15 ms·

Verified by Twilio

291 points by HugoHobling 7y ago

jonny_eh 7y ago
This may be the most valuable innovation out of Silicon Valley in 10 years. Talk about solving a pain point!
propter_hoc 7y ago
Interesting. Wonder if this is going to be a valuable public service in the long run. For sure the monetary incentive is for Twilio to operate this like an "acceptable ads" type shakedown [1], where companies pay Twilio to mark their calls as "valuable information" rather than spam. Arguably this should be administered by some trusted third party, like EFF. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies
kylek 7y ago
Is anything preventing debt collectors from being Verified by Twilio?
- koolba 7y ago
  Probably no different than the scammers that are A+ rated by the BBB.
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  It presumably prevents it by forcing them to use a single verified number per corporate entity — this once I blacklist that entity, I can be done with them. The real problem these days, IMHO, is not repeated calls but spoofed calls where the source number changes every day, and thus cannot be blocked. This would solve that.
- jpearson 7y ago
  I would expect that legitimate debt collectors will be verified by Twilio. > Verified By Twilio displays company branding and a reason for the call right in front of the consumer This should make the purpose of debt collection calls obvious, though I don't see how they plan to enforce accurate call descriptions.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > I don't see how they plan to enforce accurate call descriptions. A reporting/flagging system, perhaps? "This call wasn't as described". After enough reports, they lose the verified status.
- Theophraustous 7y ago
  I've work for a debt collection company. Typically, they do not handle their own phone numbers, their vendor for the dialer does. This is entirely dependent on the priorities of the vendor. Due to the FDCPA, we are unable to give out the reason for our call as that would inform any 3rd party that the person we are calling to speak to is in debt. The agents on the front line are scripted to advise them that we are calling in regards to a personal matter, or in response to the letter they received. This gets even worse if your company name includes "Collections" or any variation of that, as they cannot give out their company name in that case unless prompted (UDAAP requires them to answer direct questions not about the loan in a straight forward way).
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    All that sounds like an attempt to harass the recipient, with falsehoods and deceit. Which I suppose is the main business of a debt collector.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
I will install whatever app I need to get this service if it works as advertised. Well done and congrats to the team(s) that worked on this project. It's a travesty that we need a private company to solve this problem, or even that the problem exists in the first place when we as a society could have legislated it away a while ago. However, a fix is a fix.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
I wonder how many of the spam calls are actually powered by Twilio? Is this an instance of a company trying to make money by getting paid by businesses on one hand to do spam calls, and getting paid by consumers on the other hand to block spam calls?
- dqv 7y ago
  >I wonder how many of the spam calls are actually powered by Twilio? Probably not very many. Think about it: the spammer has to pay for each minute of call time on Twilio. Let's say a spammer spams for 12 hours a day at $0.013 a minute. On average that's $9.36 a day. So if they want to do this with 24 "lines", that's $224.46 a day. Now consider the the cost of (on-premise) phone lines provided by a company like Time Warner Cable: $25-$45 per line per month (the last time I checked). That's more like $36 a day. So with Twilio the spammer would be paying 6x the cost.
ufmace 7y ago
Well that's cool I guess. But: 1. How are they partnering with all of the device companies to get this on at least most phones? That'd be interesting to know. 2. I guess somebody has to type that intro text. As long as they're doing that, why bother with a normal call? How about just sending the text instead. Or send a text and let me call back for more details when it suits me, either right away or in 10 minutes. It sounds like whoever is sending these probably has a call center or somebody who's job is to sit around and answer the phone when it rings.
- spbaar 7y ago
  1. I'm really not sure yet. They haven't given any details publicly or privately. I'm most curious to see how this will be supported on iOS. 2. The demo on the keynote gave a great use case where a school nurse called the speaker about their child, and she was very lucky to pick up and not let it go to voicemail. There are still a lot of use cases for calls to hammer out important details, even if they are becoming rarer, like health or car maintenance, or places where sms is associated more with spam. This is a great way to get the best of both worlds, even if it's technically during the decline of calls.
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    > a great use case where a school nurse called the speaker about their child, and she was very lucky to pick up and not let it go to voicemail. a) if you're a sloppy enough parent that you don't even have your kids' school phone number saved as a contact, I suspect you're accustomed to relying on luck. b) "Use our service or your children might die" is fairly over the top marketing, even for marketers.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      My kids' school doesn't have one number. It varies, and they also use emergency alert systems (presumably via something like Twilio) that don't always come from a predictable number either.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
I'm skeptical for the following reasons: 1. Companies like Twilio largely created the explosion in spam calls by providing extremely cheap, programmable calls, so I'm always a little skeptical when the company selling the poison is also selling the antidote. 2. I really don't like the idea of a single company being responsible for a global verification system for something like phone calls. How are decisions made over what is verified (e.g. the example shows "call purpose" snippets on the screen - if I put something there saying "I have an important flight update", but then my call is "You're only getting free peanuts on your flight, but if you enroll in this MileagePlus card you'll get snack mix too!" who judges that?) Overall I'd just say with all the consolidation of power with US tech giants I am extremely wary of giving them anything else that could consolidate that power further. I would much prefer an open, federated model.
- tkifnn 7y ago
  Twilio is not responsible for much spam at all. Their prices are way too high to begin with. And you have no way to spoof your outgoing number.
  - edoceo 7y ago
    One would just use a turn-and-burn via twilio. Get 10000s of cheap robot calls out, use their AVMD and have a ball
- sigmar 7y ago
  >Companies like Twilio largely created the explosion in spam calls by providing extremely cheap, programmable calls... Nah, Twilio has existed for a decade. Spam calls exploded because of court decisions https://www.apnews.com/f9e6e715ebef4c058499fef9efece977 https://www.apnews.com/f9e6e715ebef4c058499fef9efece977
- bestnameever 7y ago
