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Eliminating Robocalls

twilio.com

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Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#241

Post by nulbyte »

gonehome wrote: post #42
mc32 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is a legitimate urgent call from an unwhitelisted number. Hospital, school, fire, police, relatives, etc.

Don’t care about those - voicemail is good enough, repeated call would get through anyway. I already don’t answer numbers not in contacts (I think this is true of most people) so no real change in behavior.

I think most people have learned. But every now and then, I'll get a call or text from a clueless individual. They are usually blown away to learn how my number (or a random unknown number) ended up in their call log.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#242

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

rp36 wrote: post #98

Interestingly, Robocall algorithms use phone numbers closer to my phone number (either real of fake) and since I live in different Area code, it is much easier to block the numbers. Though it is not recommended to pick up the phone, I have had some success by picking up the phone, wasting the agent's time and letting them know that my car is real old and would not need extended warranty.

Same here, but unfortunately Apple provides no mechanism to do so. Even RoboKiller, a third party app, has limited success with neighborhood spoofing, as it’s called.

I’m perfectly fine with blocking the entire NNN beginning prefix of my number but there appears to be no way to do it (they can only do NNN-NNNN). RoboKiller says it’s a limitation in the iOS API they have access to.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#243

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

lowlevel wrote: post #204

I have resorted to using DND mode as a whitelist. If a caller does not identify with a number in my contacts list, the phone doesn't ring. I feel whitelisting is the only thing that's going to stop the calls... extreme or not.

I would do this, but at least on iOS, this silences text messages and other app notifications, including other messengers.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#244

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

vitaflo wrote: post #137
hartator wrote: post #40

I disagree with the solution. A simple App that send to voicemail numbers not in my contacts will be far than enough. And it won’t require to change the whole infrastructure!

You can already do this in iOS. Set your phone on Do Not Disturb and then in the iOS settings tell it to allow numbers in your contact list to get through even when DND is on. I've done this for years and never get robocalls.

This also affects other notifications (sms, other app notifications) which might not work for most people.

Especially for people that are on PagerDuty, this solution just wont work.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#245

Post by apexalpha »

mcv wrote: post #230

I wonder why I'm not getting this barrage of robocalls. I live in Netherland, not the US, so presumably that's why, but are robocalls not a thing in Europe? Do we not have these kind of predatory companies? Do we have surprisingly effective legislation to stop robocalls? The only phone spam I'm getting are people trying to sell me new energy contracts (that's something that happens when you have a company for some re…

Also Dutch here: They are illegal.

You can only call someone if they (indirectly) got the number from you. They are _not_ allowed to dial every number and it has to be done by a human, which works the same as an e-mail costing €0,05: it isn't worth it anymore.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#246

Post by mcv »

apexalpha wrote: post #245
mcv wrote: post #230

I wonder why I'm not getting this barrage of robocalls. I live in Netherland, not the US, so presumably that's why, but are robocalls not a thing in Europe? Do we not have these kind of predatory companies? Do we have surprisingly effective legislation to stop robocalls? The only phone spam I'm getting are people trying to sell me new energy contracts (that's something that happens when you have a company for some re…

Also Dutch here: They are illegal. You can only call someone if they (indirectly) got the number from you. They are _not_ allowed to dial every number and it has to be done by a human, which works the same as an e-mail costing €0,05: it isn't worth it anymore.

But it being illegal doesn't guarantee a thing if it can be done cheaply and difficult to trace, possibly from abroad. That it doesn't happen means it's not just illegal, but enforced in an effective way.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#248

Post by Diederich »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #215
Diederich wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same Google voice number since 2009, in the south Bay Area, 408 area code. I get one or two bogus calls a day, down from two or three a day at peak, perhaps four or so months ago. To my knowledge, I've had no legit incoming calls incorrectly marked as SPAM.

Do you have the anti spam feature enabled? IIRC it's off by default.

Yup, I have that enabled.

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#249

Post by Causality1 »

joecool1029 wrote: post #202
Causality1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only Google service I rely on is Gmail, because it's the only Google service I can have a reasonable expectation of still being around in five years.

With the way they keep adding proprietary extensions to it, I wouldn't be so sure if it'll actually support sending email to non-gmail clients in five years. Google Voice is actually a safer bet as there's no doubt all sorts of legal snares they'd hit if they shut it down. Bandwidth.com runs things behind the scenes and is a competent company to do business with. They'd likely have to spin it off if they wanted to di…

The Gmail web client has also become a bloated mess that takes four to five times as long to display the inbox after its recent "upgrade".

Re: Eliminating Robocalls

#250

Post by justusthane »

dgnorton wrote: post #7
Noah-Huppert wrote: post #5

I wrote a tool which uses Twilio to screen out robocalls: https://github.com/noah-huppert/human-call-filter

Ditto, except the one I wrote only works for landlines. https://github.com/dgnorton/norobo

That is very cool. I love how retrofuturistic it feels.
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