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Show HN: CallStop – Superhuman for your phone number
Robocalls and unwanted calls are one of the biggest hassles these days. Over 50% of phone traffic is spam.
I'm the founder of CallStop: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callstop/id1455892856 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callstop/id1455892856
CallStop allows you to:
- Block 100% of robocalls on your current number, using your contacts as a whitelist
- Effortlessly email call invites to an any email (that can be joined in one tap, the PIN is embedded), where the recipient can only call you starting 5 minutes before the meeting start and up until 5 minutes after the meeting end
- Pause call filtering and have it automatically resume after a certain time
- Accept whitelist requests to join your whitelist, and receive notes from the callers prior to accepting
- Specify PINs you can give to loved ones or groups to reach you from unknown numbers.
- Get a second phone number with which you can give out in lieu of your primary.
CallStop is a productivity tool that lets you better manage your time and who can reach you.
If you're expecting a call from a business from an unknown number, or want to limit a salesperson from calling you more than once, CallStop is perfect for managing these interactions.
- chadwittman 7y agoI really wish this would have come out like 4 years ago. I love the idea, but Apple's newest iOS helped significantly cut down on the robocall annoyance. I'm cheering for you!
- davidajackson 7y agoThank you, I'm definitely looking to continue working on productivity features like scheduling to keep it relevant and less "platform vulnerable" so that it can't made moot by Apple.
- AgentK20 7y agoAny plans for Android? Would happily pay for a service like this.
- mceachen 7y agoAndroid's built-in "do not disturb" setting supports silencing all phone calls from numbers not in your address book.
- dangoor 7y agoiOS supports this too: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099
- AgentK20 7y agoOne of the features I like about it, though, is the ability to create arbitrary "pin" extensions that I can give out. I'd love for my phone number to be opt-in, worldwide. Getting spam on a particular extension? Guess CompanyA leaked my number. Blocked. Call screening is nice, and I actively use it, but a system that is "zero spam by default" is far more preferable than "click to block spam".
- aloukissas 7y agoDon't know about generic Android, but this works pretty well on Pixel. Automatic "call screen" has eliminated my spam calls to almost zero.
- davidajackson 7y agoAs soon as possible :) I've been honing the iOS version and getting feedback but doing an Android version soon would be ideal.
- sm4rk0 7y agoOver 50% of phone traffic is spam. Please, don't generalize. That statistic is maybe valid in the USA. In my case (Serbia) spam is practically 0%. There's an occasional landline call or two per month but that's enough for making fun by letting our kids answer the phone and troll the spammers. Third world "problems" (: Anyway, I support your fight against spammers.
- bestouff 7y agoSame thing in France. I wonder if phone spam exists elsewhere than in USA (in UK perhaps) ?
- ssss11 7y agoThere’s a lot in Australia
- Khamsin 7y agoMy parents in France get spam calls on their land-line phone almost everyday. It almost never occurs with mobile phones though.
- albertgoeswoof 7y agoNothing much in the UK, maybe once a month if you’re unlucky
- leokennis 7y agoIn the Netherlands, I get called unsolicited and for marketing purposes maybe once a month. The call is always by a human, I’ve never been called by a robot. As soon as I notice it’s a marketing call I just hang up and if it’s not a hidden number, I add it to my “blocked numbers” contact, which I have blocked from incoming calls on my iPhone.
- martin_a 7y agoYou could also GDPR the shit out of them... ;-)
- 7y ago
- nlh 7y agoCongrats on launching! One security-related question: I had looked into this area previously as a user and a security-conscious friend pointed out that systems that use call forwarding to stop the spam problem are a HUGE security risk. You’re effectively man-in-the-middling all mobile calls, SMS, etc, and if there’s some sort of compromise (or, much less likely, malicious act) on your end, all of us users will be in a tough spot. Is this accurate? Can you share some thoughts? (Not trying to knock your business or approach, btw - just want to know if the fears are founded or not.)
- runako 7y agoSame thought here. I have been toying with the idea of building something OSS so that people could run it themselves, for this reason. (Also I have what is possibly a common filtering case in the US that would eliminate 95% of my spam calls without blocking any relevant calls from "new" numbers. And for whatever reason, I have not seen it implemented anywhere yet.)
- nlh 7y agoIF (area code == my area code) AND (prefix == my prefix) AND (last 4 != my last 4) THEN SPAM SPAM SPAM ?
- runako 7y agoYES Also: if (area code == my area code) AND (number NOT IN whitelist) Basically: I have a mobile number in an area I left 15 years ago. Any call I get from there that's not one of my friends is de facto spam.
- prashnts 7y agoI wonder how long before AdTech uses location data change which robo-call center to choose from its aws equivalent in your area code.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mehrdadn 7y agoQuestion: does any app (yours or others) block such calls in a manner that prevents them from ringing at all? It's extremely frustrating for me when I use a call blocking app only to find that it still rings for a split second before suppressing afterward, and I have no clue why that happens with every app.
