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Whitelisting is problematic because there are so many cases where it's impractical or impossible to add a contact first: Doctor's office calling to confirm your

Whitelisting is problematic because there are so many cases where it's impractical or impossible to add a contact first: Doctor's office calling to confirm your appointment; restaurant confirming a seat reservation; delivery guy is outside and can't find your doorbell; Lyft/Uber/whatever is nearby and is looking for you; pharmacy calling to inform about a prescription being ready; some store calling to inform that your order is ready to be picked up; insurance company calling about some claim; etc. These examples are from my own life, and they happen several times a month. I hardly ever make calls myself, but I do have to be able to receive important calls. Obviously some use cases can be fixed with text messaging and app, and increaasingly they are, but there are always going to be exceptions. Directing to voicemail is also a solution to some of these, but voicemail acts as a filter: The caller may decide to not bother leaving a message.

darepublic 8y ago
Need intelligent chat agents to receive calls on your behalf and act appropriate, just as you would -- arranging legit appointments, coordinating pick up times with the spouse and trolling offshore scammers by dangling red herring personal info to keep their resources tied as long as possible.
- Causality1 8y ago
  AI assistants are all well and good but I find you continually run into seemingly simple situation that completely flummox them. I experienced this myself recently when I discovered that, despite nearly a decade of development, Google Assistant can't handle the command "navigate to the McDonald's closest to the Best Buy"
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  "Once again, sir, we're terribly sorry that Alexa misunderstood your daycare provider due to their accent. Due to your loss, please accept this $20 Audible credit to your account."
Leace 8y ago
> Doctor's office calling to confirm your appointment; restaurant confirming a seat reservation; delivery guy is outside and can't find your doorbell; Lyft/Uber/whatever is nearby and is looking for you; pharmacy calling to inform about a prescription being ready; some store calling to inform that your order is ready to be picked up; insurance company calling about some claim; etc. The problem is phone number that is short and easy to guess. Imagine replacing them with a longer token that would be generated each time you want to give someone else a way to contact you (e.g. displaying a QR barcode on your phone and letting the other party scan it). Then you'd share a unique identifier with all that parties. Delivery guy can get a token that expires after a while. If someone abuses their ability of contacting someone, the token would get revoked. I leave the details and implementation as an exercise for the reader ;)
- MBCook 8y ago
  That sounds like a huge hassle, which would probably make it a no-go.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Yes, it sounds like how PGP failed.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    It's actually a longstanding part of phone culture - "extension xxx". It doesn't need to be terribly long to keep out spam - having to enter a single digit would fix the immediate problem, and even when the spammers adapted 3 or 4 still seem sufficient.
  - Leace 8y ago
    QR codes are widely used in China for example for quick transactions: https://a16z.com/2017/08/11/qr-codes-in-china/ https://a16z.com/2017/08/11/qr-codes-in-china/
chaostheory 8y ago
Give unimportant strangers a Google voice number or an equivalent. Being able to mark a phone call as spam for a centrally managed service is useful.
mLuby 8y ago
I'd expect to be able to whitelist my doctor's office number. Likewise services I use like Uber/Lyft/delivery service XYZ. And if whitelisting becomes a thing you know the UI is going to say "your order is complete! Please click here to whitelist our number in case we need to reach you." Not a big deal, and it basically solves phone spam.
- atombender 8y ago
  The mental overhead of having to keep track of what to whitelist means it's not something 99% of people are going to do. So while it might work for you, it's not a solution. I'm certainly not going to do it.
- xvector 8y ago
  > And if whitelisting becomes a thing [...] Not a big deal But that's the whole (big) deal. The solution is usually the trivial and easy part - getting people to change is the hard part. Humanity is littered with millions of problems that could be solved if it wasn't for inertia. A solution cannot simply be better or more convenient - it has to be so overwhelmingly better, so much more convenient for people to even consider switching. And while this solution is better, I don't see your average person caring enough to take the time to make sure they've whitelisted all services they use.
jimbobimbo 8y ago
If caller doesn't leave voice mail, then it's not important. All entities that value your business perfectly understand this. Worst case - complain to their management and this will get sorted out very quickly.
- atombender 8y ago
  That's nonsense. Whether the call is important to them has nothing to do with whether it's important to me. The delivery guy may give up and not deliver my food; the doctor's office may just assume I will show up (but maybe I forgot to add it to my calendar); and so on.
tlavoie 8y ago
The solution available on my land line is very simple, and works very well. Any call from an unfamiliar number get an automated prompt to enter a specific digit. The digit changes, and of course relies on the caller being able to follow this simple instruction. All of this happens before my phone rings. Once a call does get through (or even if it hasn't), you can review it on the telco web site, and either whitelist or block each calling number. Those that are whitelisted now get through directly, without the prompt, and then continue on as normal. No cost to the consumer either for this feature, but it isn't on by default.

darepublic 8y ago

Need intelligent chat agents to receive calls on your behalf and act appropriate, just as you would -- arranging legit appointments, coordinating pick up times with the spouse and trolling offshore scammers by dangling red herring personal info to keep their resources tied as long as possible.

