2 ms·

Are you thinking of caller Id? Admittedly it's not perfect, but it's there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID On

• burnished 5y ago
  Its spoofable, right? I think thats the current problem, you can't really trust caller id to be accurate.
  • sillyquiet 5y ago
    Sure, but so then is email. I don't know if there is a perfect way to automate out of this problem, just providing the phone user a set of tools to judge whether to answer a call or not. My own personal tool is: unless I am expecting a call from a strange number, callers not in my contact list are silenced automatically and go straight to voicemail. If it's important, like a relative calling from someone else's phone in an emergency situation or say, my bank calling about a fraudulent credit card charge, they will leave a message I can review. Especially with the voicemail transcription tools I get with my phone and provider, its pretty easy to delete the 'You won a free cruise' or 'IRS is suing you for fraud' messages.
• kayodelycaon 5y ago
  The issue is, if you have a local area code, you get spam calls from adjacent numbers all the time. I have a Seattle area code due to living there many years ago. I don’t know anyone in Seattle, so spam is immediately identifiable.