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I 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 co

I 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 ago
Imagine all of the unnecessary insurance and “Google tech support” you’re missing out on purchasing.
superchink 3y ago
This 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 ago
  Thank you for mentioning this. It was news to me
- yreg 3y ago
  How 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 ago
    I 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.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    I was waiting by the door for an Amazon package recently that was out for delivery and I got a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it and the guy said "Hi, I'm calling from Amazon delivery." and they almost had me. He then said some bullshit about needing me to log into some random URL and a laughed and hung up on him. The timing was essential, though.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    That's relatively uncommon in the US, except for food and other perishables. Although often they text. But the people I know who order food and silence their phone normally are glued to the tracking page in the app anyway.
- officeplant 3y ago
  Then I get complaints from doctors that they are being shoved directly to voice mail, because they somehow have 8 different numbers to log.
kelnos 3y ago
Yup, same. I'll make an exception if I'm expecting an important call but aren't sure of what number it's going to come from. This is rare enough that it doesn't bother me much. And now that some calls are SHAKEN/STIR-verified, with a caller ID, I can often have good confidence before I pick up that it's actually the call I'm waiting for.
lisper 3y ago
This is a specific example of what should be a much more general practice: having separate protocols for establishing an initial contact and establishing a communications session with an already existing contact. My email spam filter is based on this. It does a first-stage separation between email from people I've corresponded with in the past and everything else. That simple heuristic is enough to achieve >99% accuracy all by itself.
- jowea 3y ago
  I navel-gaze that if we redesigned communications from the ground up we could handle this better. When you greet someone physically you can add each other as known trusted contacts immediately. And when you sign up to some service online and have to put in your contact info, which likewise prompts you to add them as contact. And you can't share along a contact you know to someone else without that contact ID uniquely identifying you. That way, everyone who should contact you can do so and if someone else gets their hand on your contact info you can figure out who leaked it.
  - sspiff 3y ago
    I do this with my email. I have a bunch of different emails under my own domain, and I use info+uniqueidentifier@domain.org for registrations which do not warrant their own actual email handle. This way, I can easily filter incoming email, and I can see where an email came from if any party sells my data. This also works with GMail by the way, you can use youraccount+anyrandomstring@gmail.com and emails will still be delivered to you. I use a separate email handle that I only hand out to actual human beings, never to companies and never use for account registrations. This has worked really well for the past 15 years or so.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Apple has this as a service now. It's more automatic than the GMail process and works well. A weakness with the GMail process is that spammers are able to remove the + part (even if most don't), and your credentials or identity can be aligned across leaked credential databases by removing the + part.
berniedurfee 3y ago
100% If the number isn’t in my contacts, it goes to voicemail. I used to answer calls from local numbers, but I’ve started getting spam calls with my local area code now.
amelius 3y ago
I have a different system. I pick up the phone, listen to them for a bit, tell them "please wait while I get my credit card number", and then I just walk away with the connection still open.
lsb 3y ago
This is an example of the Trust On First Use policy, like when you SSH to a machine whose cert you don't have and you are invited to trust it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_on_first_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_on_first_use
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  And the entire "Hang up, look up, call back" is just a trapdoor firewall. From a 10,000-foot perspective, humans and computers are the same, they're just nodes that communicate information.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    Man I think about this all the time. We have robots calling humans and robots answering calls to verify the other end isn't a robot. We just need to connect the dots and have the robots talk to the robots and collate the important bits for the humans. English becomes a fuzzy "API" for the robots to communicate with each other. I get weirded out when I think about it.
