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Although at first glance this sounds like a no brainer and a little confusing why we are not given the power to have a whitelist system on our phones I think th

by adim86 8y ago

Although at first glance this sounds like a no brainer and a little confusing why we are not given the power to have a whitelist system on our phones I think this feature is a terrible idea. This is the same as saying, why can we not bounce all emails that have not been stored in our email address book. This one feature has the ability to destroy modern communication as we know it. Hear me out. If you all have noticed, with every privacy feature released a significant amount of people migrate to it full-time. I currently cannot recognize my phone ring, because from the day I bought my last phone I switched off the ringing and never bothered to turn it back on, not because I hate ringtones, I just forgot and also there have been no dire consequences to do so. Someone on this thread also said he/she set her phone permanently on "do not disturb" and just deals with notifications when they want to. This is all well and good cause anyone who has tried to reach us has successfully done so and even if they did not reach us, we have evidence that they attempted to. Having a whitelist system is VERY different and has many unforeseen consequences. From as little as, your mother got a new phone and soon she cannot reach you, you got a beautiful girls number and want to ask her on a date but cannot reach her. To bigger issues like your teenage child is mad at you and deletes your contact from their phone. Job offers will be missed, you will become unreachable in emergencies etc. The short of this is, the best case of such a feature is that you don't need to install a third party app to block spam calls, the worst case of such a feature is people can literally die cause they cannot contact you or vice versa. If I was a phone manufacturer. I just won't even allow this. There are easier ways to solve the underlying problem without opening the door for worse outcomes

hardwaresofton 8y ago
I don't mean this maliciously but unless I've misread your comment this is a lot of text that boils down to "sometimes you'll be unreachable". Some of the reasons you list: - family members getting new phones - missed connections + job offers - teenage child being angry with you - emergencies Two responses: 1. The cellular phone has existed only for so long, and people found a way to exist before it. I'm not going to belabor the point since it's not very deep but this concept that you need to be reachable 99% of the time in 99% of the cases is wrong -- the cases where you actually absoutely need to be reached is often <1% of the time. 2. The problem is identity here -- it's not that you don't want certain numbers calling you, it's that you don't want certain numbers calling you. This could be solved by creating a system that links identities to numbers, though it's exceedingly optimistic notion that we'd get everyone to agree on the same system. In all the situations when you give someone your phone number or they give you theirs, you're agreeing to talk to each other. If you instead exchanged some sort of identity (let's say GPG key), the problem no longer is "how can I call a number they should be at", it's "how do I find how to contact this person with this identity". The latter question can be solved much more robustly. I've thought about something like this -- creating just a online store of just identities that you can freely create and discard, boiling down to GPG key. Having such a shared resource would mean that chat apps, telco providers, and various other usecases could just use GPG (in this example) to look up the right contact method... Attempting to create a widely used standard is basically suicide though so maybe this idea has no legs. In this imaginary scenario you have a whitelist that works the way you want -- people you want to contact you can, and you can have very limited overrides like a shared identity/utility key for hospitals/government/etc. [EDIT] - I also wanted to add -- again, I do think that this would have bad effects on "free and open communication", but I'm not sure it might actually be bad for society -- maybe free-and-open-communication by default for some mediums isn't good. I don't think closing down this loophole for phone numbers is going to squelch productive protests (one of the phenomenons I personally think we'd want to protect), but maybe I'm wrong.
- andai 8y ago
  It sounds to me like phone spam is so bad in the US, a lot of people want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I wonder what the differences are in law or technology that makes the problem so bad there vs other parts of the world? Maybe it can be solved in another way.
  - hardwaresofton 8y ago
    I think we just have really loud complainers -- I lived in the US for most of my life and it's never been this bad of a problem...
ragazzina 8y ago
Why would a beautiful girl give me her number and not whitelist mine? My teenage child could very well block my number. This argument doesn't make any sense.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Why would a beautiful girl give me her number and not whitelist mine? Ever watched any American movie? The girl usually writes the number on a back of a receipt or napkin, gives it to you and immediately leaves. :). I do generally agree with the OP though. I need to have a way for unknown but legitimate calls to reach me. To use actual examples that happened to me - sometimes there's a problem with my on-line order, or with some form I submitted to the government, and some clerk from a company/govt office calls me to set things straight. I don't have, and couldn't possibly have, an idea from what number they'll call, but getting that call is a difference between fixing a matter on the spot, vs. wasting me (and them) half a day + incurring some extra wait time the next week.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    who cares about shallow movies? this hypothetical girl would never get called, so obviously she will ask him to call her on the spot, so she can view the last blocked call in some menu, and whitelist it... sure the girl might like to be surprised, but is that worth all the spam? perhaps someone should come up with an artificial spam service "so that you will extra enjoy your real acquaintances when they call you" if that really were true...
tones411 8y ago
Opt in. Problem solved.