  It's been awhile but I believe it is much easier to use something like Asterisk and a sip provider to spoof calls then twillo.
gregmac 7y ago
I was just reviewing my call detail records on my "home" number yesterday, and realizing that the vast majority are spam - we pretty much don't answer that phone. This got me thinking about alternatives to even ringing for any unrecognised numbers, such as an IVR menu that said something like "Hi, we're screening spam, press 4 2 if you're a real person". I'm not sure how that'd be accepted by, for example, the dentist office though. Has anyone set something like that up? I really hope Twilio is successful with this - it would definitely help, so long as there's a way to avoid abuse. Just in case someone asks why I still have a "landline": it's VoIP, and I maintain it for basically two reasons: * We use our VoIP number anytime we have to give a number out as part of signing up for something, rather than cell numbers * It typically costs me under $25/year, which is actually mostly the 911 fee (oh, and it's an extra way to call 911, if we need to)
- rohansingh 7y ago
  I enabled call screening with Google Voice, where callers who are not in my contacts are asked to say their name before they are connected. It completely weeds out robocalls, and no actual humans seem to have an issue with it. On the contrary, everyone sees why it's necessary.
  - SaturateDK 7y ago
    I would love to try something like this, but living in the EU I can't use Google Voice.
- bobbiechen 7y ago
  >Has anyone set something like that up? Yes! I did "Captcha for phone calls" for a school project earlier this year. It would play a quick message along the lines of "Hey, to ring my phone just enter these numbers: XYZ", and redirect the call to my phone if the captcha was correct. The challenge was redirecting calls to the challenge even if they were originally directed to my phone number - the solution was to write a custom call handler (Android) that rejected calls if they weren't in my phone book, and then set up call-forwarding on rejected calls to go to a Twilio number with the challenge. There was a nice edge case where if I actually missed the call, it would just redirect you to the challenge again... but it was good enough for the class. While testing, I accidentally actually got someone to use it! A guy repairing my watch called me, got directed to the challenge, and actually followed directions! Which was surprising to me. I also caught some obvious spam callers (same first 6 digits), and unsure if there were any other real people who did call and got confused or just hung up. I've been meaning to clean up the code and publish it, but haven't gotten around to it - there's lots of hardcoded numbers in there. (Disclosure: currently employed by Twilio)
johnbatch 7y ago
If this works as advertised, this is great. Because of all the spam calls people just don’t bother answering the phone at all. We just started testing texting people before we call them and getting consent on an opt in form to receive a text message. Im still not sure on the “how”
gsich 7y ago
Sounds like CNIP from ISDN.
HugoHobling 7y ago
I know it's overkill, but this is my current setup for my phone numbers. I treat phone numbers the same way I do my email address: I use different numbers for different purposes. 1. I have a "clean" phone number I only share with friends/family. Certain prefixes and phone number actually receive next to zero spam calls. This number has received 2 calls in the years I've had it. 2. I have a phone number I share with companies / loyalty programs / etc. 3. I have a legacy phone number I've had for 10 years that receives multiple spam calls daily. For this number I've set up an incoming handler that uses Google Cloud to ask the caller a simple question (What is five plus two?), parses with the Speech Recognition API, and forwards calls with the correct answer. The rest go to voicemail. It's better to use the speech recognition API than it is to ask the caller to press a DTMF tone, in case they are in a car or are calling from a device without a telephone keypad. If I every need to, I'll add this protection to use numbers 1) and 2). 4. I have a number that rings straight to voicemail. All numbers use the Whitepages and Nomorobo APIs from Twilio. These score the "spamminess" of calls. Calls with sufficiently high values are forwarded to voicemail. For incoming calls, I set the caller ID for the calls to my SIP clients to indicate which number is being called, and include the spam score.
- chrisbroadfoot 7y ago
  Very cool. How do you route your legacy number? Did you port it to Twilio?
  - HugoHobling 7y ago
    I ported the legacy number to another SIP provider. Twilio is still cheap ($1 a month or so per DID, plus $0.004 per minute), but other providers are less than half that. For that price difference, I had no reason to choose another provider so I mostly did that for fun and experimentation.
- lysp 7y ago
  When I was younger I used to work for a market research company doing surveys over the phone. The way their process worked was: * Big company wanted a survey completed. * Big company would want it targeted to a specific state/regional area, so would provide a list of post/zip codes. * Survey company would translate the list of codes into phone prefixes for each area. * Computer would randomly generate phone numbers in the area - starting from xxxx 0000 through to xxxx 9999 for operators to call. That meant you'd get disconnected numbers, businesses, private/silent numbers, faxes, modems, etc. So having a "clean" number didn't protect you. While a few projects were targeted to specific people/numbers - most were just random.
paul7986 7y ago
Been running iOS 13 with Silence all unknown calls..send them to voicemail option. Spam calls are no longer a bother Nor are really seen and important messages from those not in my contacts leave voicemails.
erichurkman 7y ago
> Even more concern, 70% of consumers don’t answer a call if the caller’s number is anonymous. The concerning part is 30% still answer the calls.
- jkaplowitz 7y ago
  Unfortunately sometimes important callers use anonymous numbers. I recently had to deal with this in the public healthcare system where I live (not in the US). A certain person who needed to give me an appointment kept calling at unpredictable afternoon and evening times from an anonymous number, ignoring the voicemails I left with my availability info, and not proposing specific times in her voicemails to me. I did get the appointment in the end, but only by happening to notice one of her calls in real time - still from an anonymous number - and answering. I'm told similar important uses of anonymous numbers aren't too rare in this public healthcare system.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wiradikusuma 7y ago
Nothing to do with Twilio: If the recipient is a mobile number, can't just the caller text the recipient when they don't pick up? E.g. IM YOUR DOCTOR, CALL THIS NUMBER
cookie_monsta 7y ago
> 70% of consumers don’t answer a call if the caller’s number is anonymous. While that might cut down the number of unwanted robocalls, it also potentially prevents consumers from receiving vital communications—calls from the doctor, banks that are flagging issues, schools calling about parents’ children. A message to my doctor, bank, kids' school, etc: if you call me on a private/unknown number and don't leave a voicemail (because I can assure you that I am in that 70%) I will assume that you are spam. You don't need Twilio for this, just some basic phone etiquette.
- jt2190 7y ago