pedalpete 3y ago
That's my approach as well, but I had the same number calling me for 3 weeks and I finally answered. It was my electric company, something had gone wrong with a payment. They have my email address, they send me txts all the time, but apparently collections is still making phone calls. Had to be the dumbest thing I'd seen. Once I answered and found out the issue, I paid the bill properly, but I wonder how far it would have gone before they cut off my power, while they kept sending me emails and txts about things that have nothing to do with my bill.
- jimmygrapes 3y ago
  For some places their internal processes require positive contact with the account holder, in other words they can't trust that an email or text will be read (or read by the account holder). They definitely should've tried at least once though, especially if you opted for that as your primary communication method.
- ssl-3 3y ago
  That seems strange to me. I mean: I think it is perfectly OK to have a policy that requires real people to make real phone calls for some things -- especially things that might not fit into automated systems. But I think it's very bizarre that these real people would not also leave a voicemail message stating the purpose of the call. (There's tons of reasons for people to not answer the phone that extend beyond screening unknown numbers. Like: I might be happy to answer the phone for a strange number but I'm crawling around under my car and my hands are covered in greasy road funk. Or I'm with a client. Or I'm at work and my boss is an overbearing prick. Or...)
toomim 3y ago
If your car gets stolen, and the police find it, they will call you from a phone number that's not in your contacts. If you don't pick up, you won't realize that your stolen car has been recovered a couple miles from your house, and if you show up there in 30 minutes you can drive it back home, but if you don't, the police will send it to a towing yard, which will require you to go through 24 hours of paperwork with the police to obtain a release and then pay the towing yard $1,000+ to tow and store your car. If you live in an area of low crime, though, maybe it'll be fine not to answer phone calls from numbers that aren't in your phone.
- jamestanderson 3y ago
  In my experience, police officers leave voice messages.
- ryandvm 3y ago
  Man, that is the most edge case reason I've ever heard for answering anonymous calls.
  - bredren 3y ago
    It is. Unless you own a pre-2005 subaru.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    Medical calls are another, strangers finding your lost stuff is a third. I'm probably forgetting more. Biggest reason - voicemail. Most numbers have a mailbox limit, it's somewhat common to reach a number that has a full mailbox. Sure, you should be emptying your mailbox, but this still means you can easily drop calls if you haven't checked it in a while.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - jijji 3y ago
    I answer every call. no matter what the caller ID. I'm a landlord I have hundreds of rentals. I get calls from police and detectives from blocked numbers sometimes from people that are frantically complaining about something that's very serious and requires my immediate attention to call police or to respond immediately.... I've had situations involving death where you know not answering the phone is not an option at least for me.
TinyRick 3y ago
I do exactly this but take it even one step further. My actual (primary) phone number is only ever given out to humans. I have a second Google Voice phone number that I give out to machines (e.g. online shopping that "requires" a phone number that will eventually be leaked).
- jghn 3y ago
  What happens when one of the people to whom you gave your number shares their contacts with some app?
  - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
    This is why I use a numeric pager, digits handed out to both machines and humans. I call back from an unlisted number. Few people have my actual phone #. ---- If people are persistant, I usually mention something to the effect of "you don't want my phone number in your device, I know some weird people." ---- The first time I used Venmo, was also my last — the "feature" which show you every person who has your phone number in their phonebook was a bit too weird [the idea of public payments also strange].
heavyset_go 3y ago
Spammers will spoof local numbers. I had my pharmacy call me only to find out it was a scam call that used spoofing.
