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Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number

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51–60 of 93 posts

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

#51

People! You really need to get into politics or whatever and fix those things from a legal side! You really need to stop inventing services and starting businesses for the most simple things in life! edit: Don't get me wrong, I love the spirit, but there are _real_ problems to tackle and you are still working on stopping telephone spam? It's 2020, nobody should even think about things like that...

Robocalls are the #1 complaint to the FCC.

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

#52

I really wish this would have come out like 4 years ago. I love the idea, but Apple's newest iOS helped significantly cut down on the robocall annoyance. I'm cheering for you!

Thank you, I'm definitely looking to continue working on productivity features like scheduling to keep it relevant and less "platform vulnerable" so that it can't made moot by Apple.

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

#53
post #48

The problem I have with a whitlisting approach is, what if it's actually some legitimate and damn important call? When my father was in the hospital close to death I got informed by phone from an unknown number. You get these calls hopefully only a few times in your lifetime, but I definitely don't want to miss them. What's your approach for these cases?

Most people don't answer unknown calls anymore. They're likely to miss these life/death calls right now. That's why the PIN feature is better for most people--you can give a 5 digit PIN to loved ones. You may be an exception if you answer every call--I won't answer any call from an unknown number, and most young people don't answer unknown calls anymore. Seniors tend to answer more, but that's because they are more used to landlines and times when there were less robocalls. I'd rather make sure that my family can remember a 5 digit PIN (obviously there are lots of tricks to make numbers memorable) than answer every unknown call in my life.

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

#54
post #37

I thought CallKit only allows a blacklist of numbers to block, not a whitelist.

Numbers forwarding means you can create whitelists. CallKit doesn't support whitelisting as you mention. Whitelisting with CallKit was the first thing I looked for in the Apple developer docs, and there was nothing on it, so I used number forwarding.

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

#55

Question: does any app (yours or others) block such calls in a manner that prevents them from ringing at all ? It's extremely frustrating for me when I use a call blocking app only to find that it still rings for a split second before suppressing afterward, and I have no clue why that happens with every app.

Yes it does. It won't ring you unless the caller is permitted to.

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

#56
post #48

The problem I have with a whitlisting approach is, what if it's actually some legitimate and damn important call? When my father was in the hospital close to death I got informed by phone from an unknown number. You get these calls hopefully only a few times in your lifetime, but I definitely don't want to miss them. What's your approach for these cases?

> What's your approach for these cases? If it's important enough, the caller will leave a voicemail.

I had unknown/blocked phone numbers blocked so a deputy had to unblock her number to notify me my brother had died.

I would've been alright with a voicemail, tho.

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

#57
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.

A few people have mentioned they'd like this service, where a random digit/puzzle is presented. I decided to focus on people who wanted the most extreme call blocking service but would like to come back to this later.

Whitelists works fine. Pin "extensions" work fine. The next step is probably just a simple question/answer regarding personal information about the recipient.

Just like account security questions. Provide drop down selector/s for users to select their question.

I'm not going to provide my public number here, but if a caller of mine isn't whitelisted I just prompt them for my billing zip code. Now, that's not going to work for every one, but considering who I want to get phone calls from, it's pretty foolproof.

Keep the energy up @davidajackson. I'd love to see you hugely successful with your efforts!

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

#59
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.

I've set up something similar to this on my Asterisk server. I prompt callers not on my whitelist to respond to: "Tell me, what is 2 plus 5?", and parse the response with Google Cloud voice to text (7 is a good response as it is reliably parsed).

For the motivated, it's a short weekend project.

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

#60
post #48

The problem I have with a whitlisting approach is, what if it's actually some legitimate and damn important call? When my father was in the hospital close to death I got informed by phone from an unknown number. You get these calls hopefully only a few times in your lifetime, but I definitely don't want to miss them. What's your approach for these cases?

>What's your approach for these cases?

Send an SMS/Whatsapp/etc

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