by adim86 8y ago

hardwaresofton 8y ago

I don't mean this maliciously but unless I've misread your comment this is a lot of text that boils down to "sometimes you'll be unreachable". Some of the reasons you list: - family members getting new phones - missed connections + job offers - teenage child being angry with you - emergencies Two responses: 1. The cellular phone has existed only for so long, and people found a way to exist before it. I'm not going to belabor the point since it's not very deep but this concept that you need to be reachable 99% of the time in 99% of the cases is wrong -- the cases where you actually absoutely need to be reached is often <1% of the time. 2. The problem is identity here -- it's not that you don't want certain numbers calling you, it's that you don't want certain numbers calling you. This could be solved by creating a system that links identities to numbers, though it's exceedingly optimistic notion that we'd get everyone to agree on the same system. In all the situations when you give someone your phone number or they give you theirs, you're agreeing to talk to each other. If you instead exchanged some sort of identity (let's say GPG key), the problem no longer is "how can I call a number they should be at", it's "how do I find how to contact this person with this identity". The latter question can be solved much more robustly. I've thought about something like this -- creating just a online store of just identities that you can freely create and discard, boiling down to GPG key. Having such a shared resource would mean that chat apps, telco providers, and various other usecases could just use GPG (in this example) to look up the right contact method... Attempting to create a widely used standard is basically suicide though so maybe this idea has no legs. In this imaginary scenario you have a whitelist that works the way you want -- people you want to contact you can, and you can have very limited overrides like a shared identity/utility key for hospitals/government/etc. [EDIT] - I also wanted to add -- again, I do think that this would have bad effects on "free and open communication", but I'm not sure it might actually be bad for society -- maybe free-and-open-communication by default for some mediums isn't good. I don't think closing down this loophole for phone numbers is going to squelch productive protests (one of the phenomenons I personally think we'd want to protect), but maybe I'm wrong.

andai 8y ago
It sounds to me like phone spam is so bad in the US, a lot of people want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I wonder what the differences are in law or technology that makes the problem so bad there vs other parts of the world? Maybe it can be solved in another way.
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  I think we just have really loud complainers -- I lived in the US for most of my life and it's never been this bad of a problem...

ragazzina 8y ago

Why would a beautiful girl give me her number and not whitelist mine? My teenage child could very well block my number. This argument doesn't make any sense.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Why would a beautiful girl give me her number and not whitelist mine? Ever watched any American movie? The girl usually writes the number on a back of a receipt or napkin, gives it to you and immediately leaves. :). I do generally agree with the OP though. I need to have a way for unknown but legitimate calls to reach me. To use actual examples that happened to me - sometimes there's a problem with my on-line order, or with some form I submitted to the government, and some clerk from a company/govt office calls me to set things straight. I don't have, and couldn't possibly have, an idea from what number they'll call, but getting that call is a difference between fixing a matter on the spot, vs. wasting me (and them) half a day + incurring some extra wait time the next week.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  who cares about shallow movies? this hypothetical girl would never get called, so obviously she will ask him to call her on the spot, so she can view the last blocked call in some menu, and whitelist it... sure the girl might like to be surprised, but is that worth all the spam? perhaps someone should come up with an artificial spam service "so that you will extra enjoy your real acquaintances when they call you" if that really were true...

tones411 8y ago

Opt in. Problem solved.