21 ms·
Let’s Destroy Robocalls
- whatislovecraft 8y ago> Finally, something worse than Donald Trump. That's just about the most insulting and belittling tagline that could possibly be chosen for this. The man put children in cages, lost them, and thinks that climate change is a hoax invented by China and disproven by snowfall. Come on now. We all, left and right, agree that Trump is worse than robocalls.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> We all, left and right, agree that Trump is worse than robocalls. I'm having trouble imagining Republicans have have >89% support for robocalls, so I have doubts of your proposed left-right consensus on Trump vs. robocalls. https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ra...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kmcom 8y agoDon't feed the troll.
- whatislovecraft 8y agoAre you referring to me? The article's author is clearly the troll here! The only thing above the fold is a statement baked in hateful ideology, clearly meant to anger and upset the readers. I'm not the troll here, I'm standing to defend basic human decency. The author is the troll.
- whatislovecraft 8y ago> I'm having trouble imagining Republicans have have >89% support for robocalls Really? Why though? I would assume they do. Robocalls are the maximum free-market ideal communication / ad mechanism. Aren't Republicans constantly trying to get less regulation in the US? Constantly removing laws around protecting consumers from this stuff? I would assume most Republicans are in favor of Robocalls.
- bovermyer 8y agoYou must not talk to many Republicans.
- whatislovecraft 8y agoI sure don't. I'd like to, but most Republicans seem to want me to die. They vote out the very existence of people like me, denying our right to safety and to live as freely and openly as they do. So it's quite scary, talking in person with people who encourage me to commit suicide based on my beliefs or identity, and even pass laws that seem to serve no purpose but to cause pain to others. I'll be here to talk to Republicans, or anywhere really. But they'd have to meet halfway and stop the intentional causing of pain on minorities before that can happen. The last time I sat in a restaurant with Republicans they both encouraged me to stop breathing and kill myself, because "that would be the best thing for the environment right?" as I wouldn't be exhaling CO2 any more. No thanks. I've tried hard but it's too dangerous.
- tamaharbor 8y agoQuite the chip on your shoulder. I feel sorry for you.
- gjs278 8y agohe didn’t lose any of them. the ones that are “lost” are with guardians related to them that refuse to answer the phone because they are probably illegal. look it up
- sctb 8y agoIt's a flamebait tagline, to be sure, but we're responsible for our own discussion here on Hacker News and there's just nothing good down this road. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fossuser 8y agoWhat confuses me about this is that Apple could solve this in two seconds by allowing contact whitelists where only incoming calls in your contacts are accepted and everything else is sent to voicemail or dropped. Is there a law against this or something? Nomorobo, Robokiller, Hiya all do an okay job as blacklisting applications but that seems like the wrong way to go about it. Some suggest using do not disturb to do this, but that blocks all notifications (including from texts) so it is not a viable solution.
- ars 8y agoYou can already do that in Android (which is the majority of people). Not solved. People have phones that are not smart phones. Caller ID is frequency faked.
- wlesieutre 8y agoVoicemails are still annoying, I have a red alert badge on the home screen and have to go in, check that it's not real, and delete it. Would love to be able to junk filter incoming voicemail based on the transcript. Anything with "card services calling about your credit card account" or "qualify for a medical grade back or knee brace" goes straight to trash. Of course that only works for a few months until scammers adapt and somehow make their calls less understandable to the speech to text or vary up their script more often, but we fought the same battle with email and seem to have done pretty well. Couldn't say when the last time I got a spam email in my inbox was.
- plushpuffin 8y agoI downloaded an app that automates the process of disabling voicemail entirely. I don't need it. Anyone whose call I miss can just send me a text or email. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.teltech.novm https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.teltech.nov...
- wlesieutre 8y agoI get some useful ones like appointment confirmations that I doubt are set up to text me if I don't pick up
- Chazprime 8y agoWhat Apple & Google really should do is build the functionality of Hiya or Youmail into their mobile OSes.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI imagine the people doing robo calls spend an insane amount of money with Google?
