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Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

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Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#151

Post by adim86 »

Although at first glance this sounds like a no brainer and a little confusing why we are not given the power to have a whitelist system on our phones I think this feature is a terrible idea. This is the same as saying, why can we not bounce all emails that have not been stored in our email address book. This one feature has the ability to destroy modern communication as we know it.

Hear me out. If you all have noticed, with every privacy feature released a significant amount of people migrate to it full-time. I currently cannot recognize my phone ring, because from the day I bought my last phone I switched off the ringing and never bothered to turn it back on, not because I hate ringtones, I just forgot and also there have been no dire consequences to do so. Someone on this thread also said he/she set her phone permanently on "do not disturb" and just deals with notifications when they want to. This is all well and good cause anyone who has tried to reach us has successfully done so and even if they did not reach us, we have evidence that they attempted to.

Having a whitelist system is VERY different and has many unforeseen consequences. From as little as, your mother got a new phone and soon she cannot reach you, you got a beautiful girls number and want to ask her on a date but cannot reach her. To bigger issues like your teenage child is mad at you and deletes your contact from their phone. Job offers will be missed, you will become unreachable in emergencies etc. The short of this is, the best case of such a feature is that you don't need to install a third party app to block spam calls, the worst case of such a feature is people can literally die cause they cannot contact you or vice versa. If I was a phone manufacturer. I just won't even allow this. There are easier ways to solve the underlying problem without opening the door for worse outcomes

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#152

Post by BillinghamJ »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #5

I just put my iphone on "do not disturb" full-time and use my favourites list to only allow calls though (from a selected list). People who double call are also allowed through. Then you are not constantly distracted by notifications, emails, texts, spam calls [1]. My thinking is, my phone should serve me, not the other way around, so I only check when I'm not focused on something else. Personally, I find useless not…

Not quite the same thing, but I have my mobile network set up to forward every call to a Twilio number which just states that my number doesn't accept calls. It sends me an SMS so I know someone tried to. It's great. People who do need to call me then will just use FaceTime Audio or WhatsApp calls.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#154

Post by njarboe »

wittedhaddock wrote: post #62

My name is James, I work for Community Phone, a nationwide cell phone company. Show of hands: if we opened up this feature for you to control this filter for yourself or your loved ones, holding all else constant (price and coverage), would that be sufficient to cause a switch to try out an alternate provider?

Telephone spam was not much of a problem before unlimited cell phone calling plans. I would love a system to charge people who aren't on my white list an amount of money I determine to call me. I'd probably put it at 10 cents so as to not hurt legitimate callers but basically kill spammers. Warren Buffet might set his to $10 million.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#155

Post by narag »

4mitkumar wrote: post #53

But you can! Mostly in Android though. I can confirm MIUI - the stock rom on Xiaomi phones - have this exact feature built in. You can block all hidden numbers, all numbers not in your address book, specific numbers, etc. Or one can use Tasker - an Android automation app to achieve the same functionality and more in any Android phone. I suppose these days, you can use Iphone's scripting functionality as well for the…

I can confirm that. No need for me to block all except whitelisted numbers. Blocking the dozen or so worst offenders was more than enough.

Also the feature of recording conversations is very nice.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#156

Post by hardwaresofton »

adim86 wrote: post #151

Although at first glance this sounds like a no brainer and a little confusing why we are not given the power to have a whitelist system on our phones I think this feature is a terrible idea. This is the same as saying, why can we not bounce all emails that have not been stored in our email address book. This one feature has the ability to destroy modern communication as we know it. Hear me out. If you all have notice…

I don't mean this maliciously but unless I've misread your comment this is a lot of text that boils down to "sometimes you'll be unreachable". Some of the reasons you list:

- family members getting new phones

- missed connections + job offers

- teenage child being angry with you

- emergencies

Two responses:

1. The cellular phone has existed only for so long, and people found a way to exist before it. I'm not going to belabor the point since it's not very deep but this concept that you need to be reachable 99% of the time in 99% of the cases is wrong -- the cases where you actually absoutely need to be reached is often 2. The problem is identity here -- it's not that you don't want certain numbers calling you, it's that you don't want certain numbers calling you. This could be solved by creating a system that links identities to numbers, though it's exceedingly optimistic notion that we'd get everyone to agree on the same system.

In all the situations when you give someone your phone number or they give you theirs, you're agreeing to talk to each other. If you instead exchanged some sort of identity (let's say GPG key), the problem no longer is "how can I call a number they should be at", it's "how do I find how to contact this person with this identity". The latter question can be solved much more robustly.

I've thought about something like this -- creating just a online store of just identities that you can freely create and discard, boiling down to GPG key. Having such a shared resource would mean that chat apps, telco providers, and various other usecases could just use GPG (in this example) to look up the right contact method... Attempting to create a widely used standard is basically suicide though so maybe this idea has no legs.

In this imaginary scenario you have a whitelist that works the way you want -- people you want to contact you can, and you can have very limited overrides like a shared identity/utility key for hospitals/government/etc.

[EDIT] - I also wanted to add -- again, I do think that this would have bad effects on "free and open communication", but I'm not sure it might actually be bad for society -- maybe free-and-open-communication by default for some mediums isn't good. I don't think closing down this loophole for phone numbers is going to squelch productive protests (one of the phenomenons I personally think we'd want to protect), but maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#158

Post by nikanj »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #17
pxeboot wrote: post #7

Just a guess, but I would expect carriers to be strongly against any feature that made it easy to block most calls.

Carriers no longer get paid per call, so you'd think they'd be incentivized to lower the load on their network by reducing the number of spam calls.

The more people block most calls, the less useful the ability to make calls is. And making calls is rather important for telcos.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#159

Post by nikanj »

wyred wrote: post #49

What if it was a legitimate emergency? Like if someone used your number as an emergency contact. Or some hospital in the world trying to contact you because someone you know got hospitalized (touch wood).

This is 100% a risk I’d be willing to take. I am not trading actual every day pain for extra safety in a carefully constructed trolley problem scenario
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