- runeb 3y ago
  This is also why you always call anyone you don’t know back on a listed number like the switchboard of the company they claim to be from if you think you need to engage with them
- petsfed 3y ago
  I've a somewhat uncommon area code (less than a million 307 numbers), so any time I get a call from a 307 number, I'm reasonably confident that its either a wrong number, or a spoofed number. In either case, I don't answer. Its quite a system.
simion314 3y ago
I have a child, he has a phone but his battery might go empty, or the phone is lost or broken, he has my number written down and I instruct him to call me from a colleague or a stranger. Maybe my case is special since my son has some health issues so I really want to know immediately if something happened. This kind of problem needs to be solved at the root cause, say if the phone companies could be made to pay a bit when you get spammed and forced to recover their costs from the spammers the issue would be solved, now if they profit the issue will get larger and alrger.
- smaudet 3y ago
  For this type of case it would be ideal if you could give him a passcode. Couldn't be too difficult to set up a "unknown number" redirect that prompts for a pin, then forwards to a live line if correct.
  - simion314 3y ago
    This is adding more complexity. The solution is super simple, you should be able to report the number as spam, if a few other people report the number then the phone company will block the number and the phone company will have to pay the customers affected a small sum. You will immediately see the phone companies putting the work for detecting mass spammers, making sure that businesses that do mass calls have deposits for the case they abuse the system etc.
swader999 3y ago
I wonder if this could be setup as a rule to go directly to voice mail if not in contacts.
- runeb 3y ago
  iPhones has a setting for this
- ipnon 3y ago
  Yes, this is available in iOS settings.
  - erikcw 3y ago
    I've always wished that there was an option to whitelist certain area codes. I've had the same number for 20 years, and now live in a different part of the country. I get very little spam from local area codes -- but a ton spoofing my phone number's area code. Sending all calls all those calls to voicemail while continuing to ring for local would be the right balance (kids' school, doctors office, etc...).
samstave 3y ago
I do a thing where I answer and just dont say anything (ensuring my enviornment is silent) for like 20+ seconds.... they hang up and I block number. (The bot thinks its a dead num and I dont get calls again.
yreg 3y ago
I do the same, but even the legitimate callers never seem to leave a voicemail or send a text message. I have missed deliveries or other important things due to my policy.
RHSeeger 3y ago
Many of us are in situations where we get calls from various people we haven't had contact before (nurse at the child's school, parent's doctor, there's a lot of them) that should be answered immediately; waiting until later to listen to the message could have significant impacts. Some of the calls (injured child) could require immediate contact and, if not answered, could result in other issues.
- heleninboodler 3y ago
  Yeah, when you have small children, your obligation to pick up the phone when they aren't with you is increased. I also find that whenever you're shopping for big-ticket items that involve salespeople and soliciting multiple bids, you have to forego your "don't pick up the phone for unknown numbers" policy. I now just pick up and say "hello?" and count off two seconds. If I don't hear a response within that time I hang up. I've had a couple false positives, but they generally just assume there was a dropped call and try again.
  - myself248 3y ago
    I pick up and don't say anything. Humans typically, after about 4 seconds, go "umm.. hello?" and I have a conversation with them, while bots simply hang up.
  - bityard 3y ago
    Wow, everyone's imaginations sure ran wild with this. Yes, I use common sense and DO pick up calls from unknown numbers when I am expecting them. Most days, I am not expecting them.
    - heleninboodler 3y ago
      Same, except I am expecting calls from unknown numbers more or less constantly these days. I do remember a time in my life where I could get away with an attitude of "people I care about have other ways to contact me, so this is a non-problem," but that was basically before marriage, kids, and homeownership.
Aissen 3y ago
I do this too, but I also remember that I'm doing this from a situation of privilege, where I mostly don't have to wait for calls that could be life changing (ex: old-school HR calling back for a new job).
petsfed 3y ago
