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Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

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Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#81

Post by vineyardmike »

senectus1 wrote: post #33
SoftTalker wrote: post #8

> Alarmingly, some Gen Zers don't say "hello" when they answer a phone call; they expect the caller to just start talking. I'm an older Gen-X and I've stopped doing this unless I recognize the caller. I'm not going to give a scammer anything to build a voice print on. I also use the stock greeting for voicemail instead of a personal one.

I've been actively trying to think of a better way to answer the phone without sounding rude. but without giving up my name or mentally accepting whoever is on the other side (like hello tends to do)

I clear my throat. Do it loud enough that the other end can tell someone is on the line, so they'll know to start the conversation. It isn't a rude "WHAT" type answer, but it doesn't directly acknowledge the caller, and is not inviting a conversation. Its a common enough act that it's not suspicious nor weird to hear during a conversation, and therefore its not off-putting if extended family or clients called from an unknown number.

It doesn't share my voice (for fingerprinting, demographic leak, etc, smh).

Also works as a bot filter - Humans tend to start with a "hello..?" because they're not sure anyone is there, while robots use the non-zero audio as a signal to start talking with full confidence.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#82

Post by vineyardmike »

apparent wrote: post #41
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #22

>some gen Xers don't say hello.. That's entirely pragmatic in this data collecting age. Being silent and hanging up as soon as you hear the spam won't get you marked as a phone line that has a human on the other end nor do you risk your voice being recorded. If you're silly enough to say your name when answering you'll just end up with text and email that is now personalised with your name (it's much faster to identi…

> You should be telling your kids "never say anything on picking up, let the caller to your phone identify themselves! They could be scammers trying to get your details such as your name". How does saying "hello" give scammers your details such as your name?

When I was younger, adults used to answer the phone with "Hello, this is MyName, who am I speaking with?"

Pragmatically, even basic words from your voice can be used to estimate your age, gender, and geographic region (local accents).

But also read other comments, people are saying they answer their phone by stating their name, so plenty clearly use it as a greeting.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#83

Post by philips »

I am working on a similar project. I have something working for my own needs and a few other families already but a long road to go before making something GA.

You can waitlist at https://havenphone.com if you are interested.

There were three major things I wanted to do differently from Tin Can:

- I wanted to use off the shelf VOIP hardware so if the company ever went out of business I (and any of my users) had an escape valve or could just sell the hardware.

- I wanted to have a code base I could open source. (not open source, yet!)

- I wanted flexibility to offer ATAs (devices that let you connect any ol' "analog" phone)- some of my parent friends wanted cordless "DACT" phones, interestingly.

It has been quite an adventure entering the world of VOIP.

The SIP protocol has so many esoteric options (understandably given its history!) it could make TLS look simple.

My most recent learning is this crazy protocol called TR-069 that ISPs use to configure endpoint hardware like home routers, cable modems, and VOIP phones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069

Also, interestingly every cheap (sub-$50) phone and ATA I have tried has a built-in OpenVPN clients.

Oh, and one more interesting thing Grandstream ATAs are able to be taken over by the Grandstream cloud service by just providing the ATA serial number and mac address on the back of the device- I did not love that workflow when considering long-term security. (:

If you have $50 and some time to kill you can do it all yourself right now. In voip.ms you can use the phone book and the caller id filter to create a "*" hang-up rule and an "allow phone book" rule.

- https://major.io/p/85-cents-home-phone/

- https://www.voipsupply.com/fanvil-h3w-wifi-hotel-ip-phone-wh...

- https://www.voipsupply.com/fanvil-h2u-black-hotel-phone-v2

- https://www.voipsupply.com/grandstream-ht801-v2-ata

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#84

Post by Tepix »

This seems to be begging for a DIY project, doesn't it?

A 3d printed case, a little SoC, perhaps a Raspberry Pi Zero, as the brains with asterisk and some additional open source software providing a web interface running on it.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#85

Post by autoexec »

userbinator wrote: post #60
greesil wrote: post #16

I was thinking of doing something like this for text with LoRa. But, having kids I don't have time to do that. This seems really great! I read the previous discussion, oof: S04dKHzrKT wrote Make note of the privacy policy[1]. Some users may not like the data they collect. > Information Collected from Children: As detailed in Section 3.C, we collect voice audio during calls, call log information, and utilize the Paren…

That privacy policy doesn't sound out of the norm for any telco, which will be subjected to laws that require https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception

