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Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

phonejanitor.com

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Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#111

Post by ac29 »

nostromo wrote: post #55

Can it block unknown callers? The FCC doesn't allow phone companies to do that directly. It drives me nuts -- it's always spam callers. http://www.t-mobile.com/company/privacyresources.aspx?tp=Abt... > the FCC has mandated that carriers allow callers the ability to block their Caller ID information and thus place “anonymous” calls. T-Mobile is obligated to honor the privacy of the caller in these circumstances. Of co…

>Can it block unknown callers?

>The FCC doesn't allow phone companies to do that directly. It drives me nuts -- it's always spam callers.

I think T-mobile is wrong. You can block anonymous/spam calls with my (US) phone provider: https://i.imgur.com/0zCcbpN.png

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#112

Post by njloof »

biot wrote: post #110
david-given wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks terrible? Really? It's an uncluttered layout with the tl;dr description of what it actually is prominently on the front page, and with easy-to-find navigation links to everything else above --- and if you notice, the informational links are on the left, and the actionable links are on the right. To me, it's exactly what I want out of a product's website, and I wish more looked like it!

It's utilitarian to the max in that it cares little for graphical design. The layout is fairly functional, though I did initially think the menu links at the top were disabled given that the links below were classic blue underline. I can easily see why someone would call that terrible; it looks like a time-warp back to the mid-90s when Netscape rendered the default HTML background as grey before everyone eventually s…

Phone numbers are pretty utilitarian. You mean I need a number just to contact someone? What terrible UI.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#113

Post by userbinator »

Hysterica wrote: post #89
aresant wrote: post #34

I think it's a stroke of genius to launch something so aesthetically terrible on HN / PH (aka the early adopter crowd). For a group of people that see a dozen bootstrap / sandwhich vid style launches a week this stands out, and got me to read 3 paragraphs of ad-copy. Other notable examples of this launch strategy, intentional or not, in recent memory were Pud launching DistroKid (1) and the team behind Magic (2) I th…

As honest as the text appears, I usually associate websites which look similar to this as outdated and untrustworthy. It's the type of website you often see for old freeware, which is why it doesn't seem so great to a potential user as they'll assume the website style may reflect on the service they're about to receive. I would take a bootstrap style over this. Maybe that's just me.

I think your expectations are outdated; it's extremely easy these days to create a generic templated site that looks like every other Bootstrap one out there.

On the other hand this looks like handwritten HTML so I get the idea that the creators put a little more effort into it. Someone looking to scam or create clickbait content-farms is unlikely to do such a thing, but rather use one of the various site-generators out there instead.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#114

Post by kcbanner »

Hysterica wrote: post #89
aresant wrote: post #34

I think it's a stroke of genius to launch something so aesthetically terrible on HN / PH (aka the early adopter crowd). For a group of people that see a dozen bootstrap / sandwhich vid style launches a week this stands out, and got me to read 3 paragraphs of ad-copy. Other notable examples of this launch strategy, intentional or not, in recent memory were Pud launching DistroKid (1) and the team behind Magic (2) I th…

As honest as the text appears, I usually associate websites which look similar to this as outdated and untrustworthy. It's the type of website you often see for old freeware, which is why it doesn't seem so great to a potential user as they'll assume the website style may reflect on the service they're about to receive. I would take a bootstrap style over this. Maybe that's just me.

Interesting. I prefer an older looking site like this. To me the feeling is that it has been created by more mature developers that would rather present all the necessary information simply, instead of muddling it with a bunch of unnecessary styles (or some inane scrolling page).

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#115

Post by jonpaine »

angryasian wrote: post #103
gcb0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

better than google. which actually owns your google voice number. and the chance of google just shutting down a service they can't show text ads on is much, much higher than some company shutdown (instead of being bought by the google or facebook). google is already dropping the ball on google voice. the app has no updates since android 2.3. just so you understand how behind it is... the app cannot support two messag…

a lot of what you're saying is untrue. 1. https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1316844?hl=en you can port your number out of google voice. 2. I highly doubt google voice is going anywhere with Google's commitment to mobile. 3. The voice message app was updated last year. Yes it hasn't got the full treatment, but I assume this is because its primarily a background service. sms is done primarily through your favorit…

Should reference platform. #4 is not an option for iOS, which is to say, parent comment is correct. GV on iOS is laughably bad from a UX standpoint.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#116

Post by jessaustin »

We also conform to law enforcement inquiries only where legally required, and with notification to the account owner of any and all inquiries legally allowed.

This is precise wording! Sort of refreshing; I can't recall seeing anything like this from my mobile provider.

We do not delete call records actively, and we keep history of where a number has been provisioned. We do this for support and analytics purposes as a matter of good record keeping. This is not likely to change.

You must not have many customers yet if you don't have a schedule for deleting CDRs. Surely this will happen at some point? I guess $15/m pays for some storage... Anyway the moralistic "matter of good record keeping" is a bit of a turn-off. Deleting unnecessary data is a kindness to one's customers.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#117

Post by TodPunk »

jessaustin wrote: post #116

We also conform to law enforcement inquiries only where legally required, and with notification to the account owner of any and all inquiries legally allowed. This is precise wording! Sort of refreshing; I can't recall seeing anything like this from my mobile provider. We do not delete call records actively, and we keep history of where a number has been provisioned. We do this for support and analytics purposes as a…

We don't keep much data around for a CDR, just who called, what time, and what happened to it. Even my number hasn't generated more than 1K of data thus far. I don't see that being a big problem for 10 years of someone's line data.

We can change the wording on that, but there is a requirement for when a number is active or not and who it is attached to, and there's some significant liability if we can't say where a number was supposed to be going at some point in the past. We want to acknowledge that requirement so everybody knows what's happening and why. I understand completely if that's a turn off, but do realize that anyone who has a phone number has such records kept around for several years. My approach is that telco stuff is not something I want to be unprofessional about, and I don't want to hide that either.

Knowing that philosophy, I'm open to suggestions for restating that particular phrase. I suppose it's also worth expanding what "provisioned" means here (specifically it means we put a line on an account with this ID at this time, not a function of identifying WHO owns a number at a time).

You might also note that we don't ask who you are. We don't care. Stripe (payment processor) does, but our system honestly has no idea. If that changes, so will our policies to reflect exactly that, and why.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#119

Post by jessaustin »

TodPunk wrote: post #117
jessaustin wrote: post #116

We also conform to law enforcement inquiries only where legally required, and with notification to the account owner of any and all inquiries legally allowed. This is precise wording! Sort of refreshing; I can't recall seeing anything like this from my mobile provider. We do not delete call records actively, and we keep history of where a number has been provisioned. We do this for support and analytics purposes as a…

We don't keep much data around for a CDR, just who called, what time, and what happened to it. Even my number hasn't generated more than 1K of data thus far. I don't see that being a big problem for 10 years of someone's line data. We can change the wording on that, but there is a requirement for when a number is active or not and who it is attached to, and there's some significant liability if we can't say where a n…

Thanks for your detailed reply. Can we agree that there is a difference between CDRs and provisioning info? No one will complain that you are obeying the law with respect to the latter, but "never" is a strange call record deletion policy. Not even an ILEC would try that. A policy this strange will cost you customers, especially since anyone trying this service is much more likely to think about privacy issues.
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