I've had a disturbingly large number of repeat calls from people who absolutely refuse to leave a message. And it's always some recruiter who saw an opening on indeed or somewhere and thinks the resume I updated 5 years ago is a good match. The problem is that if I'm getting repeated calls from an unrecognized number, I'm assuming my wife, my kids, or my parents are in an ambulance, so I have to drop everything and answer. As a rule of thumb, if I get a one-off call that doesn't leave a message, I'll search my email inbox for that number, as they've probably contacted me separately. However, one time, I got called 5 times in 90 minutes, with the only message being 23 seconds of silence, and an email I hadn't even read yet (searching the number brought up the email). I sent an angry email that amounted to "you have told me how you AND YOUR CLIENTS treat prospective employees' time. I will never apply to any job you suggest, even independently of you. Stop calling"
TylerE 3y ago
One major flaw in this, at least for me: Dr's offices. They love to dial from a gazillion random numbers, and for privacy reasons they often leave no message or a very vague and concerning "Call us when you get this" sort of thing.
- ninkendo 3y ago
  Ugh, and then you call the number and it takes you to an IVR menu where the only options are “billing” and “surgery” or other some such. I’ve had doctors call me with results and the only way I could get ahold of them was to call, pretend I had a billing issue to get to some human, then try to convince them to connect me to the person who just called me not 5 minutes ago.
- bityard 3y ago
  Yes. The office that I am with just leaves a message saying to call them back. I am always happy to.
crazygringo 3y ago
> and it hasn't let me down yet. It's let me down a ton. Deliveries, contractors, maintenance people, doctor's offices with a last minute appointment available, and so forth. Fortunately never for a true emergency, but that's also something to keep in mind as well. There are lots of things that people simply don't leave a voice mail or text because if they can't contact you immediately, there's no point. Or if the contractor can't get you on the phone, they'll just move onto the next home and skip work on yours that day or that whole week. So it's not win/win. It's very much win/lose.
- genevra 3y ago
  A good tactic I use is as stated + if you see a number you don't recognize is to answer and then put yourself on mute and wait. Typically robocalls just hang up after a few seconds of silence.
  - motoxpro 3y ago
    I struggle to do this cause it shows that the number is valid. Always leads to an increase in calls for me :(
    - nazgulsenpai 3y ago
      Not answering also lets them know the number is valid, unless they receive some sort of error after dialing.
  - seadan83 3y ago
    Call centers will dial multiple numbers and connect to only the ones where someone responds. Sometimes they will still hang up on you because multiple calls responded. Probably a wash whatever you do after picking up.
- mathgradthrow 3y ago
  my strategy is to live in a different place than my area code and only pick up from number that do not share my area code. This is pretty clise to working but I did almost miss an instacart delivery because they happened to be from my home town.
officeplant 3y ago
I try to live this way, but people have become increasingly bad at actually leaving voicemails.
whyenot 3y ago
It's great when it works, but when my mom was in the hospital and they needed to reach me, I got burned by this big time and don't do it anymore. It's too easy to miss a call that could literally be life and death (my mom is better now).
batch12 3y ago
I do the same thing usually. If I do pick up an unknown number because I am expecting something, I usually press speaker and mute and just wait. If it's a person, I'll get an awkward Hello? And if it's an auto dialer usually I get nothing or the waterdrop beep and drop either way.
dorkwood 3y ago
This method unfortunately falls apart if you get a phone call from a hospital. They'll leave you a voice message, but when you call the same number back you'll get the front desk instead of the doctor who left you the message. They'll patch you through to the ward your Dad's in, but they won't be able to give out any information over the phone, so you'll need to wait for the doctor to call you back. They're out doing their rounds at the moment, but they'll get back to you as soon as they can.
solardev 3y ago
On Pixel phones (or was it Google Fi? can't remember), this is automatic. If it's not someone in my contact list already, known spam gets auto blocked and everyone else gets redirects to the voice assistant that takes a message and transcribes it. Cuts down on spam like 99% for me. I had an iPhone for a few months and the spam was so bad, even with the third party spam blockers. I switched back to Android shortly after.

