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).
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Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
141–150 of 332 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#142My 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?
Huh. I am currently on Google Fi. I'm not thrilled putting Google in charge of my mobile data, but I still trust Google to safeguard my privacy more than any of the major telcos, and for someone who uses small amounts of data, they're very competitively priced and have really good, simple billing. But particularly with the Librem Phone coming up, I've been trying to find other phone providers I won't hate that can gi…
Similar setup: I use Google Fi with a Google Pixel 3 phone, and I will buy the Purism Librem 5 phone.
I get ~5 calls/day that are legitimate calls with unknown numbers, and ~10 calls/day that are spam robocalls. I use Google screening and it works reasonably well; I would much prefer to have a telco do the screening automatically.
I use ~10-20GB of data per month, mostly for video calls, mostly for business, mostly via Signal, Slack, Zoom.
Feel free to PM me if you would like more. Contact info is in my user link.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#143I'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…
This exists (kind of).
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#144My 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.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#145You 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).
Yep I'm pretty sure this is standard on Android phones. Not sure if it can be done on iPhones though!
On iOS, you can do block everyone but favorites, or just all, with an option of allowing repeat callers through (they call X amount of times in a 5 minute duration).
Unfortunately this also disables all other app notifications which is less than desirable.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#146I just want to block all calls, period.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#147I just want to block all calls, period.
Try Flight Mode with Wifi On
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#148I have felt it since long, that phone calls should be like emails. For example, the ring should include an (optional) recorded subject of the caller (of course, may be heard on demand, by the receiver of the call for privacy reasons). In fact anyone not in contact list, should be required to send a brief voice subject/purpose of calling, which may be limited to 10 seconds. Also we should be able to respond by pressing a 'Not interested' button.
This will take the problem of spam away.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#149My 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?
Yes, for certain older relatives who are vulnerable to phone scams. I think you should market it that way.
I feel like if I just told some of my relatives about it without it being marketed, they would think I'm the one scamming them.
Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?
#150It is better to make separate ringtone for your ringtone for both.