- Symmetry 8y agoThe outfits doing this don't tend to be the wealthiest and won't be spending insane amount of money with Google anyways since they're relying on phone advertising. And anyways, Google isn't some new organization struggling to keep the lights on. They're pretty far in the black and they can afford to forgo a little bit of revenue if it means they can improve their product moat.
- Symmetry 8y agoMy Pixel phone already does that fairly well. I think it might be a recent Android feature?
- SubiculumCode 8y agoIt is a feature google only offers to their own phones...ever since leaving my Nexus, my spam calls have been a plague
- edm0nd 8y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
- sys_64738 8y agoI use Callcentric VoIP and whitelist known numbers. For all others, they are told to press a random digit before it connects.
- tbrock 8y agoOur company actually has a really good view into where robocalls are coming from and what they are doing because we own a tremendous amount of phone numbers in the US (100s of thousands - millions at peak). We can basically see when this is happening and a robo-caller is targeting an area code, zip code, state, etc... When we get called from a number we don't know we used to simply reject the call. Now, as of this week, we are publishing the metadata to a kafka topic so that we might be able to do some post-processing on these events which might help identify these robot callers earlier. We've already learned that the volume of robo-calls decreases dramatically on the weekends. The hope is that we'd at the very least learn something about how they operate but at the very best possibly provide an api that allowed people to check if a number was currently considered a robo-caller or if their city, state, zip was currently under attack. That way, for example, the makers of robo-killer, etc... could provide better protection. Perhaps we could even create a live map of the attacks. I'll follow up when we do and post something to HN.
- gjs278 8y agorobocall people are just spoofing random numbers
- wesleytodd 8y agoWhich company?
- swampthinker 8y agoHustle https://www.hustle.com/ https://www.hustle.com/
- johnmarcus 8y agoyour homepages is 404'ing from the ycombo-hug. you may want to put cloudflare or cloudfront ahead of it.
- swampthinker 8y ago
- sebringj 8y agoThis has made me so frustrated with my phone. I see it as only an entertainment device at this point and only use the phone with a small select group of people, rejecting all other calls as its gone insane.
- ngngngng 8y agoShoutout to Google and their "Screen Call" feature in android. I screen every call from an unrecognized number. If I see it's my Doctors office I pick up. If not, mark as spam. I can do this in the middle of a meeting without interrupting anything.
- kndjckt 8y agoHiya handles this for me so it's not a problem https://hiya.com/ https://hiya.com/. It will block spam calls and whitelist contacts. It's kind of annoying that the caller can still leave a voicemail but at least you don't get bothered by your phone ringing.
- stelfer 8y agoHaha. 10 years ago the carriers were flogging the voip ISPs over putative origination fraud and _robocalls_. Lots of us in the industry proposed solutions(mine)[1]. We also built some interesting and very effective ML systems to detect the originators in real time. Here we are 10 years later no further down the road. Sad. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080240082A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080240082A1/en
- aarongray 8y agoLots of feel good ideas in the post, but no actual good ideas. Back when Congress created the Do Not Call Registry, and then forced law abiding companies to pay $10,000 for it, they pretty much just compiled an amazing list of active phone numbers that non-law abiding companies could acquire for a pretty good price and then sell them in batches to smaller companies that couldn't afford the full thing. Once virtual phone services were invented, companies didn't even have to worry about dodging the Feds, they just moved all their operations overseas. Feel good laws will not solve this problem, it's going to take actual technological solutions.
- orblivion 8y agoBetween this and email, I wonder if we need to start over with an opt-in system for contacts. I know that brings in a whole mountain of other problems. But maybe if we slowly adapted to that rather of the mountain of problems with our current blacklist (if that) approach, the outcome will be preferable.
