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Nuisance Calls

2 points by reachyou 10y ago

nkurz 10y ago
I filled out the survey because I was thinking about the same question today. I've gotten two nuisance calls today, which is about the norm. Uncharacteristically, I answered both because I was expecting another call, and worried that the person might be calling from an unexpected number. One was an IRS scam, the other was a garbled voice followed by a hangup. My guess is that most of the calls I get are not "targeted" in any particular way, but are pure Robocalls, systematically dialing through blocks of valid numbers. As such, I don't know that trying to maintain greater secrecy about the phone number is a good strategy. What I think we need is some structure whereby carriers are incentivized to stop them --- maybe there's a way to hold them responsible for the illegal ones? Until then, what I'd like to have (but haven't really found) would be a simple Android app that sends known spam numbers to a blackhole (like http://www.jollyrogertelco.com http://www.jollyrogertelco.com), that sends unknown numbers to a screening system, that sends known numbers to voicemail, and rings the phone only for calls from a whitelisted subset of known numbers. Is there one of these out there?
- reachyou 10y ago
  nkurz, thanks a bunch for taking the survey! The problem of nuisance calls is a real one, indeed. To be honest, I hadn't realized how many I receive myself until I started taking count of them. And as you rightly pointed out, we answer them because we think that they might be important. Subsequently, I've missed some important calls because I thought that they might be spam (sigh!). I've some research experience where carriers were involved and realized that they have a huge sway with the politicos. So practically, I have doubts that getting them to be held accountable is gonna happen. The National Do Not Call registry works, but telemarketers and other such 'callers' always find a way around it. One slick feature I found in Android lately is that it asked (after I received a call from an unknown number) if the call was a spam. So it kind of blacklists some numbers locally. Regarding what you seek, doesn't Google Voice kind of does that?

2 points by reachyou 10y ago

nkurz 10y ago

I filled out the survey because I was thinking about the same question today. I've gotten two nuisance calls today, which is about the norm. Uncharacteristically, I answered both because I was expecting another call, and worried that the person might be calling from an unexpected number. One was an IRS scam, the other was a garbled voice followed by a hangup. My guess is that most of the calls I get are not "targeted" in any particular way, but are pure Robocalls, systematically dialing through blocks of valid numbers. As such, I don't know that trying to maintain greater secrecy about the phone number is a good strategy. What I think we need is some structure whereby carriers are incentivized to stop them --- maybe there's a way to hold them responsible for the illegal ones? Until then, what I'd like to have (but haven't really found) would be a simple Android app that sends known spam numbers to a blackhole (like http://www.jollyrogertelco.com http://www.jollyrogertelco.com), that sends unknown numbers to a screening system, that sends known numbers to voicemail, and rings the phone only for calls from a whitelisted subset of known numbers. Is there one of these out there?

reachyou 10y ago
nkurz, thanks a bunch for taking the survey! The problem of nuisance calls is a real one, indeed. To be honest, I hadn't realized how many I receive myself until I started taking count of them. And as you rightly pointed out, we answer them because we think that they might be important. Subsequently, I've missed some important calls because I thought that they might be spam (sigh!). I've some research experience where carriers were involved and realized that they have a huge sway with the politicos. So practically, I have doubts that getting them to be held accountable is gonna happen. The National Do Not Call registry works, but telemarketers and other such 'callers' always find a way around it. One slick feature I found in Android lately is that it asked (after I received a call from an unknown number) if the call was a spam. So it kind of blacklists some numbers locally. Regarding what you seek, doesn't Google Voice kind of does that?