71–80 of 339 posts
A case where LLMs or ChatGPT would be very handy. Setup honey pot number. Route all phone numbers to be answered by ChatGPT. Use ChatGPT to extract phone number. Use twilio api to lookup phone number. Route report to appropriate carrier(s)
hilarious to assume that would exist, it is very manual. if any carrier attempted to automate it, it would be used offensively for fraud as well
I wish we could euthanize this garbage, antiquated phone system. It shouldn't be expected/required that every adult has a phone number when the system is so irredeemably broken and dangerous. If the web didn't have HTTPS, it would be illegal to conduct sensitive business over it. Yet we're stuck with this entrenched telephone system, the best we can do is STIR/SHAKEN, and that's not real security.
100%. My son got sick at school last week and I ignored the call from the school nurse because I have been so thoroughly conditioned by daily scam calls to ignore any unrecognized number. It’s insane that this is still a problem.
I mainly stopped using phone calls years ago, and I hope more people also do. I ported my main number to voip.ms and created a couple others to use for pseudonymous accounts. The service is cheap at about $1/month per number, but it is a little technical to configure and is sometimes spotty. My phone number has sometimes been unregistered/out of service for long periods which has been a bonus. Nobody who really knows…
> If you want a slightly more expensive but simple and reliable number on Android, I highly recommend jump.chat. What? This is just a video chatting service like zoom...?
I got a spam call seemingly “from Verizon” (their main number) on my Verizon phone. I called them and told them and they said “oh yeah that happens all the time don’t pick up when we call” That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won.
It's tough, but it's not helpful that people don't know the face of the enemy. The fight isn't with just some stereotypical "spammers". Advertisers and marketing departments are spammers, and they've destroyed phone as a medium, much like they did it to physical mail, radio, broadcast TV, cable TV, and now streaming and the Web in general. We won't make progress until we realize that most spammers are operating 100% legally, and phone networks both participate in it and make money from it.
I wish we could euthanize this garbage, antiquated phone system. It shouldn't be expected/required that every adult has a phone number when the system is so irredeemably broken and dangerous. If the web didn't have HTTPS, it would be illegal to conduct sensitive business over it. Yet we're stuck with this entrenched telephone system, the best we can do is STIR/SHAKEN, and that's not real security.
It already takes me 45 minutes of my time to get a hold of a support person of my own carrier and I'm a paying customer. I commend the effort, but getting a human to answer a support hotline call in order to report a spammer number is so comically difficult and ineffective that I can't see a significant amount of people participating. Why doesn't my carrier have an automated system allowing them to communicate with t…
I got a spam call seemingly “from Verizon” (their main number) on my Verizon phone. I called them and told them and they said “oh yeah that happens all the time don’t pick up when we call” That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won.
This is enabled by essentially free communication --- while it's probably not feasible to go back to the rates Ma Bell used to charge so as to fund their infrastructure (and generous pensions, and stock dividends).... Why not have a system where a small amount of money is put in escrow when a call is placed? If the person who answered the call is displeased by it, they can punch in a command at the keypad after the c…
Because phone operators make money on all those robocalls, and have so far decided they'll make more money allowing it, than trying to obstruct it.
And, I mean, what are you going to do? Change your phone operator? They're all the same. Switch to using WhatsApp/Signal/etc. for calls? Sure, but you're still paying some telco for the mobile data plan.
That's the problem: all the actors with leverage here are happily making money on the scheme; regular customers... have no leverage.
I got a spam call seemingly “from Verizon” (their main number) on my Verizon phone. I called them and told them and they said “oh yeah that happens all the time don’t pick up when we call” That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won.
What an utter technological failure. How and why is this even (still) possible?