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I feel like if FCC/Telephone providers don't fix this soon, traditional cell phones will become unreliable and we will need to adopt a new system or just use ex
by spectramax 7y ago
I feel like if FCC/Telephone providers don't fix this soon, traditional cell phones will become unreliable and we will need to adopt a new system or just use existing framework (facetime, whatsapp, etc.).
If every cell phone has LTE and internet connection, why the fuck do we need traditional cell phone number? I never use it except for calling my pharmacy, customer support or restaurants/shops. All conversations with friends and family happen over messages and Facetime Audio or Whatsapp.
While I don't wish to suggest we move to a proprietary system such as Facetime, I think there is a real need for email equivalent of a VOIP solution where there is automatic spam filtering just like emails.
Also, why can't cell phone providers use same spam filtering techniques used in email filters? I don't know the details of spoofing but I feel like telephone providers are scum of the earth and they have some kind of a reverse incentive to continue allowing spam calls.
- saalweachter 7y agoI occasionally contemplate trying to find a data-only plan for my cell phone, with no associated cell number.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mey 7y agoThat may be impossible under current cell designs. WiFi hotspots even have assigned phone numbers.
- reaperducer 7y agoBut a hotspot doesn't ring, so you can ignore it. My hotspot gets spam text messages but I'm only aware of them the once or twice a year I log into its control panel.
- kalleboo 7y agoYou'll always have a phone number, but on an SMS- or Data-only plan it will never ring (MVNOs in my country offer these types of plans at a discount because reserving a voice phone number here is subject to ID verification and higher fees)
- toper-centage 7y agoGet a Wifi box, that itself contains a SIM card. Then you connect to it from your phone using Wifi. You just need to be careful because your phone will now take the liberty to update apps and use your data more liberally.
- cr0sh 7y agoTMobile used to offer (maybe they still do?) a data-only plan that was/is meant for remote sensing applications (alarms, etc). It wasn't something that was listed on their site (ok - it was there, but you had to really, really dig for it to find out about it). IIRC, it was also free, but limited to 200 MB a month. You basically got a SIM card you could stuff into your embedded sensor app and away you go. That might be a large enough data cap for plain-text messaging, but not much else.
- Scoundreller 7y agoWhat I like about PSTN is it’s open nature. If I tried to build an online voicemail system for WhatsApp or FaceTime, I’d get banned. I like having my PSTN voicemails emailed to me. And calls logs in csv. If someone says they called me 3 years earlier, I can find that out without scrolling.
- golem14 7y agoThen google voice might be for you ...
- Scoundreller 7y agoNot as an unamerican.
- ElCapitanMarkla 7y agoMy phones so bad that I have the do not disturb night mode feature enabled full time only allowing people in my contacts to ring. It really annoys me that there isn’t a way of filtering calls based on country. 99% of my junk calls come from Australian numbers, so if I could just block Australia...
- TylerE 7y agoWouldn't help here in the US. They almost always fake caller id from a local prefix.
- yebyen 7y ago70% of the spam calls I get could be stopped simply by blocking the exact same exchange that my number is in. Do spam callers really think I'm expecting a call from the same area code, same exchange as my own number? Do most people have friends that have phone numbers with the same first six digits in common with their own? I feel like this trick can't possibly work on anyone who has already seen it twice, and just based on the number of times I've seen it, I have to assume everyone has seen it at least five times by now, either that or they aren't even paying attention to caller ID at all.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoYep. This works for me, I have a 310 area code and live in 425, so almost anything 425 and 206 is legit, anything 310 is probably not.
- unityByFreedom 7y ago> I feel like if FCC/Telephone providers don't fix this soon, traditional cell phones will become unreliable and we will need to adopt a new system or just use existing framework (facetime, whatsapp, etc.). They do not intend to fix anything. This captured FCC would rather everyone use the internet to communicate, since they deregulated that, than telephones which they cannot deregulate. The game is, make money as fast as possible in deregulated industries until people complain of lousy service and the government steps in. Bonus points if the captured FCC can convince you that they care about these robocalls. EDIT: Please explain downvotes. You feel the current FCC are saints and would never do such a thing?
- fred_is_fred 7y agoAT&T and T-mobile (maybe others?) have free spam filtering. It's not perfect but it does help. As for your other question - there are still lots and lots and lots of regular phones in the world that call me and that I need to call. As you mentioned in your example - every business, school, government, etc.
- godzillabrennus 7y agoSomeone decided to spoof my cell phone number to spam call people. I don’t know how they filter spam calls from legit numbers without a new approach akin to DKIM/SPF where the number sets what carrier a call can originate from.
- reaperducer 7y agoIf every cell phone has LTE and internet connection, why the fuck do we need traditional cell phone number? You don't. Get a hotspot and use Skype instead. Problem solved.
