Sounds like a technical solution for a problem that just needs regulation and laws. I'm in Germany. I never had a ad/scam call on my cellphone number in basically 20 years. I get some kind of poll call every two months on my landline number. That's all.
Eliminating Robocalls
41–50 of 276 posts
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - a contact whitelist is all I want from iOS with two features: a button to temporarily allow all calls for 30min (for Uber/door dash) and the option to allow a second call to come through from an unknown number if it’s within 2min of the first. All other calls should go to voicemail by default. The way Apple allows you to interact with CallKit makes this hard to implement because a blacklist of numbers is requir…
The problem is a legitimate urgent call from an unwhitelisted number. Hospital, school, fire, police, relatives, etc.
Don’t care about those - voicemail is good enough, repeated call would get through anyway.
I already don’t answer numbers not in contacts (I think this is true of most people) so no real change in behavior.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because individually they'll do a worse job of mitigating spam than if they try to mitigate it collectively.
Doesn't reducing spam phone calls directly hurt their bottom line?
So let's say that I've got a network that can carry calls. I rent access by the month. The fewer calls, the less infrastructure I need to be able to handle them, but the rent doesn't change.
Why would I want spam calls on my network? Unless they're paying me by the call or something, that's the last thing I want.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using GV since it was Grand Central... love it. I really hope it doesn't get killed, I'd happily pay $25-30/year just for what google voice adds over regular phone service. If they do kill it, I'll probably do a virtual PBX to get at least similar services I can control. As an aside, I showed the email thing to a coworker pretty early on, it was pretty wild in the old days.
Related, Hangouts has started to be spammed. The spammers create a group hangout with a few dozen people, draw you into it, and then you see the welcome message. There's no blocking contacts from unknown people: rather, it seems like that was the business model of G+. Granted, hangouts is almost gone now, but it demonstrates there's a way to spam almost anything and ruin it.
It happened a lot with AOL/AIM as well as Yahoo messenger, and even MSN messenger back in the day. To a large extent, I really miss those days... would love to see something like Yahoo messenger come back with voice chat rooms, maybe over WebRTC or similar.
Facebook Messenger is about all I use, and even then rarely... I use hangouts for mostly the occasional screen share or for SMS with my google voice acct (I don't even have my actual cell phone number memorized).
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - a contact whitelist is all I want from iOS with two features: a button to temporarily allow all calls for 30min (for Uber/door dash) and the option to allow a second call to come through from an unknown number if it’s within 2min of the first. All other calls should go to voicemail by default. The way Apple allows you to interact with CallKit makes this hard to implement because a blacklist of numbers is requir…
The problem is a legitimate urgent call from an unwhitelisted number. Hospital, school, fire, police, relatives, etc.
That's what the retry feature is. If it's truly urgent they'll call again within a short timeframe (+3 to +300 seconds; not milliseconds like the 'try to go direct to voicemail' spam calls).
I tell this to everyone I care for as well, if I don't pick up by the third ring, hang up and dial again. (This is to skip it going to voicemail and also differentiate the behavior).
I don't expect scammers to pick up this tactic because it would double their OpEx and also make it more likely that they are targeted for actually trying to call your number with intent, rather than in error.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#46Sounds like a technical solution for a problem that just needs regulation and laws. I'm in Germany. I never had a ad/scam call on my cellphone number in basically 20 years. I get some kind of poll call every two months on my landline number. That's all.
We do have laws, but they cannot be easily enforced because many of the scams originate in foreign countries who proxy to VOIP providers in the US to make the calls. Some of them, like the Microsoft scam, even conscript unwitting people into the job and/or threaten them to do it, while telling them that it's not a scam because everyone in the US is rich and don't need all that money. Maybe Germany just isn't a desirable target for them.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#47All I really want to do is allow calls through to my phone that are stored in my contacts. If they're not in my contacts, I'd prefer not to be notified and have it sent to voicemail.
One problem is they can easily spoof the number. I've received 2 calls from Bank of America's 800 number, that weren't actually from Bank of America (they were pretending there was a problem with my account...phishing for info...). They were in my address book, and showed up as such. You can't trust caller ID. They might not have your friends phone numbers, but you probably also have other major institutions that you…
The fact that it is not perfect is pretty irrelevant to the need for this kind of basic functionality. I'm going to assume iPhone here because I'd be surprised if Android doesn't have this capability.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#48Getting STIR & SHAKEN implemented so we have proper trust of the caller ID is going to be a massive undertaking for the industry as a whole. T-Mobile and Verizon have implemented it in limited forms internally, but they have no interest in making their implementations interoperate, let alone work with the other RBOCs, CLECs and their resellers (Twilio in this case). STIR/SHAKEN also can break call forwarding, as a fo…
The FCC has a page tracking the response by the major carriers[0]. Also, from what the FCC chair is saying, while nothing is forcing the carriers to play nicely, he is basically warning them if they don't work together to create/implement a spec to help with the problem, the FCC will force something (that probably won't be as easy to deal with). WSJ had a podcast interviewing him recently about it[1]. [0] https://www…
> the FCC will force something (that probably won't be as easy to deal with)
After the net neutrality debacle, including the FBI investigation into public comment fraud [0], I'm writing off whatever "corporate difficulty" Ajit Pai is threatening as a snowball's chance in hell. As long as he's chair, that agency is squarely in the "regulatory capture" box.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/fbi-investigatin...
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#49I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S.
But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena.
Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardly a problem at all here? Is there a difference in infrastructure, a difference in legislature, ...?
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#50Sounds like a technical solution for a problem that just needs regulation and laws. I'm in Germany. I never had a ad/scam call on my cellphone number in basically 20 years. I get some kind of poll call every two months on my landline number. That's all.
Don't quote me on this, but I do believe there are regulations and laws preventing this - but just as the article states they are impossible to enforce given our current infrastructure. Fines are meaningless to a blackhat organization doing spoof calls over VoIP somewhere in India.