Harish Palaniappan's

You would have experienced hearing marketing messages on your phone.. I am talking about the automated ones. Communications providers like TATA or AIRTEL, are technology front-runners in the sector in India.. and they prove it in that they do machine driven phone calls to their subscribers to advice of bill payment dates... very often they do marketing calls in the disguise of "value-added services"

I have been receiving one such call from AIRTEL quite often on my mobile phone.. that just does not leave me if I ignore the call.

Looks like some intelligent programmer made sure his program ensures that the recipient hears the message and if the call is ignored or not connected the call retries after a few minutes. I do not have any idea whether the programmer has any threshold wherein if i ignore a specific number of times they will bear my number... but they surely don't seem to respect the 'DO NOT CALL' registry on their website on which i have registered many times.

Currently the solution i have is ... I recorded the number of the call, stored it as 'Airtel Virus', and whenever the call comes i take the call and disconnect after 2 secs.

After a few times like this, I started smiling whenever my phone says 'Airtel Virus calling...' So, its become a way to have a sweet surprise once in a month.

If you are in chennai, and having this problem too, the number for Airtel Virus is +9199400 12600 Other cities probably have different numbers. If you know of any, please comment to this entry.

And don't bother to register on Airtel's DO NOT CALL registry, they just don't care about that list for sure.

Happy disconnection with the virus.