- DenisM 8y agoThere is a progression: - opt-in (just you) - referrals (some of your friends) - delegation (a business you trust to do screening) - reputation (some segment of society you care about) - free for all I doubt you will want either extremes.
- darksaints 8y agoI have a really tough time comprehending why it is such a difficult problem to solve. The FCC could have solved it by now, independently of congressional legislation, considering the fact that they regulate the issuance of phone numbers. Those overseas companies still have to get their US phone numbers from an FCC regulated body. What am I missing?
- toast0 8y agoTwo things: 1) Most of the spam calls are spoofing numbers, so it doesn't really matter who issued the numbers. 2) Spam calls could come from overseas numbers instead, I've certainly gotten a few. I'd rather they come from US numbers, so at least when people call back, they're not paying an arm and a leg for the call if they don't realize the number is non-US.
- walrus01 8y agoGood luck ever fixing SS7. Just abandon it, seriously... If you can. Your life will be easier.
- orblivion 8y agoI've always been impressed with how professional they sound. I want to know where is this seedy marketplace of robocall scam companies and desperate voice actors.
- imgabe 8y agoIs this generating a lot of revenue for the service providers? I think it must be or they wouldn't allow it to go on. Surely if one provider marketed themselves as blocking robocalls, they would get a large influx of business. IIRC one of the main selling points of gmail when it started was that it had a much better spam filter than other services at the time.
- rtkwe 8y agoPhone companies are required to connect all phone calls in the US. So they can't really do anything about it. Spam callers can go to any disreputable carrier and all other carriers have to connect their calls. There was actually a really weird phone scam going back a while that was just making calls that tried to keep people on the line as long as possible to make money off of the interconnect fees companies can charge each other. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/251 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/251 https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/104-case-phantom-caller https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/104-case-phantom-calle...
- yingw787 8y agoBeen experiencing robocalls too. I use Hiya, but it's not a complete solution. Now I just let every call I don't recognize go to voicemail unless they call twice. It really sucks for the elderly, the sick, and the otherwise vulnerable because they're more desperate to hear from a doctor or caretaker or somebody without saved contact information / less technically savvy or on a landline / otherwise more likely to fall to these scams. I'm wondering, is VoIP easier to call block than general call service? If it is, the inability or unwillingness by the telecoms to address this issue might prove to be a systemic disadvantage (though I'm pretty sure they make most of their margin nowadays from selling cellular data).
- CedarMadness 8y agoI used to do what you do and let the call through if they call back. Sometime in the past year I've gotten on some autodialer list that will hit me up 6 times within a 30 second period if I reject the first call, so now I pretty much have to send anyone not in my address book straight to voicemail. It's not convenient, but at least I don't have to conduct a lot of business over the phone anymore.
- wnevets 8y agoGoogle voice seems to do a great job filtering out the spam. I can't remember the last time I got one with my voice number.
- hateful 8y agoAgreed. Ever since I moved my number to Google Voice, I was able to create an "Accept Calls" white list. It was even easier since my contacts were already in Google.
- jerrysievert 8y agointeresting. my robocall numbers dropped significantly when I stopped forwarding my google voice number to my phone. I still get the voicemails, missed call list, and texts when I log in to the voice portal, and get to see what I missed - they just aren't going to my phone anymore.
- gesman 8y agoMake it mandatory $10000/call fine + prison sentence and teach users how to get a money trail. Then the hunt will get efficiently crowdsourced. After few well publicized cases the problem will greatly diminish.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoGood luck getting a money trail with out of country scammers.
- davesque 8y agoThis assumes the offenders are in the same country as you.
- gesman 8y agoHunters in that other country can also help for a cut.
- fjord_ 8y agoHow are you going to fine a warehouse full of 500 people in India?
- Scoundreller 8y agoThe same way the US is getting Canada to extradite that Huawei executive.
