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Dunno what I said the last time a call violated the do-not-call list and woke me. They actually called back later to tell me how shook up they were, and that th
by Syzygies 5y ago
Dunno what I said the last time a call violated the do-not-call list and woke me. They actually called back later to tell me how shook up they were, and that they'd been discussing my response with their lawyers.
I don't see a difference between kidnapping one person for a week, and taking ten seconds away from 56,874 people. I'd support similar penalties.
I decided to fix this problem.
Phone.com is aimed at small businesses; if you have three extensions in your house they default to ringing separately like cubicles. However, any HN reader will have no trouble customizing their service.
I have one service spanning homes on both coasts. The phone number I give out has a white list, or answers with a recorded message to press 7. Apparently this is enough to evade all robocalls. Successful callers ring the extensions where I'm scheduled to be, and the Phone.com app on my cell phone.
My cell phone is otherwise set to "Do Not Disturb" so it only rings if you're in that address book. The Phone.com app is a bit clumsy (it doesn't track switching to AirPods once the call starts, for example) but for answering calls it works.
Some legitimate businesses robodial numbers before putting on a human. They don't get through. Life goes on. They should know better than to appear to be a robocall.
- rightbyte 5y agoSo a captcha for phones? Like "press 7 to reach me". Great idea acctually.
- irobeth 5y agoI have this set up at twilio with a simple Studio workflow and so far it defeats 100% of automated dialers: A lot of auto-dialers wait to hear a human, so to trigger anything listening for a response, the challenge goes "Can you hear me? This number is protected by Samaritan Call Protection" (shout-out to Person of Interest) Then about a second later, it follows "Press 5 to be connected." Things that dial 5 get a ring-through to my cell, things that don't get blackholed.
- fapjacks 5y agoThis is exactly what I do, but I use a randomly-generated-per-call two-digit number to advance the caller from my (Asterisk-based) IVR. It works like a charm.