Hi, 
i have got a strange problem with my telephone at home. At first i
have to say, that i am living in germany and may telephone line is
provided by the german Deutsche telekom.
At home, i have a normal telephon and i use the line also for the
internet with an analog modem.
Every 3 month (sometimes avery 2 month, its kind of randomly) there is
a call at any time at day or night. When you pick it up, it sounds
like a fax machine. You know those kind of beeping. This kind of
machnine is trying to reach the other machine on my side 3 times, so
it will call 3 times in a row. The problem is. this fax is not for
me!!!! And i donīt have a fax at all. I belive it is some kind of
company, who is sending a lot of faxes to different numbers. The
problem seems to be, that my number is on this list!!!
First i tried to plug a fax machine on my side, to see what kind of
fax they are sending, and what the number of this fax maschine is.
After a while, it works, and the two fax machines where transfering
data. But the only thing on my side was blank paper. I have to say,
that i checked the fax machine on my side with a test sending and it
worked fine.
So the next idea was, that the machine on the other side is not a fax
machine. It could be some kind of modem or some other kind of machine,
that is working like a fax machine, but the fax machine on my side
canīt understand the machine in the right way.
The only thing i want to manage, is that this thing is not reaching me
at all (So that the telephone is not ringing, when this fax is treying
to reach me, but i can still use the telephone for every other call) 
or how i can find out whats the right number on the other side, so
that i can call the other party and talk to them and stop this
process.
Can somebody help me with this?

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Clarification of Question by joho123-ga on 28 Jul 2002 11:05 PDT

The point, when i get the fax, there is no fax number from the other
party on the paper, so he or she has blocked the number information.

In the US, I would buy an inexpensive "caller ID" box.  It tells you
what number is calling, unless the caller has specifically blocked
that information.  I don't know much about the German phone system, or
if you have such a device available.
Have you tried asking your local phone company to trace the call?

I've had this problem myself recently, and it's no fun at all.

A couple of things you might want to try: Hook that line up through
your computer and set it to answer incoming calls via the modem to see
if you can get it to handshake successfully. It is possible it's doing
something like trying to send you data of some sort. Could be almost
anything--a credit card verification machine, an ATM, a Coke machine,
you name it. I'm not sure what these transmissions would look like,
but maybe if they looked obvious, or at least provided a location, you
could track it down yourself. I could also be some sort of predictive
dialler, either phoning from a large bank of telemarketers, or, more
likely, considering that the beeps sound like handshaking, a war
dialler, just poking around looking for data lines to crack into.

I'm not familiar with the laws in Germany, but you might try calling
local law enforcement to see if they'll trace the calls for you.

Good luck.