251–260 of 281 posts
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When they are screening a call, if I push the button to answer the call, the call comes to me immediately. They used to play back a 10 to 20 second "polite" message that just annoyed everybody.
I don't follow what you mean. You have a call screening program or something? But I'm not sure what that has to do with the Do Not Call database.
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> upcoming iOS 26 has a new screening feature I had this on my old Pixel. The result was that people generally hung up and didn't leave a message. Apple is a little bit better with marketing and hopefully won't make the same dumb move of making it a "pro only feature" so maybe it'll be different this time around...
> The result was that people generally hung up and didn't leave a message. This sounds perfect to me. Not only do I not have to talk to spammers, I don't even need to listen to their messages.
But legit people, they just hang up. That's also a worse situation than not answering because in that case they'd have left a message. (this is hit or miss. Sometimes they leave a message. But 0 times have they actually responded to the screening)
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Yup. I didn’t realize how bad it got until my father stopped answering calls. It turned out he was getting (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day from spammers and vendors he had no relationship with. I used the iOS filter, the AT&T filter, and turned on the shortcut so the phone doesn’t ring unless the caller is in his contacts. The problem is that it already changed his behavior. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore, even if…
This sounds stupid, but it worked for me. Change the ringtone.
I didn’t realize how bad my alert/notification sounds fatigue got until I realized that a coworker’s (in an open office layout) phone was the same brand as the office fridge (so his notifications made me get up to check if the fridge was left ajar) and his home doorbell was the same sound as the office doorbell.
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Yup. I didn’t realize how bad it got until my father stopped answering calls. It turned out he was getting (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day from spammers and vendors he had no relationship with. I used the iOS filter, the AT&T filter, and turned on the shortcut so the phone doesn’t ring unless the caller is in his contacts. The problem is that it already changed his behavior. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore, even if…
That's wild. I'm in the US, and I get maybe 1-2 spam calls a month. I get more spam texts than calls, though not many of those either. I've never done anything special to try to prevent them, so I wonder what the difference is.
(1) he was self-employed, so his business contact info (also his personal info) became public record
(2) he NEVER opted out of anything (eg “type STOP to opt-out”), never told callers to take him off their marketing list, and he was VERY sloppy with handing out his primary contact info on websites (maybe shopping or sweepstakes).
The government could fix this but they won't. They are more busy creating new ways to spy on good citizens.
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I think Chesterton’s fence is a fair analogy—but it only works if the “fence” still serves a protective function. With the PSTN, the fence is riddled with holes, and the people meant to maintain it can’t keep up with the erosion. Interoperability was indeed its greatest strength, but today that same universality is what lets malicious actors reach everyone at trivial cost. Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled g…
After all, Chesterton’s fence most importantly is about a fence that we don’t know the purpose of. We (in a collective sense, not me personally) know everything about the phone system, it isn’t even really all that old in the grand scheme of things and is actively maintained. We know how it is supposed to work and can see that it isn’t working. This is more like “Chesterton’s radio with a broken antenna,” a thing bro…
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> We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed. Is that what European countries do? Is that why there are no robocalls there?
I'm not positive, but i think they charge an astronomical amount for calls that don't originate from a local calling prefix. Of course you can get those, but some countries require ID. Mainly I know that calling from a voip number was really expensive when I tried to set something up for a family member going on vacation to Europe. That probably cuts back on a lot of spam calls.
Good start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail.
Is that what European countries do? Is that why there are no robocalls there?
I have no idea the reason.
At this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale. In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact…
Yup. I didn’t realize how bad it got until my father stopped answering calls. It turned out he was getting (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day from spammers and vendors he had no relationship with. I used the iOS filter, the AT&T filter, and turned on the shortcut so the phone doesn’t ring unless the caller is in his contacts. The problem is that it already changed his behavior. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore, even if…
I have taken to speaking like a robot, repeating two sentences in a loop ("You have reached technical support, please describe your issue." -> "I am sorry, I cannot deviate from the technical support script. You have reached technical support...") until the spammers come to the realization they cannot manipulate me into giving an affirmative response that they can interpret as consent to move our phone service, subscribe to service offerings, etc.
They have made phone service effectively worthless, just as they have made all other forms of communication effectively worthless.
Edit: Just remembered something else I do: I do not answer the phone with "Hello" or anything like that. The vast majority of calls that we receive are originated by an autodialer that is listening for a typical greeting so it knows in what language its payload should be delivered. Instead, I answer with only the name of the business and nothing else. If I hear silence, I repeat the name of the business. After a short time, the autodialer gives up and terminates the call.
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Very simple: charge caller $0.25 to make a call.
That's how it was before about 1980. Every call outside the local area cost money, and every international call cost a lot more. As a result, spam landline calls were rare and international spam calls were nonexistent. Keep in mind this was the era before CallerID so you never knew what number was calling you in advance. You answered every call on blind faith. And strangely enough most calls were worth taking, becaus…