mogadsheu 3y ago

Imagine all of the unnecessary insurance and “Google tech support” you’re missing out on purchasing.

superchink 3y ago

This 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 ago
Thank you for mentioning this. It was news to me
yreg 3y ago
How 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 ago
  I 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.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  I was waiting by the door for an Amazon package recently that was out for delivery and I got a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it and the guy said "Hi, I'm calling from Amazon delivery." and they almost had me. He then said some bullshit about needing me to log into some random URL and a laughed and hung up on him. The timing was essential, though.
- kube-system 3y ago
  That's relatively uncommon in the US, except for food and other perishables. Although often they text. But the people I know who order food and silence their phone normally are glued to the tracking page in the app anyway.
officeplant 3y ago
Then I get complaints from doctors that they are being shoved directly to voice mail, because they somehow have 8 different numbers to log.

kelnos 3y ago

Yup, same. I'll make an exception if I'm expecting an important call but aren't sure of what number it's going to come from. This is rare enough that it doesn't bother me much. And now that some calls are SHAKEN/STIR-verified, with a caller ID, I can often have good confidence before I pick up that it's actually the call I'm waiting for.

lisper 3y ago

This is a specific example of what should be a much more general practice: having separate protocols for establishing an initial contact and establishing a communications session with an already existing contact. My email spam filter is based on this. It does a first-stage separation between email from people I've corresponded with in the past and everything else. That simple heuristic is enough to achieve >99% accuracy all by itself.

jowea 3y ago
I navel-gaze that if we redesigned communications from the ground up we could handle this better. When you greet someone physically you can add each other as known trusted contacts immediately. And when you sign up to some service online and have to put in your contact info, which likewise prompts you to add them as contact. And you can't share along a contact you know to someone else without that contact ID uniquely identifying you. That way, everyone who should contact you can do so and if someone else gets their hand on your contact info you can figure out who leaked it.
- sspiff 3y ago
  I do this with my email. I have a bunch of different emails under my own domain, and I use info+uniqueidentifier@domain.org for registrations which do not warrant their own actual email handle. This way, I can easily filter incoming email, and I can see where an email came from if any party sells my data. This also works with GMail by the way, you can use youraccount+anyrandomstring@gmail.com and emails will still be delivered to you. I use a separate email handle that I only hand out to actual human beings, never to companies and never use for account registrations. This has worked really well for the past 15 years or so.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Apple has this as a service now. It's more automatic than the GMail process and works well. A weakness with the GMail process is that spammers are able to remove the + part (even if most don't), and your credentials or identity can be aligned across leaked credential databases by removing the + part.

berniedurfee 3y ago

100% If the number isn’t in my contacts, it goes to voicemail. I used to answer calls from local numbers, but I’ve started getting spam calls with my local area code now.

amelius 3y ago

I have a different system. I pick up the phone, listen to them for a bit, tell them "please wait while I get my credit card number", and then I just walk away with the connection still open.

lsb 3y ago

This is an example of the Trust On First Use policy, like when you SSH to a machine whose cert you don't have and you are invited to trust it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_on_first_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_on_first_use

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
And the entire "Hang up, look up, call back" is just a trapdoor firewall. From a 10,000-foot perspective, humans and computers are the same, they're just nodes that communicate information.
- coldpie 3y ago
  Man I think about this all the time. We have robots calling humans and robots answering calls to verify the other end isn't a robot. We just need to connect the dots and have the robots talk to the robots and collate the important bits for the humans. English becomes a fuzzy "API" for the robots to communicate with each other. I get weirded out when I think about it.

pedalpete 3y ago

That's my approach as well, but I had the same number calling me for 3 weeks and I finally answered. It was my electric company, something had gone wrong with a payment. They have my email address, they send me txts all the time, but apparently collections is still making phone calls. Had to be the dumbest thing I'd seen. Once I answered and found out the issue, I paid the bill properly, but I wonder how far it would have gone before they cut off my power, while they kept sending me emails and txts about things that have nothing to do with my bill.

jimmygrapes 3y ago
For some places their internal processes require positive contact with the account holder, in other words they can't trust that an email or text will be read (or read by the account holder). They definitely should've tried at least once though, especially if you opted for that as your primary communication method.
ssl-3 3y ago
That seems strange to me. I mean: I think it is perfectly OK to have a policy that requires real people to make real phone calls for some things -- especially things that might not fit into automated systems. But I think it's very bizarre that these real people would not also leave a voicemail message stating the purpose of the call. (There's tons of reasons for people to not answer the phone that extend beyond screening unknown numbers. Like: I might be happy to answer the phone for a strange number but I'm crawling around under my car and my hands are covered in greasy road funk. Or I'm with a client. Or I'm at work and my boss is an overbearing prick. Or...)

