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While not exactly the same, I once got a call from a number I didn't recognize, and when I answered the phone it was a recording of my wife saying "Hello?". I n
by lizardking 3y ago
While not exactly the same, I once got a call from a number I didn't recognize, and when I answered the phone it was a recording of my wife saying "Hello?". I no longer answer phone calls by saying "Hello", unless I know the caller.
- datameta 3y agoPrecisely, I give zero information. If I do pick up once in a blue moon, I pause for 3-5 seconds to give a chance for the human to start (if it isn't a bot).
- Buttons840 3y agoI have a Pixel phone and a Google bot can answer the phone for me. It transcribes the conversations on my phone in real-time, and I can push a few buttons to tell to bot what to say--things like "tell me more", or "please tell me why you're calling". If the entity calling gives an explanation I care about, then I can press a button and the bot says "thanks, connecting you now" and then I can say "hello" with my own voice and have a normal conversation. I think most people think it's just a fancy answering machine, they don't realize I'm controlling it. Voice calls are on the decline anyway, but I think it's becoming possible to have a very sophisticated AI secretary answer calls for you, even beyond what I've explained Google is doing. Imagine being able to give your LLM phone secretary a prompt and it would answer calls for you. You could tell it something like "the snowblower I listed in the classifieds is already sold" and maybe it could automatically resolve some calls or text messages for you.
- doctorwho42 3y agoDitto, it really should be the standard. Well, as well as the government actually enforcing these laws strictly. I am pretty sure they could compel companies to maintain and filter out spam/robo calls. Especially if it costs them $$$$$
- godelski 3y agoI have the same phone and feature. My experience is that everyone always hangs up immediately after facing the screener. I'd love to actually use this feature, I mean hell, I can fucking text responses to them and read what they say through it! But I never can in a realistic setting because people hear robot and hang up. I've been eagerly waiting Apple's release so that the feature becomes more well known. Google really dropped the ball on advertising and honestly I think should have just pushed it to all Android phones because you need to change how people interact. I've worried it would go away because Google deems it "useless" despite its uselessness being that the feature is just not known. There's just too few Pixel phones so people aren't experiencing the screener and so act like a normal human being and go "robot? Ugh, fuck that" and associate this with calling a 1 800 number.
- Buttons840 3y agoYeah, most people hang up immediately, mission accomplished probably. Sometimes the doctors office calls and awkwardly starts leaving a full fledged message rather than just saying their name (like the bot tells them to), then, when I press the answer button the bot interrupts them and we start a normal phone call. In fairness, it may be awkward, but it doesn't waste the caller's time, none of the robot messages are long, and people are quickly able to say their name and why they're calling.
- godelski 3y agoMy experience is more them just hanging up. Including the doctor's office. A funny case was my friend used me as a reference for a security clearance. They called, skipped to voicemail, I immediately call back to find a busy line, I leave a message, then I get a call back the next day from a new number in which I now need to just answer any unknown number. That's also happened with doctors and other offices, so it completely undermines the feature for me. Yeah, it helps with robocallers, but the DNC list does a better job. The feature has a ton of potential though, I just think it is useless if it doesn't enter the public lexicon. I've never had the experience you've had where they start to leave a message. Maybe because I don't live in The Bay? Idk. They either just hang up or go to voicemail. Which always results in the game of phone tag. So not only was mission __not__ accomplished, but the mission difficulty increased.
- itishappy 3y ago> I think most people think it's just a fancy answering machine, they don't realize I'm controlling it. FWIW, I'm betting it is just a fancy answering machine for most people. I use this feature (couldn't live without it), but I've never once been in-the-loop. My phone acts autonomously! I checked the logs for a few months, but I don't even bother anymore. It's never had a false positive.
- adamomada 3y agoThe phone system has gotten so bad these days that a lot of the time the pausing for 3-5 seconds isn’t voluntary - it just doesn’t connect the call properly. The most basic hundred year old regular phone call is too much to handle for modern systems I suppose
- chrsw 3y agoExactly what I do. And I don't pick up unless I recognize the number or I'm expecting a call for a specific reason.
- saalweachter 3y agoI just answer every phone call by saying, "My voice is my password, verify me."
- colinsane 3y agosame, but now a lot of callers whom i would like to speak with -- e.g. my insurance company -- just hang up before greeting me (because they think my phone's broken?). but then if i screen everyone via voicemail instead, a different (but overlapping) portion of callers refuse to leave messages. it's like everyone's given up on using the POTS outside of their immediate social circle, and the few people/businesses who still do are either malicious, or are just going through the motions. thanks spammers. and thanks FCC for sitting idly over the decades and letting the spammers ruin it. weird time to finally put your foot down, but sure, okay.
- djbusby 3y agoI'm still using "Ahoy-hoy" as Bell intended.
- adamomada 3y agoTry out “Pronto?” like the Italians for extra flavour
- bdowling 3y agoTry “Moshi-moshi?” for a Japanese flavor.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoOr a Chinese Wei? Or may favorite, shei ya? (Said a in a teenage girl accent)
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWell, this is a pretty niche question, but 谁啊 and 谁呀 are pretty much indistinguishable. Do you know how Chinese people tend to write it? In my mind it's 谁啊.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago谁啊 could be said by anyone, 谁呀 is the just the cute inflected 谁啊。My 7 year old over uses 呀 I think because of the kid shows he watched when he was younger.