  Patients would call my wife’s office after hours and leave their number with the answering service for a call back. After hours calls were triaged into three groups: Emergency, tell patient to call an ambulance; Urgent, get patient a prescription or tell them to get to an after hours clinics; Non-urgent, patient can wait until the office is open and make an appointment. Of course, when she made calls back with her desk or cell phone, Caller ID would display a number that was different from the main number of the clinic, and most patients would’t answer, even though they were expecting a call they’d requested. I finally built her an app that would dial the phone and spoof the Caller ID with the clinic’s main number. (This was also helpful because my wife was not the only on-call doctor, so a direct line to her was only occasionally the correct number to dial after-hours. The best move for patients was to always dial the main office number.)
- ta0xdeadbeef 7y ago
  Honestly I'd rather for all that communication to be handled by email and not phone calls. I'm not going to answer the phone either way, so it's not like it's any faster to reach me via phone than email. And the benefit is I don't need to write down what I hear or get tripped up on spelling with names.
kerkeslager 7y ago
Just what we need, another startup injecting themselves into our lives. And then for the right price, "acceptable robocalls" can be Verified by Twilio™! SHAKEN/STIR[1] is a much more network-agnostic solution to the same problem, using essentially the same, well-established technology used by internet certificate authorities. As such, it has all the same basic problems that CAs do, but it's a hell of a lot better than tightly coupling yourself to Twilio. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies [2] https://www.consumerreports.org/robocalls/spoofed-robocalls-relief-is-on-the-way/ https://www.consumerreports.org/robocalls/spoofed-robocalls-...
- gtirloni 7y ago
  This doesn't seem any more open than Verified by Twilio. Why would you trust Verizon/Comcast more than Twilio? As not a customer of both, STIR/SHAKEN doesn't help me.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    1. The promise being made is different. SHAKEN/STIR doesn't promise to only let through legitimate calls, it only promises to make caller ID accurate to prevent spoofing. This allows the weight of existing laws against robocalls to apply--the government, not Twilio, determines who is legitimate. Existing robocall laws are too lax IMO, but it's a step in the right direction. 2. This is being proposed as part of legislation. All telecoms in the US would be required to implement the technology. 3. I don't think it's accurate to call it "open", but it's not centralized in the same way that Twilio's solution is. It's a federated system analogous to HTTPS certificate authorities. Twilio's service is more analogous to content filtering services like NetNanny. As I mentioned, CAs have problems too, but they're a whole lot more open than NetNanny.
- Jolter 7y ago
  Looks cool but wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just outlaw robocalling like the rest of the world has?
pjohri 7y ago
With the new iOS beta allowing non recognized callers (not in address book) go straight to voice mail, I see little use for this service now than before.
- Jolter 7y ago
  It seems this service would allow calls from anonymous numbers to be identified by the receiver. Just routing unknown numbers to voice mail will lose you those calls. For example, my doctor's office always calls from "unknown number".
hacknat 7y ago
Isn’t robo calling about to be illegal?
- mprev 7y ago
  It is illegal in many countries but it happens nonetheless.
  - Jolter 7y ago
    Not in some countries, because they have actual enforcement of the law.
    - jimbobimbo 7y ago
      The spam operations are usually overseas, not US based. This makes enforcement harder and takes longer time. It still happens, because I see news about busts in the press from time to time.
      - whamlastxmas 7y ago
        I wish I could tell T-Mobile to never accept calls not based in the US
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  Murder is illegal, but even that doesn't stop people. Laws might stop some of the companies from working with the spammer, but the spammers will still find a way to spam.
rsync 7y ago
Unrelated, but since this is a twilio thread ... Could you please, for the love of God, give us an email verb in twiml ? Please ?
commoner 7y ago
Does anyone have a recommendation for a call filtering app that does not leak your contact list to the app developer or a third party? Open source is preferred, but any app with a solid privacy policy would do. It would be nice to see suggestions for both Android and iOS.
- jmiserez 7y ago
  iOS call blockers using the built-in API don't have this issue, it's like the content blocking for Safari but for calls. You enable them under Settings->Phone->Call blocking. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15025709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15025709
jimnotgym 7y ago
> Even more concern, 70% of consumers don’t answer a call if the caller’s number is anonymous. While that might cut down the number of unwanted robocalls, it also potentially prevents consumers from receiving vital communications—calls from the doctor, banks that are flagging issues, schools calling about parents’ children. I don't understand how this helps with anonymous callers?
- bksenior 7y ago
  Seriously? Most corporations call from a featureless pile of numbers. Now you wont miss the important calls from numbers you'd otherwise consider anon spam.
  - richardwhiuk 7y ago
    Surely if you are verified by twilio, you aren't anonymous?
abhchand 7y ago
Hate this is a problem that needs to be solved. Love that Twilio is trying to solve it with a cool, seemingly useful approach. Hate that Twilio will probably use something proprietary for this that locks people into their ecosystem even more.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> it also potentially prevents consumers from receiving vital communications—calls from the doctor, banks that are flagging issues, schools calling about parents’ children. That's bullshit. I have these important number in my address book. In the unlikely case the doctor wants to call me from a phone booth or from their friend's phone (why?), they'll leave a message and I'll call them back. As for the bank, they know my e-mail and I asked them not to use the phone for communication anyway. Really, for many people there is no reason to answer unknown calls at all, especially if their experience is that most of these is someone wanting to sell something to them. Not to mention in our times asynchronous communication is very important for mental health.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  Your response is the same bullshit you call on the message you're replying to. - I don't have the 10+ numbers that dial out from my doctor's office in my phone - I don't have the 5+ numbers that dial out from my child's school in my phone - I don't have the 10+ numbers that dial out from my child's doctor's office in my phone - Banks (god knows how many numbers each from multiple banks) - etc It's literally impossible to have all the numbers I want to allow to reach me in my phone. The fact that you happen to have a very limited set of numbers you need to be able to be called from does not invalidate the fact that many people have a vast amount of such numbers. Don't assume your anecdotal data speaks for everyone.
blackbrokkoli 7y ago
