How It Works

Access to the Fritz!Box relies on the TR-064 standard.

The fritzCallMon script listens to an incoming or outgoing external call and calls the fritzBackwardSearch script that retrieves the phone caller list from the Fritz!Box, extracts the entries that do not have a name associated, compares this list with the one from previous searches where the name was not found because people have rejected backward searching, and does a backward search via currently two German phone searching platforms (Das Oertliche and Das Telefonbuch). In case the name is found it gets added to the defined Fritz!Box phone book. This can be either the normal phone book, or a separate one, only for collected phone numbers.

The script comes with an fritzBackwardSearch.ini file where you can specify all connection settings. But for special purposes you can use the command line interface to overwrite these settings.:

usage: fritz-backward-search.py [-h] [-p PASSWORD] [-u USERNAME] [-i ADDRESS]
                                [--port PORT] [--phonebook PHONEBOOK]
                                [-l LOGFILE] [-n NOTFOUNDFILE]
                                [-s [SEARCHNUMBER]] [-v]

Update phonebook with caller list

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        Fritzbox authentication password
  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME
                        Fritzbox authentication username
  -i ADDRESS, --ip-address ADDRESS
                        IP-address of the FritzBox to connect to. Default:
                        192.168.178.1
  --port PORT           Port of the FritzBox to connect to. Default: 49000
  --phonebook PHONEBOOK
                        Existing phone book the numbers should be added to.
                        Default: Collected_Calls
  -l LOGFILE, --logfile LOGFILE
                        Path/Log file name. Default:
                        /var/log/fritz-backward-search.log
  -n NOTFOUNDFILE, --notfoundfile NOTFOUNDFILE
                        Path/file name where the numbers not found during
                        backward search are saved to in order to prevent
                        further unnessessary searches. Default:
                        /var/fritz/nameNotFound.list
  -s [SEARCHNUMBER], --searchnumber [SEARCHNUMBER]
                        Phone number(s) to search for.
  -v, --version         Print the program version

For testing purposes, or for adding individual number(s), the script can be called via this command line interface and passing one or more numbers.:

fritzBackwardSearch.py -s 1234,2298

When calling this from another script you can do it like this:

import fritzBackwardSearch
....
FBS = FritzBackwardSearch()
FBS.runSearch(s=(<number>,<number>)

The fritzCallMon script is expected to run 24x7. It connects at startup with the Fritz!Box Callmonitor. You have to enable this via a phone connected to the Fritz!Box with the key combination #95*5*. The fritzCallMon script gets installed as service on the Linux system and can be started and stopped as such.:

sudo service fritzCallMon start
sudo service fritzCallMon stop