221–230 of 244 posts
As a non-user you can unlist here: https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting
Would some variation of private/public key or authentication work? For example, if each number and the device/SIM or IP it is registered to have a unique key that must authenticate or handshake with the service provider to connect, then a spoof call with that number but lacking the key would fail, potentially be logged and reported to the FCC/authorities.
If no handshake can happen, call fails. If the number and hardware dialing out authenticates via key with the service provider or central store, call goes through.
I find TrueCaller very usefull. I used to get sooo many sales and robo-calls a day that I seriously considered just getting rid of my phone. Now they get automatically blocked or I can just put them on a profile that they ring silently and hang up immediately. I get that this can be dangerous for journalists, but shouldn't they maybe investigate alternative ways of contacting sources privately? Mobile numbers are not…
Can somebody enlighten me why robo-calls are such a problem in the US? I'm completely ignorant of any relevant legislation or enforcement, but as a young German I can literally remember exactly two unsolicited survey calls in my whole life, both on a landline. This suggests some fundamental difference compared to the US which maybe should be changed instead of a third party band-aid app with lots of problems, but aga…
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(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money Where does the $10 come from? (Who pays it? Who collects it?) Also, you just invoked a Cobra Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
> Who pays it? Who collects it? My only guess is that you misunderstand what is being proposed. The spammer is not part of the transaction.
This reminds me once again that the weakest link in the privacy chain today is the mobile phone number, especially since governments in many countries have forced people to link their number to a real ID. It's essentially become a ID number by proxy. However, in the case of the article, the reporter should know to inform her sources not to enter _any_ information linking to her real-world identity into their electron…
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Whatsapp needs to know when you add a phone contact so it can lookup the corresponding whatsapp contact. Even the 3 minute delay is annoying - it's common I meet someone, add them to my phone, and then want to send them a Whatsapp message and they don't appear in the list. I have to awkwardly hang around for a minute or so before being able to send them the message I wanted to send. (for context, in most of Europe, W…
Just install 'Open in WhatsApp' from F-droid and you can immediately start a conversation with an arbitrary number. And without polluting your Contacts with numbers you'll maybe never use again. WhatsApp used to function like that, too; you just added a new number in the UI. That was until FB decided that syphoning Contact info was lucrative. On my phones WhatsApp is still denied Contacts permissions and it works fin…
I know it is now too late for me as FB already have my contact list, but will do (and advertise) that for now on.
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So you're suggesting that it's a user's responsibility to proactively register their number with every single third party caller ID service that exists and ever will exist? And you consider that a "simple solution"? It does not seem unreasonable for a service like TrueCaller to notify people that user-generated information about them is being irrevocably added to a globally public repository.
> It does not seem unreasonable for a service like TrueCaller to notify people that user-generated information about them is being irrevocably added to a globally public repository. If they live in Europe, as far as I'm aware, they should actually also need the users consent if the information contains anything like a name (which it most likely does) and a way for users to have their personal data erased permanently.…
I personally rely on TrueCaller daily, and do not pick up any call that doesn't have identification I recognize. Otherwise I'd have to listen to bots telling me my Social Security number has been arrested, screaming at me in Chinese and people trying to get me to give them money for a myriad of reasons that I really don't have time to listen to. I get several such calls daily. Before, I was seriously thinking about just never picking up the phone at all. Now that I found TrueCaller, at least I can get calls from normal people or businesses that aren't shady and want to talk to me.
If you hate spam calls that much, it's very easy to not pick up a call from an unknown caller. I can come up with a dozen ideas just off hand that could potentially solve this spam issue far more elegantly. It's baffling that even this is up for debate and that there are people who would defend an app like this. This is not a philosophical or technical problem, this is not like spam emails, this is simply not a difficult problem to solve.