FFS USA, not every problem is a problem to solve by "the free market". You can see the America-Is-Great Mindset in a lot of these comments: Even the US has a problem with robocalls, so that must mean it's an unsolved problem obviously. So we have to solve it with our superior technology!! Just no. Almost nobody else in the western world has this problem. How? Regulation. In Germany, if you get reported for unsolicited calling, the Bundesnetzagentur will come to you and give you a very hefty fine, per violation. Problem solved. I remember exactly four unsolicited calls in my life, two of them on a number which was published in a phone book for 15 years. Spam calling is not something were there is net value created for society so we need an elaborated discussion of what is ok and what is not (like e.g. paid universities). It just sucks. Make it illegal, and then actually enforce that. The idea of creating a million dollar industry to create a telemarket arms race is...not good.
- cameldrv 7y ago
  I don't know why people don't get spam calls in Germany, but it's not because of regulation. The U.S. has similiar regulation, and in fact individual consumers can sue telemarketers for $500-$1000 per call. The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
  - perlgeek 7y ago
    > The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. The problem is that the US telco providers let them disguise their identity. In Germany, there are anonymous calls, and calls where you see the caller's numbers. I've never once been called by a spoofed number. So, it's possible to prevent that, given the political will, and the necessary investments in infrastructure.
    - cryptozeus 7y ago
      I get the same caller id now for spam calls through at&t in usa.
    - 7y ago
kenneth 7y ago
Are there any good apps on iOS that help block unwanted calls, and identify callers?
taxidump 7y ago
I have several pbx systems running, and granted this is a newer concept. Maybe this will help residential calls, business calls on the other hand will most likely allow the consumer to still take the path of least resistance.
cryptozeus 7y ago
I can see few cases when I have not picked up calls but with this kind of verification I would pick up if they ID correctly. Calls coming from 1: hospital 2: library 3: my cable or phone company 4: my car or insurance company etc. I don’t have their corp numbers saved and if we can see who is calling then it could be helpful.
aithrow 7y ago
Received this unsollicited pearl from Twilio subsidiary Sendgrid today: Hi aithrow, One of my special interests is Whitebox machine learning, and has been for many years With the dominance of Blackbox techniques causing lots of ethical questions to be raised on the uses of AI, I think it's time to revisit Whitebox techniques. I’ve written a couple of non-technical articles on the subject on Medium: Why, if you're planning to use AI you need a Whitebox system Why are tech firms ignoring half of AI? If you want to read about our Whitebox solutions please look at darl.ai Whitebox machine learning is available (free) through our GraphQL API at darl.dev Thanks for reading, Andy Edmonds Doctor Andy’s IP sales@darl.ai P.S. A glitch in our mail handling software meant that a small number of unsubscribes were missed on our last mailshot. If you were one of these my apologies. Just unsubscribe again, we won’t miss you this time! Sent by Dr Andy’s Back Office AI system If you'd like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails click here .
reportgunner 7y ago
>Imagine a world where you receive a phone call and know exactly who it’s coming from and what they’re calling about before you press the answer button. Crazy, right? Now realize that it's not you who knows it, but rather a company that is tracking all your phonecalls and decides for you whether you should answer or not. >Through the programmability of the Twilio platform, businesses will also be able to assign a purpose for each call to give further context. So a malicious actor can assign a legitimate purpose to his phone call ? No thanks
gandutraveler 7y ago
My phone is always on silent and I don't pick up any calls except if its from my started contacts or if it's a pre-scheduled meeting. I do check my phone every hour to see if there are any important missed calls. This has helped me so much from distractions and overall well being. It took me a while to realize that there is nothing that requires me to respond immediately and in case of emergency I shouldn't be the one responding. There's 911 for that.
juskrey 7y ago
Huh? "We’re partnering with leading call identification apps" Are that those shady apps which require your address book access just to start, aren't they?
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  How do you think those companies identify numbers? I'm guessing they see if any of their other users have the number saved. Of course they could still be doing shady things with people's contact lists beyond that...
  - juskrey 7y ago
    They could do that silently or at least in some optional privacy-oriented way, e.g. like Telegram or Signal. Instead they are actively implementing features to disclose everything to everyone.
wetpaws 7y ago
My final and unfortunate solution for this was to stop accepting phone calls altogether. Friends/relatives know to use Skype and IM, all important stuff goes to voicemail, everything else is on permanent mute and ignore. I wonder if it is the case for more and more people.
lonelappde 7y ago
Why won't spammers just spoof the verified by twilio data?
dingo_bat 7y ago
Seems like all of this assumes that I trust Twilio, whatever that is. Why should I trust them? Why won't they allow specific robocalls/spam some time in the future?
pier25 7y ago
Android already does this, somewhat. Whenever you receive a call you know beforehand if it's spam or not. Maybe a handful of times in the last year I've received a spam call that wasn't marked as spam. You can block callers and report as spam much like in Gmail. When the call is not spam Android looks up on Google where the number is from and it shows the name of the business in the call screen. This is working great for me. A year ago I received 2-3 spam calls per day which of course I've been blocking. Now I receive 1-2 spam calls per week at the most. Some weeks I don't receive any.
- sp332 7y ago
  I've never seen a call marked as "spam" on Android. What kind of phone do you have, and which carrier? Edit: My phone is from Samsung (who like to add a bunch of their own software to base Android) and my carrier is AT&T.
  - maydaymonday 7y ago
    Samsung Galaxy devices will do this.
  - blacksmith_tb 7y ago
    All the Pixels use Assistant to screen calls from numbers that aren't in your contacts. You watch a live transcript of the caller / bot and you can answer if it's legitimate or have it deliver a canned "stopping calling me and take me off your list" which also reports the caller[1] 1: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17955274/google-pixel-3-spam-calls-assistant-screen-filter https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17955274/google-pixel-3-s... (I have Pixel 2, so the feature isn't just > 3 at this point)
  - pier25 7y ago
    I have an Android One phone. Not sure if this feature is from the OS or the stock phone app though.
alberth 7y ago
How does this compare to the MNOs joining together to create Project Verify. https://mobileauthtaskforce.com/ https://mobileauthtaskforce.com/
upsadaisy12345 7y ago
A good twilio alternative is http://textita.com http://textita.com

