Frostwolf said:
I wonder what it would do if you connected it to a phone line simulator? It would think it had a phone connection, and you can program most phone selectors to give a busy signal or never answer.
I am not privy to how E* (or D* for that matter) call-ins work, but I would assume the nag screen will remain until a successful call is made, if so, a busy signal, or not answering, would probably not work, however, one could record a session of a call-in and use that recording to fool the receiver into thinking it was the real thing (in network security, this technique known as a replay attack), but that is far too easy, likely, a key exchange of some sort occurs, and likely an encrypted session is setup for authentication, meaning a 'replay' attack would not work as each session would be different.
Being that neither E* or D* are new to this game, chances are encrypted sessions and key exchanges would be the norm, either way, attempts to decrypt the channel for analysis, could be deemed civilly litigable at the least (TOS violation), and possibly criminal at the most (DCMA), and if the methods you mention could be made to work, that too could be a violation of TOS (if they found out) and/or civil consequences. IANAL, this is just conjecture.
I am not preaching, just this interested me, and am hoping maybe someone here does have some idea of the call-in process.
That being said, to the OP, I echo the Freeworld (or a similar service) suggestion.