toomim 3y ago

If your car gets stolen, and the police find it, they will call you from a phone number that's not in your contacts. If you don't pick up, you won't realize that your stolen car has been recovered a couple miles from your house, and if you show up there in 30 minutes you can drive it back home, but if you don't, the police will send it to a towing yard, which will require you to go through 24 hours of paperwork with the police to obtain a release and then pay the towing yard $1,000+ to tow and store your car. If you live in an area of low crime, though, maybe it'll be fine not to answer phone calls from numbers that aren't in your phone.

jamestanderson 3y ago
In my experience, police officers leave voice messages.
ryandvm 3y ago
Man, that is the most edge case reason I've ever heard for answering anonymous calls.
- bredren 3y ago
  It is. Unless you own a pre-2005 subaru.
- smaudet 3y ago
  Medical calls are another, strangers finding your lost stuff is a third. I'm probably forgetting more. Biggest reason - voicemail. Most numbers have a mailbox limit, it's somewhat common to reach a number that has a full mailbox. Sure, you should be emptying your mailbox, but this still means you can easily drop calls if you haven't checked it in a while.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jijji 3y ago
  I answer every call. no matter what the caller ID. I'm a landlord I have hundreds of rentals. I get calls from police and detectives from blocked numbers sometimes from people that are frantically complaining about something that's very serious and requires my immediate attention to call police or to respond immediately.... I've had situations involving death where you know not answering the phone is not an option at least for me.

TinyRick 3y ago

I do exactly this but take it even one step further. My actual (primary) phone number is only ever given out to humans. I have a second Google Voice phone number that I give out to machines (e.g. online shopping that "requires" a phone number that will eventually be leaked).

jghn 3y ago
What happens when one of the people to whom you gave your number shares their contacts with some app?
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  This is why I use a numeric pager, digits handed out to both machines and humans. I call back from an unlisted number. Few people have my actual phone #. ---- If people are persistant, I usually mention something to the effect of "you don't want my phone number in your device, I know some weird people." ---- The first time I used Venmo, was also my last — the "feature" which show you every person who has your phone number in their phonebook was a bit too weird [the idea of public payments also strange].

heavyset_go 3y ago

Spammers will spoof local numbers. I had my pharmacy call me only to find out it was a scam call that used spoofing.

runeb 3y ago
This is also why you always call anyone you don’t know back on a listed number like the switchboard of the company they claim to be from if you think you need to engage with them
petsfed 3y ago
I've a somewhat uncommon area code (less than a million 307 numbers), so any time I get a call from a 307 number, I'm reasonably confident that its either a wrong number, or a spoofed number. In either case, I don't answer. Its quite a system.

simion314 3y ago

I have a child, he has a phone but his battery might go empty, or the phone is lost or broken, he has my number written down and I instruct him to call me from a colleague or a stranger. Maybe my case is special since my son has some health issues so I really want to know immediately if something happened. This kind of problem needs to be solved at the root cause, say if the phone companies could be made to pay a bit when you get spammed and forced to recover their costs from the spammers the issue would be solved, now if they profit the issue will get larger and alrger.

smaudet 3y ago
For this type of case it would be ideal if you could give him a passcode. Couldn't be too difficult to set up a "unknown number" redirect that prompts for a pin, then forwards to a live line if correct.
- simion314 3y ago
  This is adding more complexity. The solution is super simple, you should be able to report the number as spam, if a few other people report the number then the phone company will block the number and the phone company will have to pay the customers affected a small sum. You will immediately see the phone companies putting the work for detecting mass spammers, making sure that businesses that do mass calls have deposits for the case they abuse the system etc.

swader999 3y ago

I wonder if this could be setup as a rule to go directly to voice mail if not in contacts.

runeb 3y ago
iPhones has a setting for this
ipnon 3y ago
Yes, this is available in iOS settings.
- erikcw 3y ago
  I've always wished that there was an option to whitelist certain area codes. I've had the same number for 20 years, and now live in a different part of the country. I get very little spam from local area codes -- but a ton spoofing my phone number's area code. Sending all calls all those calls to voicemail while continuing to ring for local would be the right balance (kids' school, doctors office, etc...).

samstave 3y ago

I do a thing where I answer and just dont say anything (ensuring my enviornment is silent) for like 20+ seconds.... they hang up and I block number. (The bot thinks its a dead num and I dont get calls again.

yreg 3y ago

I do the same, but even the legitimate callers never seem to leave a voicemail or send a text message. I have missed deliveries or other important things due to my policy.