It'd be extremely out of the norm for telco companies. Tin Can uses the calls and voicemails to collect data on children and sell that to others. That has zero to do with lawful interception. The moment Tin Can becomes popular enough you can bet that the government will be snooping those calls too

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#86

Post by philips »

Aperocky wrote: post #50
ripplefringe wrote: post #28

A year ago, I got my 8 y/o a landline (we used Ooma). It has been absolutely wonderful. By far the best thing is that he makes his own playdates. I'm not the middleman anymore. He just makes plans and asks me if it's ok. And if his friend doesn't have a landline, I let him call their parent. It surprises them, but when he leaves a message, they love it. He's definitely had more time with friends because of it. Anothe…

Make me really want to build one for my son when he gets to that age. If I build it, I can control the full feature set and explain to him how it worked and he'll get the 'cool' factor too. With the raspberry pi I have lying around at home, it doesn't sound impossible!

It is really straightforward with some cheap hardware and patience. I have another comment on this thread with more breadcrumbs but I used a Fanvil "hotel phone" and voip.ms. Under $50 and an afternoon all in and you have full control.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#87

Post by philips »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #65

I "made" something like this 7-8 years ago for our first kid. When I say "made" I mean I bought a "fixed wireless terminal" for $40 on eBay, a classic landline phone for $30, and a cell phone subscription for kids ($5/month). Then I connected the parts, and voila, we had a landline for kids. Obvious benefits include low cost, full interop with all other phones, and having the kids learn our phone numbers by heart aft…

I made something using a VOIP phone and voip.ms. What provider has a $5/mo kids cell subscription!?

voip.ms is about $1.30/mo with the cost of the phone number (DID) and "minutes".

I have some more breadcrumbs on this thread if you are interested in details on my setup too.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#88

Post by pcblues »

This is a nice idea, because it physically limits the place the child can call from. Even a very under-powered phone sets them free.

However, a new severely under-powered phone with no graphics or apps would probably meet the requirements of not being sucked into the grown-up world too early, and the kids can maintain their own contact lists.

And they'll grow super-fast thumbs like we had to in order to text :)

They cost about $50 but are still 4G.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#89

Post by autoexec »

closeparen wrote: post #31
greesil wrote: post #16

I was thinking of doing something like this for text with LoRa. But, having kids I don't have time to do that. This seems really great! I read the previous discussion, oof: S04dKHzrKT wrote Make note of the privacy policy[1]. Some users may not like the data they collect. > Information Collected from Children: As detailed in Section 3.C, we collect voice audio during calls, call log information, and utilize the Paren…

This text does not appear in the link. I do see: >Call Logs: We collect information about calls made using Phones, including the phone numbers you call or receive calls from, the date/time of the calls, and the length of the calls. We also collect network quality metrics and other technical data related to call performance. Please note that we do not record calls. The version of the privacy policy cited in the previo…

In addition to collecting all the metadata they also collect the voices of children recorded in voicemails.

Their policy says that the information they collect is used to "Send you marketing communications (see the section below for information about how to opt out of these communications at any time)" and to "Monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Phones and Services, including to generate de-identified, anonymized, or aggregated data" and to "Target advertisements to you on third-party platforms and websites (for more information and to opt out, see the Targeted Advertising and Analytics section below)"

Remember that "de-identified" and "anonymized" is a lie. De-identified data can be re-identified, and anonymized data can be de-anonymized. Often trivially. There are even situations where individuals can be identified from aggregated data.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#90

Post by philips »

apparent wrote: post #72
toast0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to call POTS numbers, seems reasonable to pay a fee. voip.ms (of Canada, I think) charges ~ $2/month for a number and ~ $0.01 / minute for calls to US/Canada, calls to other subscribers are free. They work with deposits and a balance. Something in that range seems reasonable... maybe a little bit more if there's some work to make it specifically kid friendly (parental controls for incoming/outgoing calls?…

Fair enough...$10/mo seems high. And I say this as someone in the target demo.

What price point would feel good to you?

I am working on a similar service for my own needs (and some other friends). But, my current plan is to hit $100/yr or so but the hardware is included in that cost. I am assuming $2/mo for costs of the number and minutes and retail costs for VOIP hotel phones is about $50. Hopefully the hardware costs amortize out and then I can offer a discount to users on subsequent years.

(If you want to go DIY you can save quite a bit of money too- I provided some breadcrumbs for doing that in my comment on the parent)

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