Deals.Woot

@drchops: darn good question... hmmm.... dunno.

Exactly my question @drchops.

FYI, this is for 30 days of Trapcall MouseTrap plan.

@jizbee, very disappointed that you are offering the SpoofCard. Products like this are not funny.

@drchops: You must be in high school. Only prank callers & extortionist need to hide them. :-P

@pd123: After reading the offer I believe this is for just 1 month of the plan at the discounted price. @jizbee, can you confirm this, that purchasers will not be locked into a monthly subscription.

@kevskoolkars: Or a whistleblower from a company that is poisoning us. Way to KILL OUR CHILDREN, man. ;Þ

I don't know how I ever lived without TrapCall... Everytime I get a blocked call, I see who is calling me including their name and address before I answer the call!!! I also love the voicemail transcription feature, I never call to listen to my messages any more, I read them as a SMS. TrapCall ROCKS!!!! :D

Why do half these comments sound like advertisements?

Okay.... being in the telecom biz, I'm not quite sure how they can guarantee information that doesn't exist. Is this for mobile phones that use the mobile network to block their caller ID? PSTN phones?

I'll bet the price of a nice steak dinner that I can call any single person with Trapcall and that person will not be able to unmask my information. These days, MOST blocked caller IDs are done using VoIP. The REAL caller ID is never sent or stored ANYwhere. There's no information for even the phone company to get, much less some third party like Trapcall.

I can only imagine this works on a very limited subset of calls.

@eneref: This system does use caller ID but there are more advanced methods for getting phone numbers from any source. That's using ANI.

ANI was created by AT&T (I worked for them for 8 years) to bill long distance calls. Large businesses that have toll-free numbers usually subscribe to the ANI service and will show the originating phone number regardless of the caller ID status. They are completely different systems. You can block your caller ID however you wish but it will not block the ANI.

You are right about VoIP though. That's because the call goes through the internet instead of through your local telephone company. However, if you are calling a land line phone, it does need to go through the POTS and you might get an ANI "hit" on the VoIP's number in the local area that called the land line.

Note that this is also an issue with calling 911 with VoIP. They cannot always detect your correct address so be careful if you have an emergency.

http://lifehacker.com/5155070/trapcall-reveals-whos-behind-blocked-calls says that you can get the 'lite' version for free...

"The free version does caller ID unmasking and lets you set up unwanted caller blacklists. The other two pay versions offer more features, including voicemail transcription, caller ID names, support, incoming call recording, and more."

@cengland0: It's quite possible that the call will grab an ANI. But since the ANI will vary dependent upon which carrier I'm routing our calls through to the PSTN, then that information is pretty worthless. Assuming I call Bob, and it happens to route through Vitelity, which then routes through underlying carrier A, Bob MIGHT get information from underlying carrier A. However, UC A is likely a CLEC with generic information about their owned blocks of NPAs. If I call the same number again, it might router through Vitelity and still route through a different UC (with different info), or it might route through Teliax, or straight to Level 3, etc, etc.

The permutations of the steps a call takes makes even well-intentioned ANI traces somewhat worthless.

And yes... I know all about E911. I RUN a telecom company. I'm not just a customer. All of our customers with E911 access have their current addresses on file. Unless they're on the road, or in a coffee shop, there are no worries.

if U don't show your # than go have a good conversation with my answering system, if I'm lazy I will go listen to it..

If U show your # and I don't know you, I will pickup if I'm in a good mood. :D

@meircohen: fake post looks fake

The ad says no subscription is required, but the service you are buying is good for only one month UNLESS YOU SUBSCRIBE. Strikes me as misleading.

@sportyrider

I'm pretty sure the free trial was for the beta version of Trapcall.

I've had the service for almost 4 months now and it works pretty well. It sends me a text with the name and sometimes the address of the person calling me. The only thing is that I wish it worked for land line phones.

@sybrwookie: Nah! You can usually tell by the "join date" when the marketing department of the company makes posts. There's only one person who joined today in this comment section. That's not a lot.

@cengland0 and @eneref: I am familiar with SS7, and extremely familiar with ANIs. I have multiple ANIs plugged into my cell just so that I'll know which person might be calling me from LargeCo or DotMil. This product is every bit as limited as it says. In addition, having watched friends and acquaintances spoof ANIs [fixed typo] (while doing legal vulnerability assessments), I know that, with the right equipment, it's braindead simple.

For all you folks making comments that seem to have no reputation, and no ability to vote, please don't do that. Since you can't vote, you appear to be only half a shill, but it's still DUMB.

Why would you need this ability (speaking as devil's adv.)? Because you want to know who is on the other end of a call, just in case it's the in-law you told you were going out of town. Because you have a stalker. Because it's the middle of the night, and you want to know whether to let it roll to voicemail. Out of characters, as usual. ;-}

@shrdlu: My solution has always been simpler. I block all caller-ID-blocked calls, and I never answer the phone if I don't recognise the number

I'd like to get this just to see who is calling me with political ads all the time. Apparently they aren't covered under the No-call list and they don't need to show their number or identify who is actually behind the recorded message or provide a way to stop getting the calls.
It's very frustrating, because I even get a voicemail from the recording if I don't pick up.