In today's fast-paced and highly technological world, it's no longer enough just to hang up when phone solicitors call your house. Often, they are looking for more than just an opportunity to sell to you -- they may be checking when you are home, or even casing your house for a robbery attempt. This article discusses some of the steps you and your family should take to completely prevent telemarketers from ringing your phone in the first place.

Telemarketing is probably the most source of con-artists or scams for any family. Questionable marketers may call you at any time of the day to offer investment schemes or sweepstakes plans. Then they pressure you to sign up immediately because the offer is only good for a limited period of time. Often, they'll demand some kind of up-front investment or fee to participate, which is always a red flag that the caller is not on the up-and-up.

Be forewarned: Don't give out any personal information or credit card numbers to a person who calls you on the phone like this. Don't buy anything from anyone over the phone. Some older people in particular seem to have a harder time hanging up on obnoxious salespeople. This may be because they don't want to be rude. If this is the case with you, get a phone equipped with Caller ID so that you can simply not pick up when you don't the number of the caller.

Also, make sure your phone number is registered with the national Do Not Call registry. This should significantly cut down -- if not eliminate altogether -- the number of telemarketers calling your home.

If you have kids, it's also very important to educate them not to answer the phone unless they specifically know who is calling. This protects them not only from phone solicitors but from all manner of dangerous characters.

Going beyond this basic form of not answering the phone, there are steps you and your family can take to protect yourselves. Many phone companies offer a call screening service, which means they do not automatically let callers ring your phone until you specifically accept calls from their phone number. This works well, especially for people who usually get calls from the same set of people.

One final step a family can take is to utilize an online telemarketer identification and blocking site like Phone Spam Filter or Telemarketer Catcher. These sites allow you to look up a phone number to see if others have complained about it in the past.

Recently, these sites have even expanded internationally, meaning that no matter where you are in the world you may be able to quickly look up whether a particular caller was reported in the past as a telemarketer. Even if you can't find the person that called you on one of these websites, you can still post your own information to notify others about the telemarketer or phone solicitor.

Also, there are tools online for automatically blocking inbound calls based on whether they show up in a database, if you have the technical inclination to figure that out.