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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

#91
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most robocalls are illegal anyway, unless you've given your explicit consent to a company, like your utility company. Making something illegal doesn't mean it goes away completely (or at all). https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0259-robocalls#legal

In Germany I can report numbers that are doing spam SMS or calls to a governmental agency and they will be shut down within days. That should be possible for other countries, too.

When you get spam email do you report it to your government?

There are plenty of ways to report phone scams, junk calls, auto-dialers. Federal-level, state-level, your own service provider, and the caller's service provider (if you can find them.) You could even also report it to your local police if you feel that concerned about it.... but unless someone is threatening you with violence, they'll just assign you a case number and leave you to it. People who work at all of these agencies also get the same spam and robo calling. There are more important things they are focused on.

Secondly, our governments and telcos already have live data of phone call metadata. Reporting by end-users shouldn't even be necessary. All it would take is for third-tier service providers to block outgoing calls for outbounders that have a low ratio of call attempts to calls accepted that last over 10 seconds. Then set a higher threshold for second tier providers. Basically... a simple algorithm could fix this. Just like our email providers "fight" spam. It's a reputation game.

The OP you initially berated for simply providing a service is also trying to solve it in the way they best know how. It's industry at work. You may disagree with their methodology, but demotivating small successes is also very unwise.

There's an impracticality to the enforcement of something of this scale. Government regulation between telco providers and end-users is obviously needed here. And if you want to get into the thick of it it's not there yet because the same telco providers lobby the same legislation with logic such as "you won't be able to make campaign phone calls with your auto-dialer if this regulation goes through."

Until the system at large is re-thought, it's going to continue being a problem. I personally think a new technology is the answer. In the meantime our fed is in the process of shifting the liability of auto-dialers onto the major telcos. I agree with this approach. It's better than making more, stricter laws that (in our case) cannot reasonably be enforced. The answer is obviously not to create government ran call-centers to manually respond to spam complaints.

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

#92
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I have a mobile number in an area Wow, that's fascinating to find out that is how the US works. Australian mobile numbers and I'm pretty sure most of the European ones, are prefixed by carrier and have no geographical breakdown.

Yup, the first 3 digits (the area code) tell you the the part of the country where the number is located. Obviously this was setup before mobile!

> prefixed by carrier and have no geographical breakdown.

I'm not sure how/if that would work here given the active mergers & acquisitions in telecom. (Among other things, some of these require some customers to be divested to achieve approval of the deal.)

Additionally, we actually had Congress pass a law requiring the ability for consumers to take their number to other carriers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan#...

Prior to this, carriers could use as leverage the fact that people prefer not to change their phone number.

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

#93
post #5
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'm from France and we get daily spam, especially at night. My parents don't even use their landline for that reason.
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