291 points by HugoHobling 7y ago

This may be the most valuable innovation out of Silicon Valley in 10 years. Talk about solving a pain point!

Interesting. Wonder if this is going to be a valuable public service in the long run. For sure the monetary incentive is for Twilio to operate this like an "acceptable ads" type shakedown [1], where companies pay Twilio to mark their calls as "valuable information" rather than spam. Arguably this should be administered by some trusted third party, like EFF. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies

kylek 7y ago

Is anything preventing debt collectors from being Verified by Twilio?

koolba 7y ago
Probably no different than the scammers that are A+ rated by the BBB.
TuringNYC 7y ago
It presumably prevents it by forcing them to use a single verified number per corporate entity — this once I blacklist that entity, I can be done with them. The real problem these days, IMHO, is not repeated calls but spoofed calls where the source number changes every day, and thus cannot be blocked. This would solve that.
jpearson 7y ago
I would expect that legitimate debt collectors will be verified by Twilio. > Verified By Twilio displays company branding and a reason for the call right in front of the consumer This should make the purpose of debt collection calls obvious, though I don't see how they plan to enforce accurate call descriptions.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > I don't see how they plan to enforce accurate call descriptions. A reporting/flagging system, perhaps? "This call wasn't as described". After enough reports, they lose the verified status.
Theophraustous 7y ago
I've work for a debt collection company. Typically, they do not handle their own phone numbers, their vendor for the dialer does. This is entirely dependent on the priorities of the vendor. Due to the FDCPA, we are unable to give out the reason for our call as that would inform any 3rd party that the person we are calling to speak to is in debt. The agents on the front line are scripted to advise them that we are calling in regards to a personal matter, or in response to the letter they received. This gets even worse if your company name includes "Collections" or any variation of that, as they cannot give out their company name in that case unless prompted (UDAAP requires them to answer direct questions not about the loan in a straight forward way).
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  All that sounds like an attempt to harass the recipient, with falsehoods and deceit. Which I suppose is the main business of a debt collector.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

I will install whatever app I need to get this service if it works as advertised. Well done and congrats to the team(s) that worked on this project. It's a travesty that we need a private company to solve this problem, or even that the problem exists in the first place when we as a society could have legislated it away a while ago. However, a fix is a fix.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

I wonder how many of the spam calls are actually powered by Twilio? Is this an instance of a company trying to make money by getting paid by businesses on one hand to do spam calls, and getting paid by consumers on the other hand to block spam calls?

dqv 7y ago
>I wonder how many of the spam calls are actually powered by Twilio? Probably not very many. Think about it: the spammer has to pay for each minute of call time on Twilio. Let's say a spammer spams for 12 hours a day at $0.013 a minute. On average that's $9.36 a day. So if they want to do this with 24 "lines", that's $224.46 a day. Now consider the the cost of (on-premise) phone lines provided by a company like Time Warner Cable: $25-$45 per line per month (the last time I checked). That's more like $36 a day. So with Twilio the spammer would be paying 6x the cost.

ufmace 7y ago

Well that's cool I guess. But: 1. How are they partnering with all of the device companies to get this on at least most phones? That'd be interesting to know. 2. I guess somebody has to type that intro text. As long as they're doing that, why bother with a normal call? How about just sending the text instead. Or send a text and let me call back for more details when it suits me, either right away or in 10 minutes. It sounds like whoever is sending these probably has a call center or somebody who's job is to sit around and answer the phone when it rings.

spbaar 7y ago
1. I'm really not sure yet. They haven't given any details publicly or privately. I'm most curious to see how this will be supported on iOS. 2. The demo on the keynote gave a great use case where a school nurse called the speaker about their child, and she was very lucky to pick up and not let it go to voicemail. There are still a lot of use cases for calls to hammer out important details, even if they are becoming rarer, like health or car maintenance, or places where sms is associated more with spam. This is a great way to get the best of both worlds, even if it's technically during the decline of calls.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  > a great use case where a school nurse called the speaker about their child, and she was very lucky to pick up and not let it go to voicemail. a) if you're a sloppy enough parent that you don't even have your kids' school phone number saved as a contact, I suspect you're accustomed to relying on luck. b) "Use our service or your children might die" is fairly over the top marketing, even for marketers.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    My kids' school doesn't have one number. It varies, and they also use emergency alert systems (presumably via something like Twilio) that don't always come from a predictable number either.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

I'm skeptical for the following reasons: 1. Companies like Twilio largely created the explosion in spam calls by providing extremely cheap, programmable calls, so I'm always a little skeptical when the company selling the poison is also selling the antidote. 2. I really don't like the idea of a single company being responsible for a global verification system for something like phone calls. How are decisions made over what is verified (e.g. the example shows "call purpose" snippets on the screen - if I put something there saying "I have an important flight update", but then my call is "You're only getting free peanuts on your flight, but if you enroll in this MileagePlus card you'll get snack mix too!" who judges that?) Overall I'd just say with all the consolidation of power with US tech giants I am extremely wary of giving them anything else that could consolidate that power further. I would much prefer an open, federated model.

tkifnn 7y ago
Twilio is not responsible for much spam at all. Their prices are way too high to begin with. And you have no way to spoof your outgoing number.
- edoceo 7y ago
  One would just use a turn-and-burn via twilio. Get 10000s of cheap robot calls out, use their AVMD and have a ball
sigmar 7y ago
>Companies like Twilio largely created the explosion in spam calls by providing extremely cheap, programmable calls... Nah, Twilio has existed for a decade. Spam calls exploded because of court decisions https://www.apnews.com/f9e6e715ebef4c058499fef9efece977 https://www.apnews.com/f9e6e715ebef4c058499fef9efece977
bestnameever 7y ago
It's been awhile but I believe it is much easier to use something like Asterisk and a sip provider to spoof calls then twillo.