- clove 3y ago呀 is grammatically correct for use with words ending with a long e sound. (This post is addressed to the person asking a question below.)
- robertlagrant 3y agoI haven't seen High and Low[0] in decades, but the way Toshiro Mifune answers the phone is burned into my brain. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_and_Low_(1963_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_and_Low_(1963_film)
- Mistletoe 3y agoYou just gave me chills. The future is going to be very creepy and unnerving I think.
- smolder 3y agoThe creepy, unnerving future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
- munk-a 3y agoSorry for the breach of phone etiquette but I am on the same page here - the caller needs to speak first so I can tell whether they're a real person or not. If it's an automated system I'm happy to remain silent in the hope that they don't realize my phone number isn't another automated system.
- jayknight 3y agoYep, wait and if a human is like "hello?", then say "Can you hear me now?"
- bityard 3y agoI guess you'll end up confusing a lot of people since it's exactly backwards from the normal handshake. Although you're not alone, most of the time when I call customer support and it's an overseas call center, I have to say Hello 2-3 times before the person on the other end acknowledges my existence. I guess they don't realize that I can hear all of their background noise before they talk.
- munk-a 3y agoIf they end up hanging up and texting me out of confusion then that's the best outcome I could've asked for... otherwise the call is either from a receptionist (who generally speak first anyways) or a relative that has learned of my vocal recalcitrance.
- jowea 3y agoMaybe robocalls will get so annoying that rule will change. And don't normal people end up saying something like "hello?? Anyone there?" in that case anyway?
- bee_rider 3y agoI think the convention is that the person whose job it is to be on the phone is responsible for speaking first. In the very rare event that somebody calls somebody else for leisure (who doesn’t text yet? Really.) I guess the caller should initiate.
- mtillman 3y agoMy employees get calls from "Hey, this is Mike at Goldman Sachs. Matt asked me to give you a call about the customer volumes."
- brigadier132 3y agoI've been getting these calls where nobody says anything for like 3 minutes then someone says Hello. My paranoid mind thinks they are trying to record my voice to use AI to impersonate me.
- pmontra 3y agoShould we start randomly picking the helo message from other countries? I'd go with mushi-mushi. A number of my friends would understand that.
- Larrikin 3y agoThey wouldn't if you said it like that https://jisho.org/word/%E3%82%82%E3%81%97%E3%82%82%E3%81%97 https://jisho.org/word/%E3%82%82%E3%81%97%E3%82%82%E3%81%97
- ooterness 3y agoSame. Probably from playing too much Uplink, where calling the sysadmin was the easy way to circumvent the voiceprint authentication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplink_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplink_(video_game) "I am the systems administrator. My voice is my passport. Verify me." (Which is itself a callback to the 1992 movie Sneakers.)
- throwaway29812 3y agoThat game was so, so good. Do you know any others that feel the same way? (doesn't have to be about hacking)
- acomjean 3y agoThe pause used to be while they routed the auto dialed call to an available agent (can’t have them waiting for the rings… efficiency!). In this case you may be right.
- coldpie 3y agoFWIW, I get these, too. All unknown numbers go straight to voicemail, which auto-transcribes, so I just see "Hello... hello..." in the transcription and hit delete. No idea what it's about.
- BlackjackCF 3y agoWhat are they actually trying to achieve by doing this? To get you to speak so they can record more voice samples?
- Macha 3y agoI think it's about proof that the number puts them in touch with a real person. I suspect if the robocall gets enough engagement they'll even put an actual scammer on their end.
- jowea 3y agoMy other guess is that it's one of those things where it only connects to actual person if you say something. I could try actually talking to see what happens but now that I read on this thread that they record you for replay maybe not.
- corytheboyd 3y agoAbsolutely this, I am confident that there are people out there who verify phone numbers from data leaks, selling off known “good” numbers to other nefarious people. They probably record it all now too and sell that.
- Cacti 3y agoThere are a series of gates. At the end is the scam. Each gate is designed to filter out those who will reach the end and not fall for the scam. Or in other words, by the time you are making the scam pitch, the scam is already done, because you know by then it will work. The calls are just one of the early gates, as someone screening your call is likely not to fall for the eventual scam. The gates don’t have to be clever for this to work. There merely has to be enough people that you are going to find that 0.1% who will fall for it.
- FergusArgyll 3y agoThis is what always gets me. I want to finally speak to the scammer and have him listen to me play guitar, but alas! I fail the tests...
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoNowadays I just grunt, I don't think they can voice print a grunt
- bityard 3y agoI have a system that takes it one step further and both reduces the awkwardness and false-positive rate at the same time: I add the people that I know to the contacts on my phone. When a call comes in as a number instead of a name, I simply decline to pick it up. If it's not a spam call, they will either leave a voice message or send a text. If they do neither, then either it was a spam/scam call, or whatever they had to say probably wasn't that important in the first place. Win/win. I've been doing this for a little over a decade and it hasn't let me down yet.
