Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 227 posts

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#201

Post by bambax »

caseysoftware wrote: post #177
opendomain wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a big fan of twillio, but I suspect that they or companies like it are contributing to the problem. I would like everyone that uses a telephone API to be required to register a bond. If they are found abusing the system, they will lose the bond and be banned from using ANY companies telephone system. That telephony companies do not take the opportunity fix tbe actual problem makes me think a court may be able to…

One of the most important/valuable things about Twilio is that people can get started easily with little friction. If you add a bond (aka insurance) into the process, you've added a ton of friction that will only solve a problem relevant in a tiny percentage of situations.

Yes, and also, as toast0 says, it's likely to be impossible to have all those providers agree on such a system.

But phone operators should do something, like block voicemails left by a robot, either by detecting them automatically, or blacklisting numbers, or, why not, offer the option of a captcha before leaving a message:

in order to leave a message to this person, please enter the result of the following operation: how much is 3 times 4...

Maybe there's an opportunity for a startup here. It could work before the fact with a captcha as above, or after the fact: it would listen to your messages and spam-rate them.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#202

Post by pbhjpbhj »

SyneRyder wrote: post #195
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear the crackling of my PC speakers a few seconds before the call rings on my mobile; similarly on our landline the phone lights up and shows the caller ID a second or so before it rings. Also if you ring a phone in the same room as you [we have kids!] you'll often find you get a ring tone long before the callee's phone rings.

> on our landline the phone lights up and shows the caller ID a second or so before it rings Not sure about the US, but in Australia this is a phone specific feature. The Caller ID comes between the first and second ring, so if you want a call blocking feature that is completely silent, you need to silence the first ring of every call. Some phones will do this automatically, others (like my Panasonic landline) make i…

I'm in UK, cheap German portable landline phone with virtually no useful settings. Could well be phone specific as you suggest.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#203

Post by ilanco »

bifel wrote: post #9

The method (at least here in my country) is really simple (and not really a secret): The voicemail can be reached from a special number. This number is easy to derive from the actual phone number (usually inserting one or two digits, depending on the provider). When the "owner" calls the mailbox, he gets the "admin" functionality. Anyone else calling it can only add messages. The rest is just simple call forwarding.…

Not sure if it still works, but in Israel it is as simple as prepending the voice mail prefix to the phone number. Some voice mail boxes can receive faxes, so there is some legitimate use for it.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#204

Post by Moru »

josteink wrote: post #75
kaslai wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All phones services I've used charge for total usage, regardless of the initiator. If someone calls me, I still get dinged for every minute I'm on the line, same as if I placed an outgoing call. (Granted, I've only used pay-as-you-go type services, so perhaps other services are different.)

In Europe all services I have seen has been of the kind where whoever makes the call pays, and nobody ever gets charged for receiving calls. Under such a system, this can become a issue.

I bet from the phone company they don't see the problem. Both were intending to place a call so they both pay :)

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#205

Post by e40 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #46

Anyone else in a situation where you're receiving robocalls ten times a day? Hard to believe, but I can show screenshots as proof. I just counted. It's four times per day, like clockwork. Then there are various other robocalls that come in every couple days. So sometimes it's 4 per day, sometimes it's up to 7. It's mildly annoying, but is there any other option than to just ignore it or keep blocking the endless new…

Yeah, me, too. And the calls are mostly from numbers near my number. Only once did I get repeated calls from the same number (until I blocked it). Very, very annoying.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#206

Post by PrimHelios »

derefr wrote: post #48
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it's a fairly consistently timed window (and I assume it is), it doesn't matter if it's just a few milliseconds. On a related note, I'm still surprised to find that telephone operators haven't fixed the scenario "someone calls me and I just miss it, I call them back while they're trying to call me for the second time, and we both get a busy signal". As a naive outsider, seems like it wouldn't take much to…

Under that scheme, if I called my own line by dialing my own DID, I'd end up with a completed loopback call rather than a connection to my voicemail inbox.

I don't know how phone systems work, but in any other programming scenario, a quick if..else would fix that.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#207

Post by bradleyjg »

toast0 wrote: post #183
opendomain wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a big fan of twillio, but I suspect that they or companies like it are contributing to the problem. I would like everyone that uses a telephone API to be required to register a bond. If they are found abusing the system, they will lose the bond and be banned from using ANY companies telephone system. That telephony companies do not take the opportunity fix tbe actual problem makes me think a court may be able to…

Contrary to popular belief, Twilio is not exactly magic. They're great in that they put a simple, easy to understand API, and very low startup friction (painful signup almost more important than cost) to do things you knew were possible, but didn't want to deal with figuring out how to sign up for. They weren't necessarily the first one to do that either. My point is, there are at least hundreds of providers you can…

We need for phones something like what we did for email when the spam first started getting out of control -- blacklists for providers that don't have and reasonably enforce AUPs.

It may be that the US courts have no jurisdiction over a VOIP provider in Kazakhstan, but there's no reason my phone provider can't simply refuse to route their calls.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#208

Post by pavel_lishin »

s73ver wrote: post #193
pavel_lishin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suggest at least leaving the robocall running until it hangs up. It only lasts for maybe 15 seconds. If you want to hurt them more, press 1 (or whatever) to talk to the operator, and string them along. But the downside - if you care - is that the person working a job in some hellish call center probably gets dinged, performance wise, for spending 15 minutes on a go-nowhere call with you. But on the gripping hand,…

They took an evil job. I'm fine with them getting a poor performance review.

I would take an evil job to feed my family if I had no other choice; sometimes people don't.

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#209

Post by caseysoftware »

bambax wrote: post #201
caseysoftware wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most important/valuable things about Twilio is that people can get started easily with little friction. If you add a bond (aka insurance) into the process, you've added a ton of friction that will only solve a problem relevant in a tiny percentage of situations.

Yes, and also, as toast0 says, it's likely to be impossible to have all those providers agree on such a system. But phone operators should do something, like block voicemails left by a robot, either by detecting them automatically, or blacklisting numbers, or, why not, offer the option of a captcha before leaving a message: in order to leave a message to this person, please enter the result of the following operation…

https://www.nomorobo.com/ does the rating based on phone number, effectively an RBL

Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers

#210

Post by bediger4000 »

manquer wrote: post #198
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These orgs don't necessarily have a finite number of outbound lines - they'd be using SIP and just buy more channels from the myriad providers out there for a few bucks a month. You can also get "unlimited channels"-SIP trunk providers too - in which case you're limited only by the number of simultaneous virtual channels your Asterisk setup can handle. So no, "keeping them busy" is not a viable solution.

They will have to still pay for it. If the RoI on these kind of campaigns become low enough, due to combination of higher cost and lower conversion, they will abandon it. You could develop a dialer app to autoroute, and perhaps even generate auto responses ( inverse robo call ?) to make it more frustrating

Yes, precisely. Does any research exist on what percentage of, say, cold calls, has to go bad before organizations abandon the practice? I'd google for this, but I'm not certain of what terms to use. It seems to me that percent honeypots might be relevant, percent of sabotage of cold calls, but I just don't know enough of this field to even start to get an answer.

I do know enough to say that a simple North American can cause enough ire in an Indian call center worker, that he will call back 4 times just to say "Fuck you, sir!", and that if, by chance, the same North American call center worker gets you twice in a day, the conversation is quite profane.

Post reply on HN