5 ms·

Good + heavy $$$ punishments. My father had heart attack few weeks ago and my brother refused to pickup a call, because he was thinking that it was a robocall.

Good + heavy $$$ punishments. My father had heart attack few weeks ago and my brother refused to pickup a call, because he was thinking that it was a robocall. It was a call from hospital in VA, they a left voicemail.

AimForTheBushes 8y ago
At this point, if it's a phone number not in my contacts I'm letting it go to voicemail. The problem is that I'm getting desensitized to voicemails. After hearing "...Blue cross, Aetna, blah blah" health insurance spam voicemails 5x a day I guess anyone would just start deleting them without checking. It's infuriating. Also, hope your father is doing alright!
- dba7dba 8y ago
  I also stopped really checking voicemails... I stopped checking voicemails, as only people who call and leave voicemail are not the people who I communicate everyday. People in my life know to text/chat/email if they need to get through to me right away. And I do the same. I never leave voicemail in people's inboxes...
  - AimForTheBushes 8y ago
    Exactly. I got 7 spam calls today. Each one left a voicemail. I can't keep up with that.
- loeg 8y ago
  I also let non-contacts go to voicemail, but my experience is different — I find that almost no unsolicited calls leave voicemails. Also, I use the Google Voice transcription, which is at least good enough to let me know if it's interesting or spam. Sometimes even good enough I don't need to listen to the recording.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    If they had to press a key, they'd not leave any, ever. As of right now, the voicemails are the robospiel with the first 30 seconds cut off. They start the tape the moment your voicemail picks up, and by the time it gets to the beep, their message is already half through.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    I find the same. <transcript not available> => mark as spam. Google Fi?
- stephenhuey 8y ago
  That’s exactly the ones I’ve been getting for over a year, sometimes 4+ times per day! Once I answered and told the guy I reported them to the FCC and he changed from energetically polite to boiler room sinister and he told me, “I hope your entire family gets cancer and dies.” It’s difficult to screen them before they vary the area code so much. Seems like my report through the FCC form of several numbers used should give the feds teeth to track them down since even if they’re using an API like Twilio, I’d expect a carrier would be required by regulators to track all number usage back to somebody.
dba7dba 8y ago
I think hospitals/police should really start texting a phone number first, before calling to contact a family member. Just something like, "Please call such such hospital at this number to reach us. We need to get in touch with you. You can google the hospital name to verify before calling." I get one robocall every day. Interestingly, not 3 or 5, but just about 1 a day.
- bronson 8y ago
  If I received that SMS, I'd bet money it was a scam.
- athenot 8y ago
  Two problems with that: 1. Many older patients don't use cell phones and are still on landlines. 2. Current processes would have to change. Currently healthcare companies first have to ask if the person picking up the phone matches name & DOB. If not, they need to ensure the person is authorized to receive the health information. This is done for confidentiality reasons (e.g. "hi your husband tested positive to $STD… oops you weren't supposed to know that, oh well have a nice day and tell him to make an appointment with us.").
  - vageli 8y ago
    > Two problems with that: > 1. Many older patients don't use cell phones and are still on landlines. > 2. Current processes would have to change. Currently healthcare companies first have to ask if the person picking up the phone matches name & DOB. If not, they need to ensure the person is authorized to receive the health information. This is done for confidentiality reasons (e.g. "hi your husband tested positive to $STD… oops you weren't supposed to know that, oh well have a nice day and tell him to make an appointment with us."). Many healthcare providers now offer forms that allow you to specify the level of detail you would like for messages (typically the same form where you can add a verified contact who is eligible to receive medical information on your behalf). I was able to select something along the lines of "Leave the full details you are reporting, even if it is to a voicemail" though I can understand that that is not workable for everyone.
  - 8y ago
eschneider 8y ago
Voicemail is the 21st century Turing test. Once robocalls start faking that, we're f-cked. :/
- hedora 8y ago
  There are services that let you forward telemarketers to AI’s. Totally worth it.
  - glenneroo 8y ago
    Except that most telemarketing calls are themselves robots/recordings, so I'm not sure this helps anyone.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      The future is a bunch of AIs trying to convince other AIs they're human.
  - heyjudy 8y ago
    There are some hillarious 419eater meet comedy answering apps that direct random pre-recorded skits to the scammer. When real-time natural speech synthesis arrives with unique accents, coupled to hardware-accelerated machine-learning, it would be within the realm of possible to direct a Turing-test-capable bot to waste a scammer's time with a generated situation and personality that meets various plausibility, social, customer qualifiers and scam-delaying constraints. Also at said point, the "are you a bot?" question non-IRL will be even more worthless but possibly comical.
hedora 8y ago
$$$ punishments? Are you a robocaller or something? I’d say 1 hour of hard labor for every minute of time you wasted, starting at the top of the org, and working its way down (in parallel; no fair dying of old age while the CEO is breaking rocks). Other than corruption / abuse of government authority, this is the only crime I support the death penalty for. Seriously.

