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Verified by Twilio

twilio.com

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Re: Verified by Twilio

#201

Post by squeaky-clean »

Erwin wrote: post #65
ozmbie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a uniquely American problem? My Australian mobile phone receives maybe one spam call per year. It’s my single phone and I give out the number to various businesses and people.

In Denmark, phone sales to consumers are generally illegal though strangely insurance and newspapers are excluded. There's a national "do not call" list you can sign up to as well. This is amusing called the "Robinson List", presumably after Robinson Crusoe. The same concept is used in a dozen other countries. I guess the penalties are severe enough that it generally only very shady people call, such as those pretend…

It's also illegal in the USA, and we have our own national do not call list. The problem is the spammers are mostly using spoofed numbers (I get calls from my own phone number quite often) and are not actually physically located in the USA. It's difficult to prosecute some call-center warehouse located in Asia.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#203

Post by juskrey »

RandomBacon wrote: post #194
juskrey wrote: post #115

Huh? "We’re partnering with leading call identification apps" Are that those shady apps which require your address book access just to start, aren't they?

How do you think those companies identify numbers? I'm guessing they see if any of their other users have the number saved. Of course they could still be doing shady things with people's contact lists beyond that...

They could do that silently or at least in some optional privacy-oriented way, e.g. like Telegram or Signal.

Instead they are actively implementing features to disclose everything to everyone.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#204

Post by fjp »

chabes wrote: post #173
k__ wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries it's illegal for companies to call random people, they need to gather opt-ins from all people they wanna call.

It doesn’t seem like it’s being enforced in the US, currently..

They actually do try to enforce it, but right now it's a losing battle. You can spin up a new voip company and start blasting scam calls from an overseas call center in a weekend, then spin that company down before anyone has any idea who you are.

Customers complain to carriers, who then either get the offending voip provider to block the scamming customer, or just threaten FCC action. But the whole cycle is so slow and you're fighting a never-ending shapeless horde.

I think STIR/SHAKEN will help with this if it ever gets fully implemented and enforced, and voip providers are always trying to come up with better fraud detection to avoid the man-hours associated with assuaging carrier concerns, blocking the customers, etc, etc.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#205

Post by chaostheory »

shaklee3 wrote: post #183
boring_twenties wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I've been praying for a Google Voice replacement for around a decade now, I guess this it it!

What's wrong with Google voice? Afaik it's not being deprecated.

I hope it gets even more popular soon to keep it from getting killed. Even in the valley, very few people I know are aware of Google Voice let alone use it. Google deprecation is always on my mind which causes me to stay away from any new Google products.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#206

Post by kerkeslager »

Jolter wrote: post #83
kerkeslager wrote: post #37

Just what we need, another startup injecting themselves into our lives. And then for the right price, "acceptable robocalls" can be Verified by Twilio™! SHAKEN/STIR[1] is a much more network-agnostic solution to the same problem, using essentially the same, well-established technology used by internet certificate authorities. As such, it has all the same basic problems that CAs do, but it's a hell of a lot better tha…

Looks cool but wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just outlaw robocalling like the rest of the world has?

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that robocalls already fall under laws that make them illegal. The problem is that if someone makes an illegal call from a spoofed number, you can't tell where the call is actually coming from, so you can't prosecute the caller. SHAKEN/STIR closes the loophole that allows spoofing phone numbers.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#207

Post by kerkeslager »

gtirloni wrote: post #49
kerkeslager wrote: post #37

Just what we need, another startup injecting themselves into our lives. And then for the right price, "acceptable robocalls" can be Verified by Twilio™! SHAKEN/STIR[1] is a much more network-agnostic solution to the same problem, using essentially the same, well-established technology used by internet certificate authorities. As such, it has all the same basic problems that CAs do, but it's a hell of a lot better tha…

This doesn't seem any more open than Verified by Twilio. Why would you trust Verizon/Comcast more than Twilio? As not a customer of both, STIR/SHAKEN doesn't help me.

1. The promise being made is different. SHAKEN/STIR doesn't promise to only let through legitimate calls, it only promises to make caller ID accurate to prevent spoofing. This allows the weight of existing laws against robocalls to apply--the government, not Twilio, determines who is legitimate. Existing robocall laws are too lax IMO, but it's a step in the right direction.

2. This is being proposed as part of legislation. All telecoms in the US would be required to implement the technology.

3. I don't think it's accurate to call it "open", but it's not centralized in the same way that Twilio's solution is. It's a federated system analogous to HTTPS certificate authorities. Twilio's service is more analogous to content filtering services like NetNanny. As I mentioned, CAs have problems too, but they're a whole lot more open than NetNanny.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#208

Post by blacksmith_tb »

sp332 wrote: post #186
pier25 wrote: post #180

Android already does this, somewhat. Whenever you receive a call you know beforehand if it's spam or not. Maybe a handful of times in the last year I've received a spam call that wasn't marked as spam. You can block callers and report as spam much like in Gmail. When the call is not spam Android looks up on Google where the number is from and it shows the name of the business in the call screen. This is working great…

I've never seen a call marked as "spam" on Android. What kind of phone do you have, and which carrier? Edit: My phone is from Samsung (who like to add a bunch of their own software to base Android) and my carrier is AT&T.

All the Pixels use Assistant to screen calls from numbers that aren't in your contacts. You watch a live transcript of the caller / bot and you can answer if it's legitimate or have it deliver a canned "stopping calling me and take me off your list" which also reports the caller[1]

1: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17955274/google-pixel-3-s... (I have Pixel 2, so the feature isn't just > 3 at this point)

Re: Verified by Twilio

#209

Post by giancarlostoro »

clmckinley wrote: post #131
Jolter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks cool but wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just outlaw robocalling like the rest of the world has?

Most robocalls are illegal in the US. We have a do not call list and everything. I believe is it a name change is currently working its way through to change the name to "seriously, do not call... please list". [ https://www.forthepeople.com/class-action-lawyers/robocallin... ] The problem is that determining the source is difficult and even if you did it is most likely over seas where enforcing the fine is impossibl…

The bigger problem is if they're scammers they wont care about a do not call list.

Re: Verified by Twilio

#210

Post by awwstn »

HugoHobling wrote: post #19

I know it's overkill, but this is my current setup for my phone numbers. I treat phone numbers the same way I do my email address: I use different numbers for different purposes. 1. I have a "clean" phone number I only share with friends/family. Certain prefixes and phone number actually receive next to zero spam calls. This number has received 2 calls in the years I've had it. 2. I have a phone number I share with c…

Request for startup! I would happily pay $20/month for a service that makes it easy to replicate this setup.
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