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Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

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Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#191

Post by kd5bjo »

russelldavis wrote: post #172
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #5

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#192

Post by adenner »

wittedhaddock wrote: post #62

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?

I also am on Fi, the feature would at least get my attention. The biggest problem I would have currently with going to your service is the fact that it is on the Sprint network, currently the last place provider in my area.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#193

Post by moron4hire »

leowoo91 wrote: post #185
fyfy18 wrote: post #166

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…

First time I heard about a voice captcha.

All the captcha systems I know about have a voice option for the blind. I end up using it fairly often because the image obfuscation techniques a lot of them use now makes the text nigh unreadable for humans.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#194

Post by tomohawk »

joshka wrote: post #127

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…

Several years ago, a coworker who knew about voice processing set up a device at his house that when you called his number, it would answer with whale song. This had just enough entropy to make a robocall believe that there was someone there. It would keep the robocalls going for quite some time. If you wanted to reach him, you had to dial an extension.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#195

Post by [deleted] »

wittedhaddock wrote: post #62

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?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#196

Post by danShumway »

wittedhaddock wrote: post #88
danShumway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey danShumway, thanks for your note here. I am going to share it with my colleagues if that's okay with you. You express a very important culture and way of working. The real answer is that our prices are low because most of our users to date use less than 1gb per line (nearly all senior citizens on our 15 or 25 plans)... they were overpaying the most while using the least (but even for them we cannot be too low oth…

I don't want to derail the overall conversation too much.

I was with Verizon from my first phone until I first got a smartphone. I switched over to Fi specifically because I didn't want to deal with Verizon's billing, and because I didn't like the company in general.

The low-data approach is really attractive to me -- atm I use less than 500mb a month (sometimes as low as 200-300mb). At that level of usage your prices are very competitive with Fi. My concerns are that I'm starting to migrate away from native services where possible because of the security implications -- more of my texting is happening over Signal rather than SMS, and with the Libre phone theoretically some voice is going to start getting routed over Matrix.

I have no idea what that's going to do to my data usage, I honestly just have to experiment and find out.

Additionally, I'm starting to get more serious about using a VPN everywhere, even on mobile data, since I assume that behind Google, whatever network I'm on is absolutely selling any data that hits their towers. That may drive my data usage up, or it might drive it down because I might feel more comfortable connecting to random wifi networks if I know 100% all of my traffic is going through that VPN.

I'm in an urban area, so this is unrelated to me, but the fact that you're selling dumb phones on your plan is also pretty cool, and I can think of people who would be interested in that if Sprint's rural coverage was better.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#197

Post by crtasm »

fyfy18 wrote: post #166

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…

Great workaround.

"Please press 1" reminds me of the recent CCC talk on automating hacking mobile voicemail to get access to online account recovery codes.

Some websites required a key press before speaking the code so he simply recorded the DTMF tone on the voicemail greeting message.

https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9383-compromising_online_account...

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#198

Post by ssharp »

A few years ago, prior to the recent rush of non-stop robo calls that many people experience today, I was fraudulently put on some diabetes sales list (I don't even have it) and would get calls daily on it, often from the same number.

At the time, AT&T, if you gave them a few dollars a month, would let you block 5 numbers. It was the most unbelievably stupid policy I had ever seen and almost caused me to churn, which I probably should have done.

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#199

Post by DoctorOetker »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #170
ragazzina wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a beautiful girl give me her number and not whitelist mine? My teenage child could very well block my number. This argument doesn't make any sense.

> Why would a beautiful girl give me her number and not whitelist mine? Ever watched any American movie? The girl usually writes the number on a back of a receipt or napkin, gives it to you and immediately leaves. :). I do generally agree with the OP though. I need to have a way for unknown but legitimate calls to reach me. To use actual examples that happened to me - sometimes there's a problem with my on-line order…

who cares about shallow movies? this hypothetical girl would never get called, so obviously she will ask him to call her on the spot, so she can view the last blocked call in some menu, and whitelist it...

sure the girl might like to be surprised, but is that worth all the spam? perhaps someone should come up with an artificial spam service "so that you will extra enjoy your real acquaintances when they call you" if that really were true...

Re: Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

#200

Post by krustymeathead »

joshka wrote: post #127

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…

Nomorobo does exactly this (except the robo calls are mostly auto-detected and the script read to them is pre-recorded). It records their conversation for your entertainment also! I think you can submit your own recording to harass the robo callers too I think.

link: https://www.nomorobo.com/

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