- soared 7y agoiOS has a setting to send numbers not in your contact direct to voicemail and those never ring.
- davidajackson 7y agoYes it does. It won't ring you unless the caller is permitted to.
- hedora 7y agoI like the idea of having a pin. I wonder if overloading the “extension” field in existing address books would be reasonably ergonomic. Eg: (555) 876-5309 ext 1337 Or similar syntax should work with legacy systems to share your phone number (and maybe autodial the pin).
- davidajackson 7y agoThe format for autodialing with CallStop is "<number>,2,<PIN>". The commas are pauses. You can store these in Apple contacts for example if you want to try dialing a number, pausing, and then pressing a tone. Here's what the PIN email invites look like, which use this system: David Jackson has scheduled a call with you. To join, tap here: 11111111111,2,73827 Call start: Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 7:00:00 AM Pacific Standard Time Call end: Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 8:00:00 AM Pacific Standard Time You will be able to call David Jackson starting 5 minutes before the scheduled time and until 5 minutes after. You can continue talking after the scheduled end time, but you can only call David Jackson during this window of time. If you're unable to join via the link above, call 1111111111, wait for the prompt and then press 2, and enter the PIN 73827. Your call will then be forwarded to David Jackson. Organizer notes: None.
- soared 7y agoI would’ve loved this prior to getting a new iPhone, but from my perspective the iOS setting that sends numbers not in your contact straight to voicemail does 90% of what I’d use this service for. You obviously have some useful features though (I do miss calls on occasion).
- ZARinfluencer 7y agoHow long is waiting list for your app?
- martin_a 7y agoPeople! You really need to get into politics or whatever and fix those things from a legal side! You really need to stop inventing services and starting businesses for the most simple things in life! edit: Don't get me wrong, I love the spirit, but there are _real_ problems to tackle and you are still working on stopping telephone spam? It's 2020, nobody should even think about things like that...
- qorrect 7y agoWhat should we be thinking about ?
- procombo 7y agoApparently we are all supposed to become lawyers. ;)
- procombo 7y agoCreating a whitelist service for yourself literally only takes a couple hours studying Twilio docs. Hardly a huge waste of time, and when you get 2 spam calls every morning before 8 am for weeks it's completely worth it.
- martin_a 7y agoCreating change in a society might also only take a couple hours, but serve the people next to you and after you. Just imagine you would be in charge to keep your whole town clean of robocalls. What would you do? Set this up for everybody in town, administer it and take care that it's up 24/7? Helping (anywhere in the line of this process) to pass a law that simply prohibits such calls seems to be more efficient.
- niij 7y agoMost robocalls are illegal anyway, unless you've given your explicit consent to a company, like your utility company. Making something illegal doesn't mean it goes away completely (or at all). https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0259-robocalls#legal https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0259-robocalls#legal
- jeremyw 7y agoI built a whitelisting phone system for my aging dad with Twilio, an OBi200 VoIP adapter, and gcloud for transcribing untrusted calls sent to voicemail. (US specific) If you think the aggressive IRS and Sheriff scams are bad -- you've committed a crime only $100 _right now_ will solve! -- the shakedowns targeting enfeebled senior citizens are truly sinister. Which is to say, people who care for seniors (children of, part time caregivers, etc) are an unserved audience for tools like yours. I would have paid for one had it existed.
- davidajackson 7y agoGood to hear, it's sad to see grandparents/parents get scammed. I've had a few senior citizens getting these types of scams use CallStop to protect their cell and landline. It feels good to be helping them.
- tehlike 7y agoAndroid/google got better with this past few years...
- bawolff 7y agoInteresting. I kind of wish there was like an audio captcha app. If the number isnt in your contacts, voice comes on asking them to type some random 4 digit number. Well it is of course anarms race, almost all my call spam is recordings so i think itd be effective.
- gnicholas 7y agoGoogle voice has a feature where you can ask the person to say their name. Not sure if they force you to hit # after or what happens with automated callers, but I could imagine this being a decent solution.
- davidajackson 7y agoA few people have mentioned they'd like this service, where a random digit/puzzle is presented. I decided to focus on people who wanted the most extreme call blocking service but would like to come back to this later.
- procombo 7y agoWhitelists works fine. Pin "extensions" work fine. The next step is probably just a simple question/answer regarding personal information about the recipient. Just like account security questions. Provide drop down selector/s for users to select their question. I'm not going to provide my public number here, but if a caller of mine isn't whitelisted I just prompt them for my billing zip code. Now, that's not going to work for every one, but considering who I want to get phone calls from, it's pretty foolproof. Keep the energy up @davidajackson. I'd love to see you hugely successful with your efforts!