- ForHackernews 8y agoThis service is quite fun: https://jollyrogertelephone.com/ https://jollyrogertelephone.com/
- johnmarcus 8y agoI just realized since moving to Vietnam and getting a Vietnam number, no more robocalls. Zero. Nilch. Maybe everyone in the U.S. should buy a sim card from a poor international country for a few months time. If enough people did this, I bet the feds would magically find a solution that starts to work.
- aljarry 8y agoI'm a long time user of "Should I Answer" Android app which is a godsend. It works by allowing people to categorize numbers that called them, so next time number X tries to cold call you or scam you, you get overlay with sign that's probably a nefarious or at least spammy number.
- uberman 8y agoWhat I don't quite understand is, how can the NSA and/or other three letter agencies reliably collect meta data on calls and how can the telcos reliably charge for calls and services, yet we are unable to stop robocalling...
- rtkwe 8y agoLegally carriers are required to connect all calls in the US. That provision is pretty important but leaves the system open to abuse. I hope we can find a way to block out robocalls without allowing the phone system to balkanize. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/251 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/251
- gist 8y agoFederal law also says you can't sell marijuana. However the government has pretty much decided to not prosecute that for some time. In general it's hard to believe that any law such as that would not defacto allow an exception for what can be shown as an abusive behavior. Under the theory that the law says 'you are required to connect all calls' you could say that carriers could not legally block someone who keeps calling a phone number in an abusive manner (with or w/o the permission or at the request of the customer).
- rtkwe 8y agoThe big companies aren't going to move until they get some guidance on where the line between blocking some numbers and systematically blocking numbers deemed to be 'abusive' based on the companies own criteria. Of course today you can request specific number be blocked from calling you of course but no one is currently trying that because the dangers of crossing the blurry line can be severe. Your comparison isn't much more useful than 'prosecutorial discretion exists therefore do any crime you want.' Multibillion dollar companies aren't going to just go out and blaze a trail like that. We even see this in the (spurious) comparison to marijuana, the first companies to step out and test the state vs federal divide were small and local and only after those companies figured out some of the issues did we get large and larger companies coming in. (Though they're still all independent arms because of the difficulties accessing banking because of the federal laws still in place!)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- qkachoo 8y agoIs it even possible to stop robocalls when they are spoofing the numbers? I have had instances where the robocall comes from my own phone number.
- gist 8y agoWhat an absolutely moronic way to make a point by taking a dig right off the top at the President by saying "Finally, something worse than Donald Trump".
- mberning 8y agoImagine having something in your head 24/7, constantly gnawing at you and permeating everything you do.
- Shivetya 8y agoJust an observation, unless Congress includes political calls in this legislation then I am not truly impressed. They are no more welcome to call me than the knee brace lady is. Just because I voted in an election; and why do they know which party/who I vote for; does not give them the right to call me. I don't care if they are in office or not.
- calebegg 8y agoYeah, I noticed that the bill was called "Stopping Bad Robocalls", implying that there are "good" robocalls too, and I knew immediately that it wouldn't help with the political ones.
- cletus 8y agoSo robocalls are the result of: - Cost of phone calls decreasing to basically zero - Cost of automation going to basically zero - Phone calls that can come from the Internet so there are no national boundaries anymore - Caller ID operating on essentially the honor system - Bad actors (telephone companies) benefitting from this traffic by charging for it - Larger players having no incentive to punish bad actors There's a reason why most messages are now sent on whitelist instead of blacklist systems. For whitelist systems to work you need to be able to enforce identity or have a significant cost to sending messages. Frankly I don't even want to receive phone calls on my "phone". If I did I'd be more than happy with a contacts only whitelist. Why I can't get this is beyond me. EDIT: for those mentioning the doctor's office and other non-whitelist cases, just send non-whitelisted callers to voicemail. If you need to answer the phone then OK, I guess this won't work for you. But for the majority of people for the majority of their time, whitelisted contacts only with the rest going to voicemail will work.
