71–80 of 276 posts
I have had a Google Voice number since it was Grand Central. It has gone on all of my business cards. It's at the bottom of every email. I put it on my website. Google does an amazing, world class, mind blowing, job of filtering out robo calls. I get maybe one a week at most. I get more calls direct to my cell number from random call bots that hit every number with mobile carriers than I do through my Google Voice nu…
Wow, the state we're in.
I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
The difference is regulation. The US is firmly gripped by the belief that "regulation doesn't work", and keeps electing people who try to prove that true via incompetence, cronyism and ideological malice.
>"The FCC last year authorized voice service providers to block more types of calls in which the Caller ID has been spoofed or in which the number on the Caller ID is invalid." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/robocallers-evol...
I'm waaay past trusting that network. I tell companies to text or email me. And texting is also starting to get spammed out. Right now, I can't even use apps like Hiya that implement prefix blocking. My method right now is to forward ALL calls to a google voice number, and those are transcribed or what-have-you. If you don't leave a message, I don't care about you. We need a signal, at the highest of levels to basica…
Unfortunately spammers have started leaving messages, for me, in the past ~2 years. Prior to that, this heuristic worked very well!
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So it's preventing the equivalent of dialing random numbers and hoping it's a real person?
No. When you get a spam call, the caller ID is often not random. It's usually the number of some other person on the spam caller's list of people to call, often someone from your same area code. That way, you see a call from your area code and are more likely to answer it. If you get upset and call it back, you won't be calling the spammer. You'll be calling some other innocent victim of the spammer.
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One problem is they can easily spoof the number. I've received 2 calls from Bank of America's 800 number, that weren't actually from Bank of America (they were pretending there was a problem with my account...phishing for info...). They were in my address book, and showed up as such. You can't trust caller ID. They might not have your friends phone numbers, but you probably also have other major institutions that you…
The fact that it is not perfect is pretty irrelevant to the need for this kind of basic functionality. I'm going to assume iPhone here because I'd be surprised if Android doesn't have this capability.
I don't get that many robocalls anymore after I signed up for https://www.donotcall.gov/ . I also make a point of reporting unwanted calls there too (I got two pretending to be from the IRS saying that I was about to be sued). I know that people find it annoying to go through the process of reporting the call, but I consider it to be one of those things that fall under the "All that is necessary for the triumph of ev…
I've been on the DNC for years, and a couple years ago I decided to change my number, since my old one was getting 4-5 robocalls per day, always from different numbers.
I have had a Google Voice number since it was Grand Central. It has gone on all of my business cards. It's at the bottom of every email. I put it on my website. Google does an amazing, world class, mind blowing, job of filtering out robo calls. I get maybe one a week at most. I get more calls direct to my cell number from random call bots that hit every number with mobile carriers than I do through my Google Voice nu…
Yes! I have 2 dozen numbers "blocked" on my iPhone but the robocalls keep coming. I wish there was a "Report Spam" (Gmail) equivalent on iOS that employed smarter rules so I didn't have to manually blocking one number at a time (that's likely a throwaway account anyway).
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Isn't this exact feature available via Do Not Disturb? I have DND on 24/7, and you can quickly turn it off for Lyft/etc if needed. If you make groups within your contacts you can even hone the whitelist and can fairly quickly mod it.
I have DnD constantly too and find it convenient.
Also, I've had success running Calls Blacklist (app) on my android phone - it's set up so that it will block any call that's not from one of my contacts. I haven't had a spam call since I started using it.
I have had a Google Voice number since it was Grand Central. It has gone on all of my business cards. It's at the bottom of every email. I put it on my website. Google does an amazing, world class, mind blowing, job of filtering out robo calls. I get maybe one a week at most. I get more calls direct to my cell number from random call bots that hit every number with mobile carriers than I do through my Google Voice nu…
I used Google voice for years while Google let it languish in relative obscurity. Eventually after I realized it was silently dropping group messages because they were MMS and Google never worked on supporting MMS (images were dropped too back then) I left it for iOS and iMessage. Getting dropped from group chats meant people thought you were ignoring them and you'd miss invitations. Google had a huge lead with voice…