After 15 years of cell phone spam, anything that shows up as a number on my personal phone, and not a contact, is reflexively ignored. I don't think I'll ever shake this habit: if it is important, they will leave a message.
If it’s important, they can text me. I ain’t listening to voice mail. Eww, what is this, the Middle Ages?
About a year ago I changed my voicemail to say "Sorry I missed your call. I don't listen to voicemails, please send me a message by SMS instead."
I couldn't recommend doing so more. Text is so much easier, even if you have voicemail transcription.
Can you extend a bit on that, maybe I'm not understanding the problem right. Isn't having calls being authenticated the first step before you have whitelist/blacklist? Once every call can be definitively attached to a given source, then you can ban any foreign provider that let's these proliferate completely, no?
SHAKEN/STIR + Whitelisting is the best solution. SHAKEN/STIR by itself isn't going to change things too much I think. But it is a step in the right direction. Whitelisting without SHAKEN/STIR is still extremely functional. There are billions of unique American numbers possible, and with 250-500 average contacts per random dial, contact spoofing is not statistically significant.
Not when you can contact spoof banks, major drug store chains, AppleCare, etc.
Does this mean I can start answering my phone again? Are there other vectors for spam calling which are not addressed by this solution?
After 15 years of cell phone spam, anything that shows up as a number on my personal phone, and not a contact, is reflexively ignored. I don't think I'll ever shake this habit: if it is important, they will leave a message.
This is now a feature on both iOS and Android to mute incoming calls that are not a contact. Voicemails still work fine, and with automatic transcription and all the other digital channels still open, there's no real reason to worry about anonymous calls anymore.
While this is a possible scenario- in my experience most people know to call multiple times - especially if they know that the recipient won’t recognize the number. I don’t usually answer my phone from unknown numbers, but when I get three calls from the same number within 3 minutes I’ll pick it up.
>While this is a possible scenario- in my experience most people know to call multiple times - especially if they know that the recipient won’t recognize the number. I'm surprised robocallers don't do this too
Calling once selects for people more likely to fall for the actual scam.
Kind of curious why it took so long. Spoofed calls for fraud, swatting, etc. have been around for at least ten years.
There are three big issues. Robocalls and spam were not as severe an issue until relatively recently. Political robocalls in the US are an important part of how some politicians get elected and raise funds. And these solutions cost a non trivial amount of money, without increasing revenue directly.
This is about requiring authentication, not blocking robocalls in general. Right?
It's generally a bad idea to carry your passport around just because it has your SSN printed on it
No, it's generally a bad idea to carry it around in a foreign country when you don't need it that day, as having it pickpocketed would suck. Having it pickpocketed in the US would be far less of a headache, minus lacking an ID for a few weeks.
This is bad advice. You will need it in almost any country when getting stopped by the police. That can happen any time. This will be more of a problem in some countries than others. If you really can't find a way to carry it without getting pick pocketed then a least carry a xeroxed copy with you.
After 15 years of cell phone spam, anything that shows up as a number on my personal phone, and not a contact, is reflexively ignored. I don't think I'll ever shake this habit: if it is important, they will leave a message.
I've pushed that reflex further : if it's important, the information will find its way to me.
I just wish various Doctors and Dentists could jump on the text/email bandwagon. Those two groups are responsible for nearly all of my phone usage - with a slim minority (that is itself mostly spam) being calls from my bank.
Why is this problem unique to the USA? Every time this topic comes up on HN, someone asks that same question. Then there's a bunch of responses that are lots of suppositions. Then several people from small European countries chime in saying they've never had a spam call. Then a bunch of Europeans from large countries show up saying they get spam calls, too, and it's not just an American thing. "Why is this problem un…
I would not be surprised if turns out to be a bigger problem in the USA (and perhaps also Canada) than elsewhere simply because the USA is a bigger, easier-to-access pot of honey. It's a large area where everyone speaks the same language, lives in roughly the same regulatory and infrastructural environment, and has a lot of money to be scammed out of. Europe is also a big pot of honey. But people speak all sorts of d…
I'm not sure why your comment is being downvoted. Having THE largest rich homogenous market segment in the world with a weak regulatory environment (aka a free market) is probably a huge factor in scam targeting. See also Amazon fake inventory and fake reviews, which are a much bigger problem in Amazon US than in Amazon Canada, for example.
Why is this problem unique to the USA? I'm not saying I never get spam calls, but I certainly have to scroll back quite a bit in my phone call history to see the last one. Also, on the rare occasion I do get a spam call it's always from some random international country like South Sudan or Oman that I would never expect a phone call from. What makes this problem uniquely hard to solve for the USA as opposed to anywhe…
It’s not, but the scale... in the Netherlands if your number is on the lists you get I’d say about 5 calls from ‘Microsoft’ each month, not multiple calls a day.
Why is this problem unique to the USA? I'm not saying I never get spam calls, but I certainly have to scroll back quite a bit in my phone call history to see the last one. Also, on the rare occasion I do get a spam call it's always from some random international country like South Sudan or Oman that I would never expect a phone call from. What makes this problem uniquely hard to solve for the USA as opposed to anywhe…