Call Protect error, deficient support

[elsanelson]

Call Protect's blacklist system is mostly vulnerable to Caller-ID spoofing, where scam callers (and a very few legitimate spoofers) replace the original Caller-ID with something misleading or random to avoid screening by recipients.

The one case somewhat solved involves the WITHELD Caller-ID, where BT itself replaces the Caller-ID being sent to the recipient with the word 'WITHELD'.  BT Call Protect for the first years of its operation allowed WITHELD numbers to be blacklisted just like any explicit Caller-ID.  Furthermore BT keeps the original Caller-ID that it witheld, so presumably unspoofable.

In fact, the current BT Call Protect supplied with Digital Voice has blacklisting WITHELD numbers in its user interface.  I can supply a screenshot as proof, although I can't see how to upload it here.  The Recent Calls listing treats Witheld calls just the same as the calls with explicit Caller-IDs, even adding to the Save prompt "You can save a Witheld number even though it is not visible."

Unfortunately, clicking the Save button in the above prompt  results in a red error bar "There was an error saving your changes.  Please try again".

For more than a week now I have had a fault entered.  'Back Office' claimed they could find no problem, but the fault is still categorised as 'Call Barring' rather than 'BT Call Protect'.  I have run the diagnostic twice to try to correct the category, and spoken to multiple support agents.  One agent trial-and-errored different service arrangements on my account.  Another tried to convince me (at her boss' insistence) that BT Call Protect never allowed blacklisting WITHELD numbers.  She also said that there was no way I could send my screenshot proof and that no one she knew could talk to anyone who would know I was talking about! -- and why did I want to get an engineer involved when she was telling me it couldn't work?

Why do I care?  We finally bought the BT Premium Phone when the scammers started waking us up at 6 AM (we're old).  Complicated and quirky, Premium Phone has a massive whitelist that loads contacts from your mobile and has practical caller announcing and contact updating.   Just one scam call in months: a WITHELD number.  We have to let them through so my daughter can call from work, but I'd like to blacklist that WITHELD scammer.   Rrrrrrrr!

Ideas welcome, including how to upload screenshots.

Elsa

[jac_95]

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[imjolly]

you need to use the camera icon to upload to post

[elsanelson]

Ah, thanks @imjolly 

Here's the shot of me about to try blacklisting a Witheld call:

Last call listed. See dropdown list on right and prompts at top of Save dialog.

[elsanelson]

And here's the error I got when I tried to add the Witheld number to the blacklist:

[elsanelson]

Had good luck today,

I happened onto a more knowledgeable agent who looked at the screenshots above.  She fairly quickly described what I was saying to back office engineers and I got a call back about an hour later.  The engineer said there is definitely a Call Protect setup problem on our account and they are de-installing and re-ordering it, probably finished Sunday.  He was familiar that what the first screenshot shows, adding witheld numbers to the blacklist, and verified that this would be proper operation.  He was not like the support manager yesterday who insisted it couldn't be done and had his agent refuse to look at a screenshot refuse to contact the back office.

Richard

[elsanelson]

The problem has re-surfaced, as we finally got a nasty insistent scammer using WITHELD.  Tried the MyBT website Call Protect interface, but the re-set configuration above seems to have left us with the same problem, BUT....

After trying and failing to blacklist the 5 recent WITHELD calls, I tried 1572 to just blacklist the last one.  It worked!

The problem seems to be software supporting the Recent Callers page.  The My Blacklist page now shows one blacklisted WITHELD call from 1572, but the Recent Callers page still shows none of them blacklisted.

Not bothering Support again, whether clued up agent or no, but if someone can communicate to back office, please have them re-test blacklisting individual WITHELD calls from the Recent Callers page (as shown in the above screenshots).  It would be nice to have this back working like it did before Digital Voice came in, but I have done putting in my time trying to deal with this as a fault.

Richard for Elsa and me