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I tried it, and within a week I missed an important call. I was waiting by the phone, and it just never arrived. I realized too late that it had been silenced.

I tried it, and within a week I missed an important call. I was waiting by the phone, and it just never arrived. I realized too late that it had been silenced. It's very frustrating that we can't just get something like a spam filter, rather than a blanket "silence everything unknown."

_delirium 7y ago
T-Mobile does spam filtering; not sure about other carriers. The default configuration (or at least I think it is, because I don't remember changing it) is to tag the calls by setting the Caller-ID to the name "Scam Likely". You can then configure your phone to respond differently to calls from that ID (e.g. disable ringer). Alternately, if you trust their filtering enough, you can have those calls blocked so they don't ring through to the phone at all. I think it's been working fairly well for me, but I also rarely get legitimate calls from anyone other than a handful of friends/family who are in my contacts list, so I can't be too sure of the false-positive rate. Info: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-38784 https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-38784
- MarkSweep 7y ago
  Unfortunately when I use our conference system’s “call my phone” feature it almost always shows the number as “scam likely”. So I guess the scammers are using the same block of numbers as the conference system.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Is your outbound system spoofing a number so they all appear to be from the same one? If so, that might be why.
wilg 7y ago
iOS also has a call blocking and identification interface apps can hook into. I haven't found a good spam call blocker app though.
- dmckeon 7y ago
  Try Nomorobo - took robocalls down by at least 90% for me, and I gladly pay ~$20US / year to not have flow interrupts. Works on iOS, free for VOIP numbers.
cactus2093 7y ago
Yeah part of the problem is there are tons of legitimate businesses out there that will do important things only over the phone, from obviously an unknown number, where if you miss the call it becomes a big hassle to get back in touch with them. Happens with banks and other financial institutions, doctors offices, deliveries and all kinds of other services. It would kind of solve the problem if a norm emerged that these types of companies first send a confirmation email with the phone number they'll be calling from so you can add it to your caller id. But it's a lot of extra work for people and I think it's probably asking too much of the average non technical user. Even better, why couldn't we have something like SSL certificates or DKIM for phone calls? People for the most part understand the lock icon and a verified flag in a user interface. Then a call could be signed to know that it's coming from a particular entity. It seems like some other countries have solved this problem by moving away from regular sms and phone calls and instead letting a private company own all communication, like WeChat in China. Which obviously is quite problematic in other ways, but honestly at this point that would be an improvement in my opinion, if businesses started only contacting me through Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp so I could see who every message is associated with.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Business opportunity.
  - dangero 7y ago
    I agree there’s a business here, but will walled gardens let the solution work optimally? Apple locks down their phone and messaging apis so that nobody can use them.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Basically: selling the ability for a company to make phone calls from numerous systems all of which appear to originate at a single, designated, known, and generally callee-approved, number. Needn't be a walled garden. Though migrations from PSTN to various alternatives is also fairly likely. Much of the present "social media" / apps space is actually probably a jostling for supremacy / positioning in this regard.
pfranz 7y ago
I updated to the beta specifically for this feature. But, like anything else like this, was worried missing important calls. I get a notification immediately about a missed call (which I'll probably soon try and turn off), I'm a lot more aggressive about adding businesses to my address book (someone else said they whitelist phone numbers you've made calls to even if they're not in your address book), and I kind of expect important calls to leave a voicemail.
Vadoff 7y ago
You don’t have voicemail setup?

_delirium 7y ago

T-Mobile does spam filtering; not sure about other carriers. The default configuration (or at least I think it is, because I don't remember changing it) is to tag the calls by setting the Caller-ID to the name "Scam Likely". You can then configure your phone to respond differently to calls from that ID (e.g. disable ringer). Alternately, if you trust their filtering enough, you can have those calls blocked so they don't ring through to the phone at all. I think it's been working fairly well for me, but I also rarely get legitimate calls from anyone other than a handful of friends/family who are in my contacts list, so I can't be too sure of the false-positive rate. Info: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-38784 https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-38784

MarkSweep 7y ago
Unfortunately when I use our conference system’s “call my phone” feature it almost always shows the number as “scam likely”. So I guess the scammers are using the same block of numbers as the conference system.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Is your outbound system spoofing a number so they all appear to be from the same one? If so, that might be why.

wilg 7y ago

iOS also has a call blocking and identification interface apps can hook into. I haven't found a good spam call blocker app though.

dmckeon 7y ago
Try Nomorobo - took robocalls down by at least 90% for me, and I gladly pay ~$20US / year to not have flow interrupts. Works on iOS, free for VOIP numbers.

cactus2093 7y ago

Yeah part of the problem is there are tons of legitimate businesses out there that will do important things only over the phone, from obviously an unknown number, where if you miss the call it becomes a big hassle to get back in touch with them. Happens with banks and other financial institutions, doctors offices, deliveries and all kinds of other services. It would kind of solve the problem if a norm emerged that these types of companies first send a confirmation email with the phone number they'll be calling from so you can add it to your caller id. But it's a lot of extra work for people and I think it's probably asking too much of the average non technical user. Even better, why couldn't we have something like SSL certificates or DKIM for phone calls? People for the most part understand the lock icon and a verified flag in a user interface. Then a call could be signed to know that it's coming from a particular entity. It seems like some other countries have solved this problem by moving away from regular sms and phone calls and instead letting a private company own all communication, like WeChat in China. Which obviously is quite problematic in other ways, but honestly at this point that would be an improvement in my opinion, if businesses started only contacting me through Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp so I could see who every message is associated with.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Business opportunity.
- dangero 7y ago
  I agree there’s a business here, but will walled gardens let the solution work optimally? Apple locks down their phone and messaging apis so that nobody can use them.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Basically: selling the ability for a company to make phone calls from numerous systems all of which appear to originate at a single, designated, known, and generally callee-approved, number. Needn't be a walled garden. Though migrations from PSTN to various alternatives is also fairly likely. Much of the present "social media" / apps space is actually probably a jostling for supremacy / positioning in this regard.

pfranz 7y ago

I updated to the beta specifically for this feature. But, like anything else like this, was worried missing important calls. I get a notification immediately about a missed call (which I'll probably soon try and turn off), I'm a lot more aggressive about adding businesses to my address book (someone else said they whitelist phone numbers you've made calls to even if they're not in your address book), and I kind of expect important calls to leave a voicemail.

Vadoff 7y ago

You don’t have voicemail setup?