Autodialing programming help

Hello,

I am working with a New York based artist to build an artwork using auto dialing software and think Asterisk is a good starting point. We are looking for the software to automatically dial a list of about 100 numbers using a masked or continually randomized caller ID, and we’d like to be able to program the numbers it calls ourselves after the initial setup. If this seems like something you could help with, we are looking to hire someone to help us program a raspberry pi to do this.

Please let me know if this is something you could assist with.

Thank you,
Greg Wall

Wut?

Do you have any experience of working with Asterisk at all, and you’re asking
for assistance with some specific part of this project, or are you looking for
someone to do the whole thing?

Would the numbers being dialled correspond to real telephones on the public
network? If so, do you already have some connectivity to the PSTN which will
allow you to fake Caller ID in the way you suggest?

Antony.

Thanks for the reply. We do not have any experience with Asterisk, and are asking for a programmer to help us set up a system with Asterisk on a Raspberry Pi that will enable us to repeatedly call a set list of numbers. The numbers to be dialed would correspond to real telephone numbers. We do not have PSTN set up - hoping to make the calls over the internet. Not sure if I am answering these questions thoroughly, but definitely looking for a programmer to help set this up for us. thanks

Okay, here is a short list of some of the questions which I think anyone would
need answers to before being able (or willing) to go ahead with such a
project:

  1. What numbers do you want to present as Caller ID? You said you wanted “a
    masked or continually randomized caller ID” - is this legal in your
    jurisdiction?

  2. When a number gets dialled, what do you want to happen when it gets
    answered?

  3. When a number gets dialled, what do you want to happen when it does not get
    answered? Would the same number get called more than once?

  4. Do you want to dial these numbers one after another, or more than one
    concurrently?

  5. Do the numbers to be dialled belong to organisations or individuals who
    have consented to take part in such an auto-dialling project?

  6. (Just out of curiosity) Where does the “artwork” element come in to this?

Antony.

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What kind of artwork would dial a lot of numbers continually? There would most likely be alternative ways to solve the communication, without using the phone network.

Most providers would get a lot of warnings if you keep dialing the same numbers continually. Also most providers will not allow you to set caller ID’s that does not correspond to numbers you have registered with the provider, or in other ways has documented you own, or has permission to use, if they even allow you to specify any callerID at all.

If you just want to simulate a phone network on your own, you can do mostly everything you like, using one or more machines running Asterisk. You would have to setup som endpoints and to make it easy to setup, you’d need one of the nodes to have a public IP. This machine should work as your telephone server, handling calls and letting all the other nodes register to it.

On your hub node, you’d setup the 100 numbers you’d like to use, then setup the 100 (or more) nodes you need to receive the call, and finally you configure the nodes to dial in whatever pattern you want.

But the specific details highly depends on what you’d like to do. For all I know you might hate your local parlement members, and want to place harassing phone calls at all times of the day, and while I understand people might not like politicians, there are better ways to voice your disapproval, some are even anonymous. (Hint: Phone calls are NOT anonymous if you have the required resources (Read: The money) to trace them, it can be done.)

Usually people who spoofs caller ID’s are people up to no good, indian scam callcenters, stalkers etc. love the idea. But if your actions are bad enough, telcos can figure out where the call came from, they need to work together, and do some tedious work to figure it out. The process would generally be like follows:

  1. The called partys phone company can see they got a call from number xyz to number zyx at a specific time, from a specific provider or customer
  2. In case the call came from another provider, have them perform the same identification, eg. figure our what provider sent the call to them.
  3. Repeat step 2 until you reach the originating provider, who can then identify the customer placing the call.

Your request and your framing sounds quite suspicious to me, and I see no real legitimate reason to randomize/spoof the caller ID, when just marking it as private is enough to prevent it from being shown in the recipient end.

Also with the stir/shaken implementation, primarily in the US, these calls would most likely be filtered and rejected anyways, making the whole setup not working.

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Hi Greg,
If you are still on the lookout for someone, I would be glad to help you out as what you are wanting done is within my skillset
You can reach out to me on my email here
Colin

Why will a “New York based artist” building an art network need to spoof their phone number?
Particularly I reject the notion of using Asterisk to scam people.

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