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Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

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Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#31

Post by runako »

nlh wrote: post #27
runako wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thought here. I have been toying with the idea of building something OSS so that people could run it themselves, for this reason. (Also I have what is possibly a common filtering case in the US that would eliminate 95% of my spam calls without blocking any relevant calls from "new" numbers. And for whatever reason, I have not seen it implemented anywhere yet.)

IF (area code == my area code) AND (prefix == my prefix) AND (last 4 != my last 4) THEN SPAM SPAM SPAM ?

YES

Also: if (area code == my area code) AND (number NOT IN whitelist)

Basically: I have a mobile number in an area I left 15 years ago. Any call I get from there that's not one of my friends is de facto spam.

Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#32

Post by runako »

joshmn wrote: post #30
runako wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thought here. I have been toying with the idea of building something OSS so that people could run it themselves, for this reason. (Also I have what is possibly a common filtering case in the US that would eliminate 95% of my spam calls without blocking any relevant calls from "new" numbers. And for whatever reason, I have not seen it implemented anywhere yet.)

> Same thought here. I have been toying with the idea of building something OSS so that people could run it themselves, for this reason. I'm in the process of open-sourcing the core part of a SaaS I run that does exactly this. It relies on Twilio but could be easily made to work with any API that exposes the forwarded number, which should be all of them.

Would love to sign up to get notified when this is ready!

Good luck!

Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#33

Post by _-___________-_ »

bestouff wrote: post #5
sm4rk0 wrote: post #4

Over 50% of phone traffic is spam. Please, don't generalize. That statistic is maybe valid in the USA. In my case (Serbia) spam is practically 0%. There's an occasional landline call or two per month but that's enough for making fun by letting our kids answer the phone and troll the spammers. Third world "problems" (: Anyway, I support your fight against spammers.

Same thing in France. I wonder if phone spam exists elsewhere than in USA (in UK perhaps) ?

I have mobile numbers in HK, mainland China and UK. I get zero spam on the UK number, and daily spam calls on the other two, although they hang up as soon as they realise I speak neither Cantonese nor Mandarin, which is a good enough spam filter for me :)

Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#34

Post by bawolff »

Interesting.

I kind of wish there was like an audio captcha app. If the number isnt in your contacts, voice comes on asking them to type some random 4 digit number. Well it is of course anarms race, almost all my call spam is recordings so i think itd be effective.

Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#35

Post by gnicholas »

bawolff wrote: post #34

Interesting. I kind of wish there was like an audio captcha app. If the number isnt in your contacts, voice comes on asking them to type some random 4 digit number. Well it is of course anarms race, almost all my call spam is recordings so i think itd be effective.

Google voice has a feature where you can ask the person to say their name. Not sure if they force you to hit # after or what happens with automated callers, but I could imagine this being a decent solution.

Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#39

Post by davidajackson »

nlh wrote: post #7

Congrats on launching! One security-related question: I had looked into this area previously as a user and a security-conscious friend pointed out that systems that use call forwarding to stop the spam problem are a HUGE security risk. You’re effectively man-in-the-middling all mobile calls, SMS, etc, and if there’s some sort of compromise (or, much less likely, malicious act) on your end, all of us users will be in…

This is definitely a big concern and I have thought a lot about it. Storing data like whitelists, whitelist requests, etc. on the device instead of server is probably going to be the best way to minimize potential issues around privacy. One way to do that is to locally store the whitelist and to route the call to the device and then have the device reject the call if not in the whitelist. But it’s slightly more complex than that, because PINs are an option here too. This is an area that I'm going to be working hard on exploring.

I intentionally haven’t added SMS filtering because of these privacy concerns.

I definitely want to focus on privacy because I am as privacy conscious as everyone else on here.

Re: Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

#40

Post by davidajackson »

sm4rk0 wrote: post #4

Over 50% of phone traffic is spam. Please, don't generalize. That statistic is maybe valid in the USA. In my case (Serbia) spam is practically 0%. There's an occasional landline call or two per month but that's enough for making fun by letting our kids answer the phone and troll the spammers. Third world "problems" (: Anyway, I support your fight against spammers.

You're right, the number varies based on geography. Also it is subjective because what constitutes spam depends on personal preferences (I'm personally okay with 1 appointment reminder, for example, and getting work calls only between 9-6). Thank you for the support!
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