URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

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IP: Fighting back at a fax attack David Farber (Oct 10)