Well, I personally choose to just ignore them. Blocking each of them are a waste of time. By ignoring them, I think along with time, they will consider my phone number as an inactive number. Sometimes I also look up the numbers on Google or some sites like http://whycall.me and just post some reports about those numbers if I find people have reported them as scams.
Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
311–320 of 332 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
UK also has them, Germany doesn't. I don't think it's the language barrier (UK calls are targeted for UK customers), so there's likely a difference in regulation or treatment by providers.
The fake "Microsoft Support" calls happen in Germany too, but appears to be mostly on land-line numbers.
But they're more targeted and low volume. Not robot calls that are easy to identify as fake after a second.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#313I've been pretty happy with blacklist blocker. https://github.com/kaliturin/BlackList I had to work some magic (which I have since forgotten) to convince my S9+ to ignore this background process, else it would stop working after a few hours. The key thing that I wish it had was a quick way to allow unknown calls for a specified time. This would have been helpful when given the option of staying on hold for an extende…
Have you looked at the Should I Answer? app?
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I just love the thought of identifying a CAPTCHA-like obscured audio everytime I am calling someone.. :D
I love the idea of using that to train my new speech-to-text AI.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#315A 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…
Many landline handsets sold in the UK now have this as a feature. What I've found is that whist it does stop a lot of spam calls they now fake local numbers. Worse they fake them with a missing digit. The phone companies could definitely spot that. I've wondered previously if international telecoms treaties stop the phone companies from acting to block these calls.
The whole reason why I did this was because I was playing around with Asterisk and VOIP, and wanted to connect a PTSN line to it (which the OBi device was marketed as), but it turned out I could do everything on the device.
Anyway, at the time I was traveling a lot so had my VOIP number forward to whatever local number I had in that country. That worked great, except on my phone it just displayed my VOIP number as the caller ID, so I had no idea who was calling.
In Asterisk I saw you could set the caller ID, but it didn't work for outgoing calls via my SIP trunk, so I assumed it was disabled by my provider (makes sense). I contacted them, and they said they had unlocked that feature, after which I could make a phone call with any caller ID. I expect there is something fundamental about how the telecom system works that prevents them from blocking these calls, but I'm really surprised at how easy they gave me access to it.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#316A 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…
What do you mean by foreign number? Most spam calls I get are from the same area code as my phone number?
Some of the spam calls I received were from US phone numbers (I'm in the UK), but when I answered I ended up connected with someone with a Southern Asian accent speaking rather bad English.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#317A 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…
I did something similar for myself nearly 20 years ago with Asterisk, and it was amazingly effective for my home phone. I'd whitelist numbers of friends and family, everyone else had to dial a number to get the phones in the house to ring. I stopped doing it when I basically switched over to a cell phone as my only phone. For a while 5 years ago I was getting a ton of spam calls, mostly the "Rachel from Credit Card S…
Yeah I got the OBi device as I intended to use it as a VOIP gateway to connect to Asterisk, but in the end I was able to do everything I needed on the device.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#318My 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.
If this system existed, would you be pilling to port your phone number over to us today to try it out, potentially even paying slightly more upfront?
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Sam, I started a previous company (caffei.net) and during this time of selling network software that improves end user privacy, battery life, network performance, and total data used to the folks building all the apps all the people use for 2 years, I grew disgusted with how little regard they have for all of the many prepaid people in the world... for whom a sloppily set up RPC connection for some trash 30 second…
Man, I wish I had heard of hologram earlier - thanks for that. Ill send you an email though - love the mission you describe for what youre doing.
Thanks Sam. I hope you love the mission enough to switch!
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have a "Press 1 to be connected" option? Where?
Not who you're replying to, but I just looked and the only option I see is you can turn on screening and so when you pick up, you hear the person's name and can decide to take the call or not.
And you can choose to disable screening for numbers that are already in your contacts.