- autotune 8y agoiPhone at least has the option for a contacts only whitelist, I only get notifications from contacts and everything else gets ignored. No point in even considering answering a call from someone I don’t know, if it’s truly important they can leave a message and I respond asap.
- tprynn 8y agoThat's only true with Do Not Disturb, which also silences all other notifications as well, a major drawback (for me, at least).
- reaperducer 8y agoIf your other contacts have "VIP" status in the contact list, they will automatically go through. I'm not sure if it works for non-Apple apps, though.
- city41 8y agoI probably make two or three phone calls a year. And that’s just to companies behind the times not offering chat support. I think it’s high time we just deprecate phones altogether. It’s pretty crazy I use a 10 digit number to identify myself. ICQ did that and it was considered archaic.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cfallin 8y agoOne solution, not practical for most folks but works well for me: live in a different area code than phone number. (My cell number is in the area code I grew up in.) It seems most spam calls either fake a source number that's in my phone's area code, or use a completely random source. Almost any inbound call I actually expect without an address-book entry would come from my (new) local area code, so I can pick up a call if (in current area code) OR (in address book). So in essence, my current area code is a 3-digit passcode. Perhaps a nice trick if one is allocating a new VoIP number -- at the cost of looking like a non-local when giving it out, you can effectively screen for actual local calls...
- bonobo_34 8y agoI get a lot of robocalls from spoofed numbers that have my area code and even the first 3 digits of my phone number in common. I guess the thought is that people are more likely to pick up if the number looks familiar? For me, it's just an indication of a robo call that I won't pick up.
- jngreenlee 8y agoI think they get an exit virtual POP in that AC to avoid extra charges, start at XXX-0001, XXX-0002, etc. It lowers cost and looks more relevant.
- JdeBP 8y ago* It's not really a POP. * The fact that many geographic numbers are in fact non-geographic means that the idea of being "in" an area has long since gone out of the window. * It's not done to avoid extra charges. Call cost is determined by routing and tarrif, not caller ID. It's done pretty much for the reason that bonobo_34 supposed.
- gph 8y ago>I guess the though is that people are more likely to pick up if the number looks familiar? For me, it's just an indication of a robo call that I won't pick up. That's probably good for the robo-callers. Just like with horrible spelling/grammar errors in spam emails, they don't mind if the smart folks can figure out their pattern. They are after the suckers born every minute.
- jlkid225 8y agoWhy are so many NYtimes posted on this site?
- tomhoward 8y agoLikely because it's among the most prominent news outlets in the world, and it covers many of the topics that are of interest to HN readers.
- jlkid225 8y agoWhy are so many NYtimes articles posted on hacker news?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Rooster61 8y agoI'm about as confident something will come of this bill as I am that my house will one day get up and fly away into the sunset. Any bill passed is going to be under the purview of the FCC to enforce if signed into law. Yes, the same FCC that allows telecoms to continually run roughshod over consumers contrary to anti-trust laws that have been on the books for ages. Unless this becomes a problem for the companies that provide phone service, which it apparently isn't due to the fact that it is still rampant, nothing will be done other than public finger wagging.
- rrggrr 8y agoRegardless of one may feel about Trump is there a reason @gailcollins must invoke his name in the title of a totally unrelated OpEd? For some people identity politics is a fever.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoBefore 2016, the behavior commonly seen would have been unthinkable. People that hated Obama, didn't start articles about robocolls with the same derangement.... Now... I'm not even slightly surprised. TDS seems to be real.
- davesque 8y agoHow is that identity politics?
- monochromatic 8y ago> Finally, something worse than Donald Trump. This is an article that has literally nothing to do with Donald Trump, but they just couldn't resist making it about him.
- redwards510 8y agoThis being HN, everyone has a technological solution or workaround to the calls themselves. Why can't we simply go after the companies that are being advertised during the robocall? They all have a link or number back to the actual company being advertised.
- inetknght 8y agoWhat makes you think the link or number is legitimate? Or, better said: what makes you think the link or number is enforceable in the U.S.?