- mogadsheu 3y agoImagine all of the unnecessary insurance and “Google tech support” you’re missing out on purchasing.
- superchink 3y agoThis 100%. iPhones have a feature to do this automatically. It doesn’t even ring, and goes straight to voicemail if they’re not in your contacts. It’s so freeing! https://support.apple.com/en-us/111106 https://support.apple.com/en-us/111106
- czbond 3y agoThank you for mentioning this. It was news to me
- yreg 3y agoHow do you deal with deliveries from DHL and similar? Everytime I buy something from an eshop I have to start taking calls around the delivery date. Also it would be a bit annoying (and risky!) to have to remember to turn it on and off again any time I order food.
- superchink 3y agoI have cameras and and a smart doorbell so I know if someone is at the door. This plus in-app notifications handles food delivery for me. You can also set up a shortcut to toggle the setting. There’s been a couple times when waiting for a callback where I turn the setting off. Then when I get the call I switch it back. Ultimately, for me, the pros far outweigh the cons. But you have to make the decision for yourself.
- standardUser 3y agoYou guys are answering the phone? Maybe if I just placed a delivery order I will answer for an unknown local number. Beyond that, leave a message at the beep and maybe I'll check it in a few days.
- corytheboyd 3y agoWhen you’re dealing with contractors and whatever for house stuff, yeah you kinda need to answer the phone for long stretches of time. Same if you have kids (I don’t), you need to be receptive. Yes yes I am incredibly aware that people can leave voicemails and send text messages, but many out there won’t do it, from real experience, especially those outside of the tech bubble.
- antisthenes 3y agoI answer the phone and don't say anything. Humans will typically ask if anyone is there, robots will either start their pre-recorded bullshit or hang up.
- tombert 3y agoI have gotten into the habit of answering the phone in the Graham-Bell/Mr. Burns way by answering "Ahoy Hoy" whenever I get a number that I don't recognize. I figure that that's not going to be as useful for any training purposes, and is also pretty inoffensive, so even if I don't get a robot then it won't offend anyone.
- lmm 3y ago> I figure that that's not going to be as useful for any training purposes Um what? Why? It's just as much a sample of your voice, and if it's what you usually say on the phone then a recording of it will... sound like it's you on the phone.
- tombert 3y agoThis is going to highlight my ignorance of AI, so bear with me, but my rationale (which is probably wrong) was that they are training their model on my voice specifically for the word "hello". If I provide "Ahoy Hoy!" to them instead, and their system thinks that that is "hello", it might mess up their model a bit. As I said, I don't really know what I'm talking about, that was just my rationale.
- corytheboyd 3y agoYep, I don’t say hello anymore either, if I don’t recognize the number. Makes things awkward sometimes, but this is the dogshit awful world we live in.
- holoduke 3y agoWonder how many secs of voice you need to replicate one. You can call a number programmatically, ask something silly. record the response and then recreate the voice. I can imagine one can do much harm. Like calling the voice's boss and tell him you fell in love with his wife and now resign.
- LegitShady 3y agoReceiving a call like that would terrify me. I'd become super paranoid. I've been screening all my calls with the pixel call screener feature. Worth it.
- b8 3y agoThis is why I love Google's new AI phone call screening feature. Some people get spooked by it and hang up, and sometimes spam calls get through via exploits like calling twice within a short time or somehow bypassing with a weird spoofed number (only happened 1-2 times so far)
- chaoticmass 3y agoIf I don't know the number, I answer with "Hola. Buenos días."
- Osiris 3y agoIf I immediately hear sound from the caller it's usually a valid call. If I wait several seconds and it's just quiet, it's an automatic dialer waiting for a voice response. I found it highly effective at weeding out spam calls.
- germinalphrase 3y agoI was once told that some automated dialing systems will listen for, and hang up/flag the number as another automated system, if you wait four seconds, say hello very clearly, and then say nothing else. It… seems to work?
- DonHopkins 3y agoI have a friend who would always answer the phone with a robotic monotone "READY" like a C64 BASIC prompt. It made people think he was a robot, and confused the real robots.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoat 56 i hate to admit it, but i think i just lol-ed.
- leptons 3y agoI only answer the phone with "Who's calling?". If I don't want to talk to them, they get "this is his assistant, he's not available". If it sounds even slightly like a canned voice it gets hung up on.
- rmbyrro 3y agoThat's going to be a major and widespread issue very soon. Unfortunately, rulings such as this FCC's are ineffective to prevent it. If someone is already committing fraud, they obviously won't care if it's illegal to use an AI-generated voice.
- CivBase 3y agoI just don't care. It's not like they can train a bot to convincingly speak like me from just one word. And if they can, the game is already over and we've all lost. That said, I don't answer suspicious numbers and I won't move past "hello" until the caller identifies themselves.
- jpl56 3y agoWhen an unknown call happens, I pick up and wait 3 seconds before saying "Hello". Most of the time, the robot detects no voice and hangs up.