I’m considering building an Asterisk box at home in order to stop telemarketers. We’ve tried the “Do Not Call” registry but we still inevitably get lots of wrong numbers and other unwanted calls. What I’d like to do is have the Asterisk box field incoming calls and prompt callers for a PIN number. If the PIN number is correct then the call is allowed to ring on the house phones. If the PIN is incorrect the call is dropped. I figure we’ll only give the PIN to family members and those we want to actually speak to.
Before I get started on a project like this I’d like to know if Asterisk can actually do this. Any thoughts?
Hi
Yes asterisk can do this, Personally I intercept all international and withheld numbers as well as a list of CLIs and they are told they are either international or blacklisted and then are required to dial 5 to get through. this stops all automated systems and 99.9% of all manual calls.
Ian
There are one more way - you can create white list - then all from white list will go directly to your phone, others will be asked for pin.
And you can decide - if you want you can forward all with wrong pin to calling card system and ask them for their calling card.
This way you can get monney if somebody wants to sell you something 
There are a lot of ready made calling card systems for Asterisk. You can even connect calling card system to paypall - to allow telemarketers easy to by credit to call you.
Best of all - you can charge telemarketers as much as you want 
I am sure - this way they will stop torture you.