AimForTheBushes 8y ago

At this point, if it's a phone number not in my contacts I'm letting it go to voicemail. The problem is that I'm getting desensitized to voicemails. After hearing "...Blue cross, Aetna, blah blah" health insurance spam voicemails 5x a day I guess anyone would just start deleting them without checking. It's infuriating. Also, hope your father is doing alright!

dba7dba 8y ago
I also stopped really checking voicemails... I stopped checking voicemails, as only people who call and leave voicemail are not the people who I communicate everyday. People in my life know to text/chat/email if they need to get through to me right away. And I do the same. I never leave voicemail in people's inboxes...
- AimForTheBushes 8y ago
  Exactly. I got 7 spam calls today. Each one left a voicemail. I can't keep up with that.
loeg 8y ago
I also let non-contacts go to voicemail, but my experience is different — I find that almost no unsolicited calls leave voicemails. Also, I use the Google Voice transcription, which is at least good enough to let me know if it's interesting or spam. Sometimes even good enough I don't need to listen to the recording.
- nikanj 8y ago
  If they had to press a key, they'd not leave any, ever. As of right now, the voicemails are the robospiel with the first 30 seconds cut off. They start the tape the moment your voicemail picks up, and by the time it gets to the beep, their message is already half through.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  I find the same. <transcript not available> => mark as spam. Google Fi?
stephenhuey 8y ago
That’s exactly the ones I’ve been getting for over a year, sometimes 4+ times per day! Once I answered and told the guy I reported them to the FCC and he changed from energetically polite to boiler room sinister and he told me, “I hope your entire family gets cancer and dies.” It’s difficult to screen them before they vary the area code so much. Seems like my report through the FCC form of several numbers used should give the feds teeth to track them down since even if they’re using an API like Twilio, I’d expect a carrier would be required by regulators to track all number usage back to somebody.

dba7dba 8y ago

I think hospitals/police should really start texting a phone number first, before calling to contact a family member. Just something like, "Please call such such hospital at this number to reach us. We need to get in touch with you. You can google the hospital name to verify before calling." I get one robocall every day. Interestingly, not 3 or 5, but just about 1 a day.

bronson 8y ago
If I received that SMS, I'd bet money it was a scam.
athenot 8y ago
Two problems with that: 1. Many older patients don't use cell phones and are still on landlines. 2. Current processes would have to change. Currently healthcare companies first have to ask if the person picking up the phone matches name & DOB. If not, they need to ensure the person is authorized to receive the health information. This is done for confidentiality reasons (e.g. "hi your husband tested positive to $STD… oops you weren't supposed to know that, oh well have a nice day and tell him to make an appointment with us.").
- vageli 8y ago
  > Two problems with that: > 1. Many older patients don't use cell phones and are still on landlines. > 2. Current processes would have to change. Currently healthcare companies first have to ask if the person picking up the phone matches name & DOB. If not, they need to ensure the person is authorized to receive the health information. This is done for confidentiality reasons (e.g. "hi your husband tested positive to $STD… oops you weren't supposed to know that, oh well have a nice day and tell him to make an appointment with us."). Many healthcare providers now offer forms that allow you to specify the level of detail you would like for messages (typically the same form where you can add a verified contact who is eligible to receive medical information on your behalf). I was able to select something along the lines of "Leave the full details you are reporting, even if it is to a voicemail" though I can understand that that is not workable for everyone.
- 8y ago

eschneider 8y ago

Voicemail is the 21st century Turing test. Once robocalls start faking that, we're f-cked. :/

hedora 8y ago
There are services that let you forward telemarketers to AI’s. Totally worth it.
- glenneroo 8y ago
  Except that most telemarketing calls are themselves robots/recordings, so I'm not sure this helps anyone.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    The future is a bunch of AIs trying to convince other AIs they're human.
- heyjudy 8y ago
  There are some hillarious 419eater meet comedy answering apps that direct random pre-recorded skits to the scammer. When real-time natural speech synthesis arrives with unique accents, coupled to hardware-accelerated machine-learning, it would be within the realm of possible to direct a Turing-test-capable bot to waste a scammer's time with a generated situation and personality that meets various plausibility, social, customer qualifiers and scam-delaying constraints. Also at said point, the "are you a bot?" question non-IRL will be even more worthless but possibly comical.

hedora 8y ago

$$$ punishments? Are you a robocaller or something? I’d say 1 hour of hard labor for every minute of time you wasted, starting at the top of the org, and working its way down (in parallel; no fair dying of old age while the CEO is breaking rocks). Other than corruption / abuse of government authority, this is the only crime I support the death penalty for. Seriously.