5 ms·

So, block calls from banks, government agencies, schools, emergency rooms, offices, prospective employers, ...

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Banks don't call my very often. I have a deep mistrust of calls claiming to be from banks. If a bank is calling me, they'd better want zero information from me - they better be just telling me things. Otherwise, I'm going to call them back at a number that I know is really them.
unsignedint 8y ago
At least most of those legitimate caller would leave a voice mail if you don't take a call.
ravenstine 8y ago
You can still take voice mails, and there are even ways to transcribe them to text. That way separating the wheat from the chaff takes less time. If the government calls you, you're really in trouble. Calls from the "government" are almost always a scam. Same with banks to a lesser extent. The school issue is an interesting one. Schools ought to have other methods to contact parents(or students). At the very least, a school should be willing to provide a list of numbers to whitelist. My point is that there are difficulties in not taking phone calls, but there aren't as many of those difficulties as one might assume, and they exist in large part because nobody is pushing for obsolescence of the phone in favor of something better. I wouldn't even mind a system that wasn't IP based so long as it had better security measures. In fact, that'd be preferable to relying on proprietary systems owned by the likes of Facebook and Google. The fact that a Caller ID can be easily spoofed, that numbers themselves can be spoofed, and that phone companies have long been complicit in the criminal activity that goes on over their system, is absurd. It can't be fixed and should either be thrown away or rebuilt from the ground up.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  People especially on the poor end of the spectrum can't not have a phone. A solution that only works if you have $100-$300+$600 per year per person is probably not a solution. Any totally new solution is liable to be useful only to an increasing minority of the population over at least the next few decades. It would probably be easier to graft authentication onto the current system and force individuals to post a tiny bond per assigned phone number. Let people report robo calls and cause robo call originators to forfeit their numbers and bonds and don't allow them to buy new numbers under the same identity or credit card. Even paying $10 per per 10 robo calls placed would boost the cost to $1 per call. If you need 1000 bullshit calls to scam $500 out of someone then your net is negative.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  There's no reason the phone system can't be fixed incrementally. They did it for 911 and location data, they can do it for ANI. After all, it's not like the phones themselves are faulty (well, maybe on the wireless spectrum, but that's a separate issue) If you want a solution, whitelisting isn't it. You could even create them at the organizational level, like schools and government offices publishing lists of numbers to be whitelisted... But that would just be used by the robocallers, spoofers and scammers. We as a society benefit hugely from instant communication and trying to remove it today would put too many people at risk.

Banks don't call my very often. I have a deep mistrust of calls claiming to be from banks. If a bank is calling me, they'd better want zero information from me - they better be just telling me things. Otherwise, I'm going to call them back at a number that I know is really them.

unsignedint 8y ago

At least most of those legitimate caller would leave a voice mail if you don't take a call.

ravenstine 8y ago

You can still take voice mails, and there are even ways to transcribe them to text. That way separating the wheat from the chaff takes less time. If the government calls you, you're really in trouble. Calls from the "government" are almost always a scam. Same with banks to a lesser extent. The school issue is an interesting one. Schools ought to have other methods to contact parents(or students). At the very least, a school should be willing to provide a list of numbers to whitelist. My point is that there are difficulties in not taking phone calls, but there aren't as many of those difficulties as one might assume, and they exist in large part because nobody is pushing for obsolescence of the phone in favor of something better. I wouldn't even mind a system that wasn't IP based so long as it had better security measures. In fact, that'd be preferable to relying on proprietary systems owned by the likes of Facebook and Google. The fact that a Caller ID can be easily spoofed, that numbers themselves can be spoofed, and that phone companies have long been complicit in the criminal activity that goes on over their system, is absurd. It can't be fixed and should either be thrown away or rebuilt from the ground up.

michaelmrose 8y ago
People especially on the poor end of the spectrum can't not have a phone. A solution that only works if you have $100-$300+$600 per year per person is probably not a solution. Any totally new solution is liable to be useful only to an increasing minority of the population over at least the next few decades. It would probably be easier to graft authentication onto the current system and force individuals to post a tiny bond per assigned phone number. Let people report robo calls and cause robo call originators to forfeit their numbers and bonds and don't allow them to buy new numbers under the same identity or credit card. Even paying $10 per per 10 robo calls placed would boost the cost to $1 per call. If you need 1000 bullshit calls to scam $500 out of someone then your net is negative.
peterwwillis 8y ago
There's no reason the phone system can't be fixed incrementally. They did it for 911 and location data, they can do it for ANI. After all, it's not like the phones themselves are faulty (well, maybe on the wireless spectrum, but that's a separate issue) If you want a solution, whitelisting isn't it. You could even create them at the organizational level, like schools and government offices publishing lists of numbers to be whitelisted... But that would just be used by the robocallers, spoofers and scammers. We as a society benefit hugely from instant communication and trying to remove it today would put too many people at risk.