How can I make Anonymous Calls?

Making anonymous calls from Wholesale PBX, VoIP bundles or SIP Trunks

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in association with the Communications Alliance has developed a new effort to reduce spam calls in Australia.

The code is available for your review here: https://www.commsalliance.com.au/Documents/all/codes/c661

The new effort to reduce spam calls in this code enforces stricter policies with regards to outbound caller ID configuration. Please read the below to ensure your configuration aligns with the new code.

There are ample reasons why you may want to hide your Caller ID when making a call outbound from our system, this might be due to the call being a sensitive call or simply that you don't want the person calling to have your number.

Whatever the reason behind wanting to block your CallerID you can do this fairly easily within VoIPNow, although depending on the product it does require additional configuration to be set for it to work correctly.

Anonymous Calls on Wholesale PBX and VoIP Bundles

If you use our Wholesale PBX and VoIP Bundles products you can configure the extensions to make anonymous calls on a per-extension basis. To do this you simply need to carry out the below steps.

1. Login to VoIPNow and navigate to the extension you want to send Anonymous Calls

2. Click into "Phone Terminal Setup"

3. Set the Caller ID Name and Number to "Set by Server"

4. If "Currently using CallerID numbers" is empty click on "Change" next to the empty box and select a DID to use, you need to have at least one selected

5. Enable the function "Do not send Caller ID on public calls"

6. Enable the function "Send SIP P-Asserted-Identity and P-Preferred-Identity headers"

7. Click "OK" at the bottom of the page to save the settings

Once saved all outbound calls from that Extension will be sent as Anonymous.

The reason for selecting the DID for the CallerID is that the system will use this in the "P-Asserted-Identity" header, it won't use it as the Caller ID but instead uses it to ensure it isn't a SPAM call.

Anonymous Calls on SIP Trunks

If you use any of our SIP Trunk products and would like to send anonymous calls you can do so but are required to send additional information to comply with recent ACMA changes, specifically you need to include the header "P-Asserted-Identity".

To ensure this information is passed through our system you need to ensure the below settings are configured in the "Phone Terminal Settings" within VoIPNow:

• Caller ID Name and Number are set to "Set by Equipment"

• "Send SIP P-Asserted-Identity and P-Preferred-Identity headers" is enabled

If the above is enabled then you just need to set your PBX to send the "P-Asserted-Identity" header through with the call. Depending on the PBX the configuration of this may be quite different.