- ignoramous 7y ago> I think there is a real need for email equivalent of a VOIP solution where there is automatic spam filtering just like emails. https://truecaller.com https://truecaller.com uses a crowd-sourced model to help you identify PSTN callers and spammers not in your contacts. Besides, I think WhatsApp had the right idea around personal communication at least when Jan and Brian called the shots. > If every cell phone has LTE and internet connection, why the fuck do we need traditional cell phone number? I think with SecureElement now common in Android-based devices, eSIMs would be ubiquitous and may be SpaceX's Starlink would mean the end of traditional PSTN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19680412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19680412
- homero 7y agoThese apps steal your phonebook and upload it
- ignoramous 7y agoUnfortunately, yes, but you don't necessarily have to use the TrueCaller app on Android/iOS, the website works just fine. Besides, TrueCaller and WhatsApp won't be the only apps to steal your phone book, and with 100M and 2B installs respectively, the jury is already out on their utility.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 7y agoYou can use Whatsapp without giving it access to your phonebook. It complains initially but it works fine.
- throwawayjava 7y ago> we will need to adopt a new system or just use existing framework (facetime, whatsapp, etc.). I already use white lists -- I simply don't answer the phone if the person isn't in my contacts list and I'm not expecting a call from an unknown number. I assume this is pretty common practice. > If every cell phone has LTE and internet connection, why the fuck do we need traditional cell phone number? I almost never have LTE or even mobile data of any kind when I'm outside of cities (for a liberal definition of city). > Also, why can't cell phone providers use same spam filtering techniques used in email filters? Because spam filters rely on contents in addition to meta-data. You can't pick up the phone and listen to the contents for a few minutes.
- kalleboo 7y ago> I almost never have LTE or even mobile data of any kind when I'm outside of cities (for a liberal definition of city) I'm curious what countries /places these are. My operator doesn't even activate 3G on modern phones, I literally have nothing aside from LTE/VoLTE. Since LTE got deployed on the low frequencies reclaimed from analog TV, the reception is generally BETTER than 3G etc. Also when there are natural disasters, the voice infrastructure is the first to collapse, but data in chat apps still makes it through
- throwawayjava 7y ago> I'm curious what countries /places these are. The United States. Not even the western or mountain states! One of the places I regularly go that doesn't have data coverage but does have voice coverage is in a national (or maybe state there?) forest in New York state. > Also when there are natural disasters, the voice infrastructure is the first to collapse, but data in chat apps still makes it through I don't have any experience with this, so I'll take your word for it.
- URSpider94 7y agoOn spam filtering: the public telephone network transmits almost zero data on a call - the only header is the originating number, which can be un-traceably spoofed at the originator. There is no embedded message data (that would be the call itself). So there’s literally no valid data to filter spam on, unless the spam caller is chivalrous enough to use their legit caller ID. I would also bet that there are regulations that require phone providers to complete all calls that are presented to them. My provider, T Mobile, does overwrite the caller ID with “Scam Likely” for what they believe to be telemarketing calls, which is probably the best they can do until we implement a standard that authenticates the origination ID of calls.
- bradleyjg 7y agoThere’s at least one piece of data on every call that the network operator has—-the identity of the prior network hop. In the early days of fighting email spam, that was enough. Every network operator was responsible for receiving spam complaints and responding appropriately. Network providers that couldn’t or wouldn’t prevent spammers from using their networks were blacklisted and other networks would refuse to route mail originating from them. It wasn’t perfect, but it was far better than nothing.
- rsync 7y ago"There’s at least one piece of data on every call that the network operator has—-the identity of the prior network hop." I'm curious - is this available in a call passed through twilio ? I would like to log, or pass, the prior network hop using twiml ... or a twilio function, I guess ...
- jgowdy 7y agoFrom my best interpretation of your comment you seem to think VoIP is far more "carrier peer to carrier peer" than it is in practice. As a value added telecom provider I have a few upstream carriers but it's not as if I receive calls from every carrier. Just like the Internet, my upstream carriers are my access points to the PSTN, so all of my SIP invites come from either my customers or my know upstream carriers. Those carriers are effectively my ISPs of the PSTN. I chose them and I pay them for service. Distrusting one of them and the calls that come from them is something of a non-sequitur since you chose them and intentionally became one of their customers and pay them to receive those calls. TL;DR This isn't like email or IP traffic where you're interacting with other IPs in a purely untrusted network model. Merely analyzing the previous hop doesn't tell us anything valuable.
- jgowdy 7y agoAs someone who has worked in telecom for a long time, I assure you most of us carriers / service providers (Except maybe Big Red and Big Blue) desperately want to implement signed SIP invites and kill robocall for our customers. We also want to universally deploy G.722 HD Voice without unnecessary transcoding. The telephone industry and the Big Color Telecoms (Red /Verizon, Blue / AT&T, Green / CenturyLink, Yellow / Sprint, Pink / T-Mobile) moves at a snail's pace. The security model of domestic VoIP right now is largely IP whitelisting or private IP circuits, no encryption allowed unless it's an entirely on-net call where you deal with that yourself and send it to the telecom unencrypted. We'd like to fix that too, but again, big telecoms aren't interested as best we can tell (they don't communicate their strategy reliably so we have to infer from their actions). Encryption of in flight calls, even with wiretap laws and legalized domestic surveillance, is important in my opinion. Of all of them, I think T-mobile is the most willing to actually improve the industry for everyone's benefit. When we receive a SIP invite (incoming call) from one of our upstream carriers, the amount of metadata information they're able to provide us is often very limited (largely due to interop issues in my opinion). If you think about IP spoofing, BGP, and the state of egress filtering on the internet, it's a very similar situation. Since this is related to my work, obviously all of the above is just my personal opinion.