gregmac 7y ago

I was just reviewing my call detail records on my "home" number yesterday, and realizing that the vast majority are spam - we pretty much don't answer that phone. This got me thinking about alternatives to even ringing for any unrecognised numbers, such as an IVR menu that said something like "Hi, we're screening spam, press 4 2 if you're a real person". I'm not sure how that'd be accepted by, for example, the dentist office though. Has anyone set something like that up? I really hope Twilio is successful with this - it would definitely help, so long as there's a way to avoid abuse. Just in case someone asks why I still have a "landline": it's VoIP, and I maintain it for basically two reasons: * We use our VoIP number anytime we have to give a number out as part of signing up for something, rather than cell numbers * It typically costs me under $25/year, which is actually mostly the 911 fee (oh, and it's an extra way to call 911, if we need to)

rohansingh 7y ago
I enabled call screening with Google Voice, where callers who are not in my contacts are asked to say their name before they are connected. It completely weeds out robocalls, and no actual humans seem to have an issue with it. On the contrary, everyone sees why it's necessary.
- SaturateDK 7y ago
  I would love to try something like this, but living in the EU I can't use Google Voice.
bobbiechen 7y ago
>Has anyone set something like that up? Yes! I did "Captcha for phone calls" for a school project earlier this year. It would play a quick message along the lines of "Hey, to ring my phone just enter these numbers: XYZ", and redirect the call to my phone if the captcha was correct. The challenge was redirecting calls to the challenge even if they were originally directed to my phone number - the solution was to write a custom call handler (Android) that rejected calls if they weren't in my phone book, and then set up call-forwarding on rejected calls to go to a Twilio number with the challenge. There was a nice edge case where if I actually missed the call, it would just redirect you to the challenge again... but it was good enough for the class. While testing, I accidentally actually got someone to use it! A guy repairing my watch called me, got directed to the challenge, and actually followed directions! Which was surprising to me. I also caught some obvious spam callers (same first 6 digits), and unsure if there were any other real people who did call and got confused or just hung up. I've been meaning to clean up the code and publish it, but haven't gotten around to it - there's lots of hardcoded numbers in there. (Disclosure: currently employed by Twilio)

johnbatch 7y ago

If this works as advertised, this is great. Because of all the spam calls people just don’t bother answering the phone at all. We just started testing texting people before we call them and getting consent on an opt in form to receive a text message. Im still not sure on the “how”

gsich 7y ago

Sounds like CNIP from ISDN.

HugoHobling 7y ago

I know it's overkill, but this is my current setup for my phone numbers. I treat phone numbers the same way I do my email address: I use different numbers for different purposes. 1. I have a "clean" phone number I only share with friends/family. Certain prefixes and phone number actually receive next to zero spam calls. This number has received 2 calls in the years I've had it. 2. I have a phone number I share with companies / loyalty programs / etc. 3. I have a legacy phone number I've had for 10 years that receives multiple spam calls daily. For this number I've set up an incoming handler that uses Google Cloud to ask the caller a simple question (What is five plus two?), parses with the Speech Recognition API, and forwards calls with the correct answer. The rest go to voicemail. It's better to use the speech recognition API than it is to ask the caller to press a DTMF tone, in case they are in a car or are calling from a device without a telephone keypad. If I every need to, I'll add this protection to use numbers 1) and 2). 4. I have a number that rings straight to voicemail. All numbers use the Whitepages and Nomorobo APIs from Twilio. These score the "spamminess" of calls. Calls with sufficiently high values are forwarded to voicemail. For incoming calls, I set the caller ID for the calls to my SIP clients to indicate which number is being called, and include the spam score.

chrisbroadfoot 7y ago
Very cool. How do you route your legacy number? Did you port it to Twilio?
- HugoHobling 7y ago
  I ported the legacy number to another SIP provider. Twilio is still cheap ($1 a month or so per DID, plus $0.004 per minute), but other providers are less than half that. For that price difference, I had no reason to choose another provider so I mostly did that for fun and experimentation.
lysp 7y ago
When I was younger I used to work for a market research company doing surveys over the phone. The way their process worked was: * Big company wanted a survey completed. * Big company would want it targeted to a specific state/regional area, so would provide a list of post/zip codes. * Survey company would translate the list of codes into phone prefixes for each area. * Computer would randomly generate phone numbers in the area - starting from xxxx 0000 through to xxxx 9999 for operators to call. That meant you'd get disconnected numbers, businesses, private/silent numbers, faxes, modems, etc. So having a "clean" number didn't protect you. While a few projects were targeted to specific people/numbers - most were just random.

paul7986 7y ago

Been running iOS 13 with Silence all unknown calls..send them to voicemail option. Spam calls are no longer a bother Nor are really seen and important messages from those not in my contacts leave voicemails.

erichurkman 7y ago

> Even more concern, 70% of consumers don’t answer a call if the caller’s number is anonymous. The concerning part is 30% still answer the calls.

jkaplowitz 7y ago
Unfortunately sometimes important callers use anonymous numbers. I recently had to deal with this in the public healthcare system where I live (not in the US). A certain person who needed to give me an appointment kept calling at unpredictable afternoon and evening times from an anonymous number, ignoring the voicemails I left with my availability info, and not proposing specific times in her voicemails to me. I did get the appointment in the end, but only by happening to notice one of her calls in real time - still from an anonymous number - and answering. I'm told similar important uses of anonymous numbers aren't too rare in this public healthcare system.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wiradikusuma 7y ago

Nothing to do with Twilio: If the recipient is a mobile number, can't just the caller text the recipient when they don't pick up? E.g. IM YOUR DOCTOR, CALL THIS NUMBER

cookie_monsta 7y ago

> 70% of consumers don’t answer a call if the caller’s number is anonymous. While that might cut down the number of unwanted robocalls, it also potentially prevents consumers from receiving vital communications—calls from the doctor, banks that are flagging issues, schools calling about parents’ children. A message to my doctor, bank, kids' school, etc: if you call me on a private/unknown number and don't leave a voicemail (because I can assure you that I am in that 70%) I will assume that you are spam. You don't need Twilio for this, just some basic phone etiquette.

