211–220 of 332 posts
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This is the kind of solution that only works because basically nobody is doing it. If a big provider deployed it, it would take five seconds for it to be defeated.
Google Voice offers this as an option; they're fairly big.
A few years ago my parents were getting a lot of spam calls on their landline. Basically all of them were automated calls, either a recorded message or you were connected to a person shortly after the call was connected. I bought an OBi100 [0], which is a small device designed to be a VOIP adapter, but you can setup rules on how calls (incoming or outgoing) are handled. I setup a rule that if the call was from a with…
Cool idea, but you're talking about a landline though aren't you? The implication from the OP is that it's a question about mobiles. It's not 100% clear, but in my experience people rarely bother to have contact lists on landlines, which themselves are increasingly less popular.
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This approach comes pretty close to solving the problem, but a couple issues are dealbreakers for me: 1) It mutes all notifications, not just non-whitelisted calls. As much as I hate notification overload, I do want a select few to come through. 2) I want a discoverable way for non-whitelisted callers to be able to break through (not everyone will know to call multiple times to break through). I'm working on an app t…
re #2: They can leave a voicemail; I'll listen to it and call back if necessary.
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.
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?
- People in my contact list (or whitelist) automatically get through
- Everyone else is forwarded to a real live human who screens my calls
(The reason why I would pay is I'd rather just have a well-paid human handle this instead of some kind of AI or heuristic.)
The human could be paired with some data, like what phone network the call came from, and additional data about how likely caller ID is spoofed. If you want to get fancy, you could do some kind of machine learning where you tell the person, "this call is xx% likely to be spam."
To keep things simple, I shouldn't be able to set many preferences. (This allows the human to react the same way every time.) But, things like choosing to allow or block "good" robocalls, like automated calls from the power company, are probably useful.
You could try to make a profit by actually asking to get on the do-not-call list, tracking it, and then aggressively suing violators. When I'm interrupted on my cell phone, I just don't have the time to track this kind of thing.
And, one more thing: If you want to get into AI, see if you can figure out how to keep the spammers on the phone as long as possible. This increases their costs dramatically.
I'm more inclined to say that the real solution to this is to make it expensive for the callers by having a service that answers the call every time and tries to keep the caller on the line wasting their time. There's obviously an asymmetric principal at play here. Imagine for a sec a situation where: 1. I receive a robocaller message. 2. I press a button on phone indicating spam 3. Software Agent takes over, presses…
Are you sure this is a problem you want to (try to) solve technically? - You'll make it very hard for genuine people to contact you. - You don't solve the problem, you only make it more expensive. As long as the benefit of calling you is bigger than the cost they will jump through whatever hoop to call you. For some context: this isn't a problem everywhere in the world. In my country there are strict laws about unsol…
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?
No. Android + Google resolved my problems with spam calls.
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I've found the Google Call Screening feature to do a much better job at this than anything more malicious. I tap a button, and the call screener takes its time to explain that I've enabled that call screening service, while I continue on my day. No spam I've ever gotten has waited for the voice to finish its 3rd word.
Google Call Screening almost solves the parent's problem. The only thing missing is a setting to have it automatically screen all calls that aren't in my contact list. Then my phone would never ring unless I know you or you waited/responded to the call screening.
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re #2: They can leave a voicemail; I'll listen to it and call back if necessary.
Going back and listening to voicemails of spam is more time consuming than just answering it at the time it comes in.
You can? I thought that was pretty standard on Android phones? On my phone, at least, there are do-not-disturb options for "priority only" (which can be set to either specific contacts or the whole contact list), "alarms only", and "total silence" (careful with that one).