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Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#61

Post by mostlystatic »

radford-neal wrote: post #58
bkdonline wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are people who would press that button on non-spam calls as well. And then litigation hell will break loose.

Really? You'd press the button when your friends call? Or, if you phoned a store to ask whether they stocked an item you want to buy, do you think the store would press the button? At any rate, people already (often) pay to make phone calls. By dealing a number, you're implicitly agreeing to pay. Just think of it as a charge (often waived) for the time of the person answering it.

People could submit their phone number anywhere that collects leads (be it dentists, charities, or SaaS companies), wait for a call, and then press the button to get the money.

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#62

Post by tonyquart »

I think the best way to avoid them is by not using any landlines, but I believe it couldn't be a right option for you. I think ignoring calls from unfamiliar numbers is the only thing that we could do, and it saves your time. I just read at http://www.whycall.me/news/consumer-wins-massive-229500-robo... about suing telemarketers. It might works for you if you are dealing with legit telemarketers.

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#63

Post by tom_mellior »

radford-neal wrote: post #52

This problem would stop instantly if you could press a button during a call and have 25 cents added to the caller's phone bill and perhaps get a 25 cent credit on your own bill. Anyone know why this rather obvious solution hasn't been implemented? At a minimum, one could switch cell phone billing so that only the caller pays, not the recipient.

> At a minimum, one could switch cell phone billing so that only the caller pays, not the recipient.

Are there any countries besides the US that charge the callee? It's completely unheard of in Europe.

I did spend some time in the US about ten years ago, and I do remember being very surprised at being charged for calls received, and even for texts received, although you have no influence on accepting them! Such a weird system.

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#64

Post by somecallitblues »

It started happening to me when I registered a domain name and made my phone number available via whois lookup. The same day I got an Indian company offering me web services for the new domain. Then it escalated and every dodgy Indian web company started calling me. I managed to change the details and update the phone number to a local law enforcement agency's number, but I guess the number was online for long enough to spread through some kind of Indian scammer network. I started getting calls offering me to remortgage my home even if I don't have a mortgage, pretend calls from the taxation office (in American accent even though I'm not in the US) and a million other things like SEO services etc. A lot of the times they'll route calls through a local VOIP number and even have a local mobile number popup in my screen. They could totally scam me if it wasn't for the Indian accent that gives it away.

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#65

Post by radford-neal »

mostlystatic wrote: post #61
radford-neal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You'd press the button when your friends call? Or, if you phoned a store to ask whether they stocked an item you want to buy, do you think the store would press the button? At any rate, people already (often) pay to make phone calls. By dealing a number, you're implicitly agreeing to pay. Just think of it as a charge (often waived) for the time of the person answering it.

People could submit their phone number anywhere that collects leads (be it dentists, charities, or SaaS companies), wait for a call, and then press the button to get the money.

Maybe. And how much money do you think you'd loose each year due to such scams? Maybe 50 cents?

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#66

Post by afo »

DKnoll wrote: post #54
afo wrote: post #25

Founder of Nomorobo here. We put a stop to all of those annoying robocalls, telemarketers, and spam/scam calls and texts. It's about the only thing that works nowadays. It's not your imagination - these types of calls are out of control. According to our data, 40% of all calls made in the US are illegal, unwanted spam/scam robocalls. And those "neighbor" spoofed calls (same area code and extension) are especially pre…

Sounds interesting. I was hoping to try it out but your app isn't in the Canadian Android app store.

We don’t have enough data to protect Canada yet but we’re working on it. Do you get robocalls from US area codes too?

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#67

Post by afo »

spartas wrote: post #10

Answer the phone when they call and conference in the Jolly Roger telephone bot http://www.jollyrogertelco.com The bot will waste the telemarketers time, which is the most expensive thing that these companies are paying for. Do this enough times and the calls drop off rapidly.

We (Nomorobo) worked with Jolly Roger this holiday season and built SantaBots. Check out all the recordings at www.DoNotCallChristmas.com

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#68

Post by mac01021 »

tom_mellior wrote: post #63
radford-neal wrote: post #52

This problem would stop instantly if you could press a button during a call and have 25 cents added to the caller's phone bill and perhaps get a 25 cent credit on your own bill. Anyone know why this rather obvious solution hasn't been implemented? At a minimum, one could switch cell phone billing so that only the caller pays, not the recipient.

> At a minimum, one could switch cell phone billing so that only the caller pays, not the recipient. Are there any countries besides the US that charge the callee? It's completely unheard of in Europe. I did spend some time in the US about ten years ago, and I do remember being very surprised at being charged for calls received, and even for texts received, although you have no influence on accepting them! Such a wei…

What if you use your mobile phone to receive a million texts per day and the sender uses a different service provider. Your service provider has to pay for all that data moving through its network one way or another...

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#69

Post by bradknowles »

afo wrote: post #45
jakebasile wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T-Mobile offers a spam blocking service that stops calls from reaching my phone, because of that there's no way for me to gauge just how many are being blocked. What is your take on network level spam filtering? You're blocking 1300 numbers a day. I assume the spammers rotate numbers, so if someone gets a recycled number that was on your list, what happens? These spammers get connected to the telephone system somehow…

The spammers rotate through new numbers every few hours. We're actually adding 1,300 new numbers per day and the full blacklist is over 700k entries. As for getting connected to the phone system - Yeah, they have to jump on the phone network somewhere and, in theory, the best way to stop these guys would be to at the ingress point. The problem is that the phone system is built for interconnection. Even just one bad a…

I’ve been a nomorobo customer for a long time, and I’ve had my full phone number entered in the system from day one. And you’ve had access to my contacts, too.

However, I still get the neighbor scam calls, and it’s one of the most annoying things I deal with on a daily basis.

I’ve been thinking that I should write my own whitelist-only call screening app on top of twilight, and maybe becoming one of your biggest competitors.

That is, unless you want to take this idea and implement it yourselves, and saving me the trouble. ;)

Re: Ask HN: How can I stop receiving spam phone calls?

#70

Post by greenyoda »

miranda_rights wrote: post #53
greenyoda wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a lot of these calls, and I figured out the pattern very quickly. Since I don't happen to know anyone with the same areacode/prefix as my cellphone, I just let all these calls go to voicemail, and none of them ever leave a message. (My area code is an overlay area code that has mostly mobile numbers.)

I do too! It's very frustrating, to the point that I've considered just getting a new phone number. The problem being I've had this number for >10 years and like the idea of an old high school friend being able to reach me without Facebook. Someone online suggested I make a complaint to the FCC but it went nowhere. I never pick up anymore but it's still annoying.

I wouldn't expect that getting a new phone number would help. I'm guessing that these scammers sequentially call all the phone numbers in an area code rather than targeting specific individuals. (If they were targeting me, they'd probably stop wasting their time after the hundredth time I didn't answer their call.)
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