- ropeladder 8y agoThe legislation mentioned in the article probably would help, but the real untold sorry here is that the blame for the recent increase in robocalls lies with Paj's FCC (and thus Trump). Previous FCC rulings kept robocalls from getting out of hand, but the ruling was overturned on a small technicality. The FCC could easily replace it with a similar ruling but they haven't done anything. (My source here is the recent Reply All episode on robocalls)
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoFCC under Paj "and thus Trump" as you put it (which is a ridiculous notion imo, but it's yours to have) https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/new-robocall-blocking-tools-on-the-way-but-carriers-can-charge-you-extra/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/new-r...
- angel_j 8y agoWe should destroy phone numbers instead, not only for spam, but for privacy and security. You might as well wear an RFID on your collar. Replace phone numbers with DNS and spam blocking. Change it when you want instead of asking your provider. Tell people to contact you through your website.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoSounds good. Would you mind getting in touch with my mom to explain that system to her? THANKS!
- angel_j 8y ago> Would you mind getting in touch with my mom to explain that system to her? I am your mom, robothead! this is your mother, honey!! don't @ me in these ignorant shit-posts of yours, please. love, mommy
- vict00ms 8y agoIt was a vapid response but a sincere criticism: your proposed system is too complex for a layperson.
- davesque 8y agoI recently turned on "do not disturb" mode on my pixel phone once I started getting about 400% more robocalls than real calls per day. It's actually nice because now my phone only rings for people in my contacts list. So I'm in whitelist mode. However, it's insane that I have to do this. At this point, having a phone with actual phone service seems basically pointless. It's one of those things that I pay for because I'm so used to paying for it.
- rootusrootus 8y agoAs someone who used to work for a telco, please be aware that they could solve this at any time. They choose not to. I wonder if they have a secret list, though, of numbers that should never get robocalls. Aka congressmen.
- arthurofbabylon 8y agoMy non-scalable solution: I occasionally answer the robocalls, get through to a human, establish common ground, and then let the caller know how they are helping to commit fraud. My goal is to in some way provide a feedback system. I don’t think that this is the responsibility of the consumer, but like most of us, I’m desperately interested in solving this problem.
- nullc 8y agoThank you for your service. Actually what you're doing isn't really non-scalable-- the spam calls are just not viable if even a small percentage of non-victims waste their time. (Though I've noticed now that they're automating more of the calls, it takes some effort to get through to a human... and the automation is starting to sound surprisingly realistic)
- gesman 8y ago- I want all non-contact-list calls to auto-go to voicemail. Apple? Why is it so hard to implement?
- daphneokeefe 8y agoHere is my simple strategy. It doesn't work perfectly, but it increases the probability that I will answer an important call and let an unimportant call go to voice mail. I change the ringtone for everyone on my contact list to be different from the default ringtone. I do it when I create the contact. That's it. Two ringtones: they're a contact or they aren't. When I hear my phone ringing in the other room, in my pocket with friends, on the bus, I know whether I may be interested in either taking the call immediately or listening to the voice mail fairly soon. For one added level of differentiation, I use a very few other special ringtones: -- one that sounds like knocking on the door when I receive a call or text from Amazon or UPS and other delivery services -- a strident one when my doorbell rings (in my apartment complex, the exterior doorbell calls a phone) -- immediate family has a different one
- HocusLocus 8y agoIf I cannot hide from the police, robocallers should not be able to hide from me.
- lordnacho 8y agoNo, the solution is technological and close at hand: An obnoxious voice synthesizer that takes the agent on a long and fruitless journey. The people who do robocalls are only using the robot to get you into a conversation. At that stage -at least when I've been called- a human takes over and tries to talk you into whatever it is they're selling. If you eat up the person's time with GPT-2 generated BS that's voice synthesized, the operator wastes his time.
