4 ms·

I think VOIP has great untapped potential for this, having helped many people get vanity numbers with their name embedded. Once the job hunt is over, you can li

I think VOIP has great untapped potential for this, having helped many people get vanity numbers with their name embedded. Once the job hunt is over, you can literally reject all calls, and build a caller ID blacklist of spammy companies and recruiters. Plus, numbers are 1/4th to 1/10th the cost of domains these days.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
It works the other way too. I keep blocking spammy numbers, and they keep creating new ones.
sokoloff 8y ago
Are they? I pay $1/mo for phone numbers, which is quite close to what I pay for most of my domains.
- disiplus 8y ago
  phone numbers cost close to nothing to operators, but running a voip infrastructure hast its costs, and a lot of those costs come from protecting it from hacking attempts. They love open pbx boxes where they can generate a significant cost, or use to spam others. also compassion with domain is not exactly fair in this case, it would make more sense to compare it to ip address.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Fail2ban, not using IP based auth, and mandatory TLS/SRTP will generally cover your bases (ofc, Fail2ban should be banning any IPs attempting TCP/UDP registration or calling without SRTP). Not really rocket science, but the VOIP industry is stuck in the 1990s when it comes to security practices related to their core offering. Its a terrible state of affairs!
- _rs 8y ago
  Could you share some places you use to buy numbers like that? Do you just set them up to forward, or do you have more control than that? I've always been interested in this, but apart from Google Voice, I haven't found a good way to get started.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Twilio is the easiest by far, IMO.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      Twilio is also one of the most expensive providers, and if you don't need E911 you can easily get numbers for less than half that price.
      - _rs 8y ago
        That's great to know, could you point me towards any other companies?

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

It works the other way too. I keep blocking spammy numbers, and they keep creating new ones.

sokoloff 8y ago

Are they? I pay $1/mo for phone numbers, which is quite close to what I pay for most of my domains.

disiplus 8y ago
phone numbers cost close to nothing to operators, but running a voip infrastructure hast its costs, and a lot of those costs come from protecting it from hacking attempts. They love open pbx boxes where they can generate a significant cost, or use to spam others. also compassion with domain is not exactly fair in this case, it would make more sense to compare it to ip address.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Fail2ban, not using IP based auth, and mandatory TLS/SRTP will generally cover your bases (ofc, Fail2ban should be banning any IPs attempting TCP/UDP registration or calling without SRTP). Not really rocket science, but the VOIP industry is stuck in the 1990s when it comes to security practices related to their core offering. Its a terrible state of affairs!
_rs 8y ago
Could you share some places you use to buy numbers like that? Do you just set them up to forward, or do you have more control than that? I've always been interested in this, but apart from Google Voice, I haven't found a good way to get started.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Twilio is the easiest by far, IMO.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Twilio is also one of the most expensive providers, and if you don't need E911 you can easily get numbers for less than half that price.
    - _rs 8y ago
      That's great to know, could you point me towards any other companies?