141–150 of 175 posts
If only callerID spoofing was not possible... I think that it would solve most spam call problems because it would be easier to make them accountable.
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What I don’t understand is why no major mobile carrier is offering a solution to this. It’s a pretty competitive market and this could be a big selling point. When the isp wars were going strong, before broadband put everyone under the thumb of monopolists and also before gmail, spam filtering was a serious competative advantage. Why can’t phone companies take an RBL like approach? If your VoIP service garners too ma…
Blocking calls from certain VoIP services is almost certainly going to be a violation of common-carrier rules (which still apply to phone service no matter what happens with broadband). At a technical level, spam filtering relies heavily on analyzing email text. Doing similar analysis on voice calls is way harder. Also, there's UI issues. You can redirect suspected spam emails to a folder the user can inspect for fal…
Send it straight to voicemail, where the user can inspect for false positives?
One technique I use is my phones have an area code from another state that I never get calls from. (South Dakota). If I get a call from this area code I know it’s spam.
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T-Mobile offers it as a free option with two levels: labeling the call as Scam Likely and blocking it outright. The latter is quite effective - I was getting 5+ calls per day and it’s now 1-2 per week.
The “Spam Likely” determination is fairly unreliable, IMO. They have labeled my doctors office “Scam Likely”, while many “Scam definitely” calls have not been labeled.
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Actually, the FCC clarified their rules a few years back that carriers CAN block robocalls. More details here: https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/fcc-clarifies-robocal... Note that Ajit Pai (then a commissioner, not chairperson like now) voted AGAINST this. Full disclosure: We (Nomorobo) advocated to the FCC to allow carriers to block robocalls.
It's worth reading Pai's actual dissent: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-72A5.pd... . Among his reasons for dissenting is that the Commission was unwilling to "establish[] a safe harbor so that carriers could block spoofed calls from overseas without fear of liability." All this occurs against the background of the Communications Act's common-carrier obligations, and the FCC's call-completion rul…
This makes third party call blocking products a better/easier solution for carriers to recommend as a solution.
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What I don’t understand is why no major mobile carrier is offering a solution to this. It’s a pretty competitive market and this could be a big selling point. When the isp wars were going strong, before broadband put everyone under the thumb of monopolists and also before gmail, spam filtering was a serious competative advantage. Why can’t phone companies take an RBL like approach? If your VoIP service garners too ma…
>What I don’t understand is why no major mobile carrier is offering a solution to this. I remember at one of the WWDC keynotes, Tim Cook announced this as a new iPhone feature. But he also noted that it was only available in China. I wonder if whatever the Chinese carriers have done can be imported to the United States. My wife's iPhone will occasionally get an incoming call with small text below reading "Possible sp…
Those features of CallKit are what we (Nomorobo) use to stop the robocalls.
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Even if they wanted the 70$, at the moment there’s nothing they can do about robocalls without cooperation from the entire industry. A robocall doesn’t look any more shady than a normal call from a receiving carrier’s perspective; whatever solution they come up with will have tons of false positives.
While you cannot say for certain that a particular call is coming from a robot, being a major network you can make a very good guess. E.g. when the same origin hits every number with a caller ID in that number's exchange just block that origin from your network. If there is a legitimate reason for this - they will contact you immediately and sort it out. Bonus point - spammers will hit the competitors networks with m…
There is no real concept of "origin". Unless you're the direct upstream carrier of the originator of the robocalls, the robocalls will be diluted with legitimate calls in such a way no single inbound carrier stands out.
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That's T-Mobile? I thought it was Google Voice.
Definitely TMO - it's on the billing statement (free line item).
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You have a call received on your monthly bill from a number and the owner of that number does not have the call on their bill.
How? Even in the same city, cellular and land lines aren't always serviced by the same company. In most places I'm pretty sure it's illegal for phone companies to be swapping call data. Or are you suggesting I call back all the numbers that call me to compare bills with the owner on the other end? This plan is not going to work out.
Is there anyone who doesn't get multiple robocalls every day?