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Let’s Destroy Robocalls

nytimes.com

41–50 of 286 posts

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#42
post #8

What Apple & Google really should do is build the functionality of Hiya or Youmail into their mobile OSes.

I imagine the people doing robo calls spend an insane amount of money with Google?

The outfits doing this don't tend to be the wealthiest and won't be spending insane amount of money with Google anyways since they're relying on phone advertising.

And anyways, Google isn't some new organization struggling to keep the lights on. They're pretty far in the black and they can afford to forgo a little bit of revenue if it means they can improve their product moat.

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#43
post #14
post #3

What confuses me about this is that Apple could solve this in two seconds by allowing contact whitelists where only incoming calls in your contacts are accepted and everything else is sent to voicemail or dropped. Is there a law against this or something? Nomorobo, Robokiller, Hiya all do an okay job as blacklisting applications but that seems like the wrong way to go about it. Some suggest using do not disturb to do…

Here's how to actually "solve" this problem on an iPhone: - Pay $1.99 to buy a silent ringtone from the ringtone store. - Make that your default ringtone. - Give everyone who you want to be able to call you an audible ringtone.

still would vibrate, right? but this is a really clever idea...

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#44
post #3

What confuses me about this is that Apple could solve this in two seconds by allowing contact whitelists where only incoming calls in your contacts are accepted and everything else is sent to voicemail or dropped. Is there a law against this or something? Nomorobo, Robokiller, Hiya all do an okay job as blacklisting applications but that seems like the wrong way to go about it. Some suggest using do not disturb to do…

We found out that a business we asked to call us shows up with no caller id, it was because of Google services. Plus in many cellular networks its not common for the caller id information to be passed.

While I would like more tools on phones by various providers this problem as a whole needs to be solved by those routing the calls. How that works I don't know, I always thought ANI was the end all solution but IP calling circumvents that?

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#45
I just realized since moving to Vietnam and getting a Vietnam number, no more robocalls. Zero. Nilch. Maybe everyone in the U.S. should buy a sim card from a poor international country for a few months time. If enough people did this, I bet the feds would magically find a solution that starts to work.

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#46
I'm a long time user of "Should I Answer" Android app which is a godsend. It works by allowing people to categorize numbers that called them, so next time number X tries to cold call you or scam you, you get overlay with sign that's probably a nefarious or at least spammy number.

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#47
What I don't quite understand is, how can the NSA and/or other three letter agencies reliably collect meta data on calls and how can the telcos reliably charge for calls and services, yet we are unable to stop robocalling...

Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls

#50
post #11

Our company actually has a really good view into where robocalls are coming from and what they are doing because we own a tremendous amount of phone numbers in the US (100s of thousands - millions at peak). We can basically see when this is happening and a robo-caller is targeting an area code, zip code, state, etc... When we get called from a number we don't know we used to simply reject the call. Now, as of this we…

Make a firehose and sell it to {Google|Apple} so that they can use it to increase value of their phones to consumers.
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