Causality1 8y ago
AI assistants are all well and good but I find you continually run into seemingly simple situation that completely flummox them. I experienced this myself recently when I discovered that, despite nearly a decade of development, Google Assistant can't handle the command "navigate to the McDonald's closest to the Best Buy"
pavel_lishin 8y ago
"Once again, sir, we're terribly sorry that Alexa misunderstood your daycare provider due to their accent. Due to your loss, please accept this $20 Audible credit to your account."

Leace 8y ago

> Doctor's office calling to confirm your appointment; restaurant confirming a seat reservation; delivery guy is outside and can't find your doorbell; Lyft/Uber/whatever is nearby and is looking for you; pharmacy calling to inform about a prescription being ready; some store calling to inform that your order is ready to be picked up; insurance company calling about some claim; etc. The problem is phone number that is short and easy to guess. Imagine replacing them with a longer token that would be generated each time you want to give someone else a way to contact you (e.g. displaying a QR barcode on your phone and letting the other party scan it). Then you'd share a unique identifier with all that parties. Delivery guy can get a token that expires after a while. If someone abuses their ability of contacting someone, the token would get revoked. I leave the details and implementation as an exercise for the reader ;)

MBCook 8y ago
That sounds like a huge hassle, which would probably make it a no-go.
- amelius 8y ago
  Yes, it sounds like how PGP failed.
- mindslight 8y ago
  It's actually a longstanding part of phone culture - "extension xxx". It doesn't need to be terribly long to keep out spam - having to enter a single digit would fix the immediate problem, and even when the spammers adapted 3 or 4 still seem sufficient.
- Leace 8y ago
  QR codes are widely used in China for example for quick transactions: https://a16z.com/2017/08/11/qr-codes-in-china/ https://a16z.com/2017/08/11/qr-codes-in-china/

chaostheory 8y ago

Give unimportant strangers a Google voice number or an equivalent. Being able to mark a phone call as spam for a centrally managed service is useful.

mLuby 8y ago

I'd expect to be able to whitelist my doctor's office number. Likewise services I use like Uber/Lyft/delivery service XYZ. And if whitelisting becomes a thing you know the UI is going to say "your order is complete! Please click here to whitelist our number in case we need to reach you." Not a big deal, and it basically solves phone spam.

atombender 8y ago
The mental overhead of having to keep track of what to whitelist means it's not something 99% of people are going to do. So while it might work for you, it's not a solution. I'm certainly not going to do it.
xvector 8y ago
> And if whitelisting becomes a thing [...] Not a big deal But that's the whole (big) deal. The solution is usually the trivial and easy part - getting people to change is the hard part. Humanity is littered with millions of problems that could be solved if it wasn't for inertia. A solution cannot simply be better or more convenient - it has to be so overwhelmingly better, so much more convenient for people to even consider switching. And while this solution is better, I don't see your average person caring enough to take the time to make sure they've whitelisted all services they use.

jimbobimbo 8y ago

If caller doesn't leave voice mail, then it's not important. All entities that value your business perfectly understand this. Worst case - complain to their management and this will get sorted out very quickly.

atombender 8y ago
That's nonsense. Whether the call is important to them has nothing to do with whether it's important to me. The delivery guy may give up and not deliver my food; the doctor's office may just assume I will show up (but maybe I forgot to add it to my calendar); and so on.

tlavoie 8y ago

The solution available on my land line is very simple, and works very well. Any call from an unfamiliar number get an automated prompt to enter a specific digit. The digit changes, and of course relies on the caller being able to follow this simple instruction. All of this happens before my phone rings. Once a call does get through (or even if it hasn't), you can review it on the telco web site, and either whitelist or block each calling number. Those that are whitelisted now get through directly, without the prompt, and then continue on as normal. No cost to the consumer either for this feature, but it isn't on by default.