- QUFB 7y agoI've set up something similar to this on my Asterisk server. I prompt callers not on my whitelist to respond to: "Tell me, what is 2 plus 5?", and parse the response with Google Cloud voice to text (7 is a good response as it is reliably parsed). For the motivated, it's a short weekend project.
- ThomPete 7y agoCongrats on the launch. My advice is to stay away from the "Like X for your Y". Define your own category otherwise, you will end up just copying way too much of Superhumans thinking.
- davidajackson 7y agoI definitely will need a non-analogy description. I've called it a "Call Manager" on the App Store. I'll see if I can think of something more... descriptive.
- armatav 7y agoI thought CallKit only allows a blacklist of numbers to block, not a whitelist.
- davidajackson 7y agoNumbers forwarding means you can create whitelists. CallKit doesn't support whitelisting as you mention. Whitelisting with CallKit was the first thing I looked for in the Apple developer docs, and there was nothing on it, so I used number forwarding.
- ascar 7y agoThe problem I have with a whitlisting approach is, what if it's actually some legitimate and damn important call? When my father was in the hospital close to death I got informed by phone from an unknown number. You get these calls hopefully only a few times in your lifetime, but I definitely don't want to miss them. What's your approach for these cases?
- craftyguy 7y ago> What's your approach for these cases? If it's important enough, the caller will leave a voicemail.
- WarOnPrivacy 7y agoI had unknown/blocked phone numbers blocked so a deputy had to unblock her number to notify me my brother had died. I would've been alright with a voicemail, tho.
- davidajackson 7y agoMost people don't answer unknown calls anymore. They're likely to miss these life/death calls right now. That's why the PIN feature is better for most people--you can give a 5 digit PIN to loved ones. You may be an exception if you answer every call--I won't answer any call from an unknown number, and most young people don't answer unknown calls anymore. Seniors tend to answer more, but that's because they are more used to landlines and times when there were less robocalls. I'd rather make sure that my family can remember a 5 digit PIN (obviously there are lots of tricks to make numbers memorable) than answer every unknown call in my life.
- wrs 7y agoUntil this service becomes so popular that the robocallers start deliberately working around it, I think you may only need a 1-digit PIN. I've had a service from the phone company on my landline for decades that just makes an unknown caller dial a 1 before my phone will ring, and it continues to nearly eliminate spam calls. So the 1-digit PIN can just be a "1".
- winrid 7y agoSo it's like a shared and community driven (but automatic) blacklist? Do numbers ever need to get whitelisted?
- davidajackson 7y agoCallStop uses whitelists that each person manages. When an unknown caller calls you, they hear, "You have reached a phone number protected by CallStop. If you know this person, press 1 to send a whitelist request with a quick note. If you have a PIN to reach this person directly, press 2 and enter the PIN." Your contacts are your default whitelist to begin.
- davidtranjs 7y agoGreat tools. I am just a normal web developer, yet still receive unwanted calls from the insurance sale every month
- pavel_lishin 7y agoI want something different. I want a Lenny, but that I don't have to conference in. That step is failure prone, takes time, and usually doesn't work -by the time Lenny is on the line, the spammer has long fucked off. I want a "bot" that spews nonsense - but sufficiently plausible nonsense to keep spammers on the line - that I can activate with a single button click, at any point during a phone conversation with anyone. Either by reaching out to a remote server, or by running it locally on my phone. When a human being reaches my phone, I want to be able to keep them from reaching others, for at least some time. ( Lenny: https://toao.net/595-lenny https://toao.net/595-lenny )
- offtotheraces 7y agoCheck out the Robokiller app - their answerbots do exactly what you described. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robokiller-block-spam-calls/id1022831885 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robokiller-block-spam-calls/id...
- Terretta 7y agoThis one also has ‘neighbor spoofing’ blocking.
- pavel_lishin 7y agoI tried - it might work like that on iPhone, but on Android you have to enable some network-specific features that Google Fi doesn't currently support :(
- rckoepke 7y agoAbsolutely - I think something like this could make it non-profitable to operate as a telemarketer or telescammer anymore.
- Shank 7y agoDoes it work with Google Voice forwarding? I tested it by calling my Google Voice number, but it looks like it doesn't.
- davidajackson 7y agoYou can protect any number (cell, landline, google voice number) by forwarding that number to your CallStop number. As long as you can forward the number to CallStop, you can screen calls in this fashion. If you're intending to route incoming calls from your CallStop number to another number, let me know and I can try to add that option into the app. Also my email is david@callstop.com if I can help any further.
- colbertw08 7y agoCongrats, definitely going to give this a try as I get spam calls all day long! I wanted to tinker around with other phone projects what provider are you using on the backend if you don’t mind sharing ?
- davidajackson 7y agoLet me know how you like the app! The backend uses Twilio. They have good documentation and examples, and their teams are responsive.