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I've been thinking about doing it more basic: "Please enter the extension"

I'd make '7777' be the only "extension" that gets through. Callers that are in my contacts wouldn't even get the prompt. The doctor's office, school administrators, or any other not-a-contact-but-still-wanted caller would know what my "extension" is.

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I’ve been thinking the same thing. You could even treat extensions as tokens and whitelist numbers only if they call the right extension.

Essentially, that's what 5284 is--an extension. The "Dial 1, Dial 2" is just to waste the time of human bad actors. If you can keep them on the line for just 20-30 seconds longer, you cut their call volume down considerably and perform a public service.

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