jt2190 7y ago
Patients would call my wife’s office after hours and leave their number with the answering service for a call back. After hours calls were triaged into three groups: Emergency, tell patient to call an ambulance; Urgent, get patient a prescription or tell them to get to an after hours clinics; Non-urgent, patient can wait until the office is open and make an appointment. Of course, when she made calls back with her desk or cell phone, Caller ID would display a number that was different from the main number of the clinic, and most patients would’t answer, even though they were expecting a call they’d requested. I finally built her an app that would dial the phone and spoof the Caller ID with the clinic’s main number. (This was also helpful because my wife was not the only on-call doctor, so a direct line to her was only occasionally the correct number to dial after-hours. The best move for patients was to always dial the main office number.)
ta0xdeadbeef 7y ago
Honestly I'd rather for all that communication to be handled by email and not phone calls. I'm not going to answer the phone either way, so it's not like it's any faster to reach me via phone than email. And the benefit is I don't need to write down what I hear or get tripped up on spelling with names.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Just what we need, another startup injecting themselves into our lives. And then for the right price, "acceptable robocalls" can be Verified by Twilio™! SHAKEN/STIR[1] is a much more network-agnostic solution to the same problem, using essentially the same, well-established technology used by internet certificate authorities. As such, it has all the same basic problems that CAs do, but it's a hell of a lot better than tightly coupling yourself to Twilio. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies [2] https://www.consumerreports.org/robocalls/spoofed-robocalls-relief-is-on-the-way/ https://www.consumerreports.org/robocalls/spoofed-robocalls-...

gtirloni 7y ago
This doesn't seem any more open than Verified by Twilio. Why would you trust Verizon/Comcast more than Twilio? As not a customer of both, STIR/SHAKEN doesn't help me.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  1. The promise being made is different. SHAKEN/STIR doesn't promise to only let through legitimate calls, it only promises to make caller ID accurate to prevent spoofing. This allows the weight of existing laws against robocalls to apply--the government, not Twilio, determines who is legitimate. Existing robocall laws are too lax IMO, but it's a step in the right direction. 2. This is being proposed as part of legislation. All telecoms in the US would be required to implement the technology. 3. I don't think it's accurate to call it "open", but it's not centralized in the same way that Twilio's solution is. It's a federated system analogous to HTTPS certificate authorities. Twilio's service is more analogous to content filtering services like NetNanny. As I mentioned, CAs have problems too, but they're a whole lot more open than NetNanny.
Jolter 7y ago
Looks cool but wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just outlaw robocalling like the rest of the world has?

pjohri 7y ago

With the new iOS beta allowing non recognized callers (not in address book) go straight to voice mail, I see little use for this service now than before.

Jolter 7y ago
It seems this service would allow calls from anonymous numbers to be identified by the receiver. Just routing unknown numbers to voice mail will lose you those calls. For example, my doctor's office always calls from "unknown number".

hacknat 7y ago

Isn’t robo calling about to be illegal?

mprev 7y ago
It is illegal in many countries but it happens nonetheless.
- Jolter 7y ago
  Not in some countries, because they have actual enforcement of the law.
  - jimbobimbo 7y ago
    The spam operations are usually overseas, not US based. This makes enforcement harder and takes longer time. It still happens, because I see news about busts in the press from time to time.
    - whamlastxmas 7y ago
      I wish I could tell T-Mobile to never accept calls not based in the US
RandomBacon 7y ago
Murder is illegal, but even that doesn't stop people. Laws might stop some of the companies from working with the spammer, but the spammers will still find a way to spam.

rsync 7y ago

Unrelated, but since this is a twilio thread ... Could you please, for the love of God, give us an email verb in twiml ? Please ?

commoner 7y ago

Does anyone have a recommendation for a call filtering app that does not leak your contact list to the app developer or a third party? Open source is preferred, but any app with a solid privacy policy would do. It would be nice to see suggestions for both Android and iOS.

jmiserez 7y ago
iOS call blockers using the built-in API don't have this issue, it's like the content blocking for Safari but for calls. You enable them under Settings->Phone->Call blocking. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15025709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15025709

jimnotgym 7y ago

> Even more concern, 70% of consumers don’t answer a call if the caller’s number is anonymous. While that might cut down the number of unwanted robocalls, it also potentially prevents consumers from receiving vital communications—calls from the doctor, banks that are flagging issues, schools calling about parents’ children. I don't understand how this helps with anonymous callers?

bksenior 7y ago
Seriously? Most corporations call from a featureless pile of numbers. Now you wont miss the important calls from numbers you'd otherwise consider anon spam.
- richardwhiuk 7y ago
  Surely if you are verified by twilio, you aren't anonymous?

abhchand 7y ago

Hate this is a problem that needs to be solved. Love that Twilio is trying to solve it with a cool, seemingly useful approach. Hate that Twilio will probably use something proprietary for this that locks people into their ecosystem even more.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> it also potentially prevents consumers from receiving vital communications—calls from the doctor, banks that are flagging issues, schools calling about parents’ children. That's bullshit. I have these important number in my address book. In the unlikely case the doctor wants to call me from a phone booth or from their friend's phone (why?), they'll leave a message and I'll call them back. As for the bank, they know my e-mail and I asked them not to use the phone for communication anyway. Really, for many people there is no reason to answer unknown calls at all, especially if their experience is that most of these is someone wanting to sell something to them. Not to mention in our times asynchronous communication is very important for mental health.