- justinmchase 8y agoOne time I got phone-DDoS'd by a robocaller who was using my number to call everyone else in my area code. Then for several hours, people were calling me back nonstop and saying "Calling you back...". Incredibly annoying. When I complained to my phone provider they basically said there is no way to stop it since the callback numbers are spoofed and they apparently have no logs at all. Its _unreal_.
- craftyguy 8y agoThis actually happened a few months ago with my work phone number, which I had forwarded to my cell. Within tens of minutes, my cell voicemail box was completely full. Luckily I just had to stop forwarding calls to my cell and disconnect my work phone (which I never really used anymore). Before I figured out it was my work number that had been 'stolen', I was talking to my cell carrier (tmobile) who basically said the only 'solution' was to get a different phone number. This would be an excellent way to DoS a competitor, for example..
- twodayslate 8y agoRobokiller is an amazing app that has dropped by robocalls to almost zero. It's paid but well worth it imo
- fmajid 8y agoI loathe Ajit Pai as much as anyone but the FCC and Telcos have been fairly swift (by the glacial standards of telecom standards) in coming up with a fix for forged CallerID known as SHAKEN/STIR. It's still about a year from being deployed, and it's unclear how legacy landlines will be covered, given Nortel's been bankrupt for a decade and Lucent (know Nokia) has been out of the switch business for at least as long (an aunt of mine used to work on the 5ESS software until she was laid off about 15 years ago. She's now a realtor and makes far better money, so I guess nothing lost). They're doing this out of not-so-enlightened self-interest. Voice is still a huge part of telco revenue and they can see people abandoning voice outright if the last year's trend of 75+% of all calls being spam continues. Millennials have already adopted social standards of phone calls being considered intrusive and rude.
- musicale 8y agoMaybe it's just as well that the phone system is being destroyed by robocalls - it's a great excuse to ignore all incoming calls, or not to have a voice number at all. If the FCC and phone companies continue to do nothing, the problem may eventually correct itself as the phone system becomes unusable by humans.
- blaze33 8y agoGot some felling these robocalls mostly are a USA thing. From France where I happen to currently live, unsolicited cold-calls unrelated to my whereabouts are really rare. I've no idea if there's some law leading to such differences. I've only once in my life been harassed by some polling company that really wanted me to answer lots of questions. Eventually felt strong enough to go through the process, last question was "would you be open to participate in future polls we may have?" → HELL NO! and never heard from them again :)
- Animats 8y agoWe need attribution on caller ID info as a first step. Caller ID should read "212-555-1212 per T-Mobile, CenturyLink, Adino". Like mail headers. T-Mobile says the call came in from CenturyLink. CenturyLink says it came in from Adino. The telco knows most of this now, they just don't pass it forward. Someone upstream may be lying, but you can usually tell. If the number is US local but the path goes through Mumbai, something is wrong.
- JdeBP 8y agoActually, the telephone companies are often in the same boat as you, not knowing anything more than the immediate inbound carrier. Not all signalling protocols could even relay the information that you are talking about.
- artur_makly 8y ago"It has been brought to our attention that your Google Plus Profile..... " is this for real???
- tones411 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19031711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19031711
- drivingmenuts 8y agoI’d rather destroy the people who utilize them. Ultimately, the problem isn’t tech, it’s people who misuse it.
- sfopdxnonstop 8y agoTech solution is Whitelist + Pay To Connect. Anyone on my list rings through. Everyone else can pay to connect, whatever amount I set, and if I like your call I'll whitelist you and refund the money. Email, same.
- apexalpha 8y agoWhat are robocalls? Do they just call random numbers and have a computer voice read an ad? Is it like unsolicited faxing from back in the day?
- linsomniac 8y agoIt feels like phone companies have basically destroyed their business model by turning a blind eye to robocalls and telemarketers. The other day I was filling out a form and it had like 3 different phone number fields, and I was thinking "we're shockingly close to those getting filled with N/A" as I was putting the same number in them. And I'm not even particularly young.