RHSeeger 7y ago
Your response is the same bullshit you call on the message you're replying to. - I don't have the 10+ numbers that dial out from my doctor's office in my phone - I don't have the 5+ numbers that dial out from my child's school in my phone - I don't have the 10+ numbers that dial out from my child's doctor's office in my phone - Banks (god knows how many numbers each from multiple banks) - etc It's literally impossible to have all the numbers I want to allow to reach me in my phone. The fact that you happen to have a very limited set of numbers you need to be able to be called from does not invalidate the fact that many people have a vast amount of such numbers. Don't assume your anecdotal data speaks for everyone.

blackbrokkoli 7y ago

FFS USA, not every problem is a problem to solve by "the free market". You can see the America-Is-Great Mindset in a lot of these comments: Even the US has a problem with robocalls, so that must mean it's an unsolved problem obviously. So we have to solve it with our superior technology!! Just no. Almost nobody else in the western world has this problem. How? Regulation. In Germany, if you get reported for unsolicited calling, the Bundesnetzagentur will come to you and give you a very hefty fine, per violation. Problem solved. I remember exactly four unsolicited calls in my life, two of them on a number which was published in a phone book for 15 years. Spam calling is not something were there is net value created for society so we need an elaborated discussion of what is ok and what is not (like e.g. paid universities). It just sucks. Make it illegal, and then actually enforce that. The idea of creating a million dollar industry to create a telemarket arms race is...not good.

cameldrv 7y ago
I don't know why people don't get spam calls in Germany, but it's not because of regulation. The U.S. has similiar regulation, and in fact individual consumers can sue telemarketers for $500-$1000 per call. The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
- perlgeek 7y ago
  > The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. The problem is that the US telco providers let them disguise their identity. In Germany, there are anonymous calls, and calls where you see the caller's numbers. I've never once been called by a spoofed number. So, it's possible to prevent that, given the political will, and the necessary investments in infrastructure.
  - cryptozeus 7y ago
    I get the same caller id now for spam calls through at&t in usa.
  - 7y ago

kenneth 7y ago

Are there any good apps on iOS that help block unwanted calls, and identify callers?

taxidump 7y ago

I have several pbx systems running, and granted this is a newer concept. Maybe this will help residential calls, business calls on the other hand will most likely allow the consumer to still take the path of least resistance.

cryptozeus 7y ago

I can see few cases when I have not picked up calls but with this kind of verification I would pick up if they ID correctly. Calls coming from 1: hospital 2: library 3: my cable or phone company 4: my car or insurance company etc. I don’t have their corp numbers saved and if we can see who is calling then it could be helpful.

aithrow 7y ago

Received this unsollicited pearl from Twilio subsidiary Sendgrid today: Hi aithrow, One of my special interests is Whitebox machine learning, and has been for many years With the dominance of Blackbox techniques causing lots of ethical questions to be raised on the uses of AI, I think it's time to revisit Whitebox techniques. I’ve written a couple of non-technical articles on the subject on Medium: Why, if you're planning to use AI you need a Whitebox system Why are tech firms ignoring half of AI? If you want to read about our Whitebox solutions please look at darl.ai Whitebox machine learning is available (free) through our GraphQL API at darl.dev Thanks for reading, Andy Edmonds Doctor Andy’s IP sales@darl.ai P.S. A glitch in our mail handling software meant that a small number of unsubscribes were missed on our last mailshot. If you were one of these my apologies. Just unsubscribe again, we won’t miss you this time! Sent by Dr Andy’s Back Office AI system If you'd like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails click here .

reportgunner 7y ago

>Imagine a world where you receive a phone call and know exactly who it’s coming from and what they’re calling about before you press the answer button. Crazy, right? Now realize that it's not you who knows it, but rather a company that is tracking all your phonecalls and decides for you whether you should answer or not. >Through the programmability of the Twilio platform, businesses will also be able to assign a purpose for each call to give further context. So a malicious actor can assign a legitimate purpose to his phone call ? No thanks

gandutraveler 7y ago

My phone is always on silent and I don't pick up any calls except if its from my started contacts or if it's a pre-scheduled meeting. I do check my phone every hour to see if there are any important missed calls. This has helped me so much from distractions and overall well being. It took me a while to realize that there is nothing that requires me to respond immediately and in case of emergency I shouldn't be the one responding. There's 911 for that.

juskrey 7y ago

Huh? "We’re partnering with leading call identification apps" Are that those shady apps which require your address book access just to start, aren't they?

RandomBacon 7y ago
How do you think those companies identify numbers? I'm guessing they see if any of their other users have the number saved. Of course they could still be doing shady things with people's contact lists beyond that...
- juskrey 7y ago
  They could do that silently or at least in some optional privacy-oriented way, e.g. like Telegram or Signal. Instead they are actively implementing features to disclose everything to everyone.

wetpaws 7y ago

My final and unfortunate solution for this was to stop accepting phone calls altogether. Friends/relatives know to use Skype and IM, all important stuff goes to voicemail, everything else is on permanent mute and ignore. I wonder if it is the case for more and more people.

lonelappde 7y ago

Why won't spammers just spoof the verified by twilio data?

dingo_bat 7y ago

Seems like all of this assumes that I trust Twilio, whatever that is. Why should I trust them? Why won't they allow specific robocalls/spam some time in the future?

pier25 7y ago

Android already does this, somewhat. Whenever you receive a call you know beforehand if it's spam or not. Maybe a handful of times in the last year I've received a spam call that wasn't marked as spam. You can block callers and report as spam much like in Gmail. When the call is not spam Android looks up on Google where the number is from and it shows the name of the business in the call screen. This is working great for me. A year ago I received 2-3 spam calls per day which of course I've been blocking. Now I receive 1-2 spam calls per week at the most. Some weeks I don't receive any.

sp332 7y ago
I've never seen a call marked as "spam" on Android. What kind of phone do you have, and which carrier? Edit: My phone is from Samsung (who like to add a bunch of their own software to base Android) and my carrier is AT&T.
- maydaymonday 7y ago
  Samsung Galaxy devices will do this.
- blacksmith_tb 7y ago
  All the Pixels use Assistant to screen calls from numbers that aren't in your contacts. You watch a live transcript of the caller / bot and you can answer if it's legitimate or have it deliver a canned "stopping calling me and take me off your list" which also reports the caller[1] 1: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17955274/google-pixel-3-spam-calls-assistant-screen-filter https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17955274/google-pixel-3-s... (I have Pixel 2, so the feature isn't just > 3 at this point)
- pier25 7y ago
  I have an Android One phone. Not sure if this feature is from the OS or the stock phone app though.

alberth 7y ago

How does this compare to the MNOs joining together to create Project Verify. https://mobileauthtaskforce.com/ https://mobileauthtaskforce.com/

upsadaisy12345 7y ago

A good twilio alternative is http://textita.com http://textita.com