RHSeeger 3y ago

Many of us are in situations where we get calls from various people we haven't had contact before (nurse at the child's school, parent's doctor, there's a lot of them) that should be answered immediately; waiting until later to listen to the message could have significant impacts. Some of the calls (injured child) could require immediate contact and, if not answered, could result in other issues.

heleninboodler 3y ago
Yeah, when you have small children, your obligation to pick up the phone when they aren't with you is increased. I also find that whenever you're shopping for big-ticket items that involve salespeople and soliciting multiple bids, you have to forego your "don't pick up the phone for unknown numbers" policy. I now just pick up and say "hello?" and count off two seconds. If I don't hear a response within that time I hang up. I've had a couple false positives, but they generally just assume there was a dropped call and try again.
- myself248 3y ago
  I pick up and don't say anything. Humans typically, after about 4 seconds, go "umm.. hello?" and I have a conversation with them, while bots simply hang up.
- bityard 3y ago
  Wow, everyone's imaginations sure ran wild with this. Yes, I use common sense and DO pick up calls from unknown numbers when I am expecting them. Most days, I am not expecting them.
  - heleninboodler 3y ago
    Same, except I am expecting calls from unknown numbers more or less constantly these days. I do remember a time in my life where I could get away with an attitude of "people I care about have other ways to contact me, so this is a non-problem," but that was basically before marriage, kids, and homeownership.

Aissen 3y ago

I do this too, but I also remember that I'm doing this from a situation of privilege, where I mostly don't have to wait for calls that could be life changing (ex: old-school HR calling back for a new job).

petsfed 3y ago

I've had a disturbingly large number of repeat calls from people who absolutely refuse to leave a message. And it's always some recruiter who saw an opening on indeed or somewhere and thinks the resume I updated 5 years ago is a good match. The problem is that if I'm getting repeated calls from an unrecognized number, I'm assuming my wife, my kids, or my parents are in an ambulance, so I have to drop everything and answer. As a rule of thumb, if I get a one-off call that doesn't leave a message, I'll search my email inbox for that number, as they've probably contacted me separately. However, one time, I got called 5 times in 90 minutes, with the only message being 23 seconds of silence, and an email I hadn't even read yet (searching the number brought up the email). I sent an angry email that amounted to "you have told me how you AND YOUR CLIENTS treat prospective employees' time. I will never apply to any job you suggest, even independently of you. Stop calling"

TylerE 3y ago

One major flaw in this, at least for me: Dr's offices. They love to dial from a gazillion random numbers, and for privacy reasons they often leave no message or a very vague and concerning "Call us when you get this" sort of thing.

ninkendo 3y ago
Ugh, and then you call the number and it takes you to an IVR menu where the only options are “billing” and “surgery” or other some such. I’ve had doctors call me with results and the only way I could get ahold of them was to call, pretend I had a billing issue to get to some human, then try to convince them to connect me to the person who just called me not 5 minutes ago.
bityard 3y ago
Yes. The office that I am with just leaves a message saying to call them back. I am always happy to.

crazygringo 3y ago

> and it hasn't let me down yet. It's let me down a ton. Deliveries, contractors, maintenance people, doctor's offices with a last minute appointment available, and so forth. Fortunately never for a true emergency, but that's also something to keep in mind as well. There are lots of things that people simply don't leave a voice mail or text because if they can't contact you immediately, there's no point. Or if the contractor can't get you on the phone, they'll just move onto the next home and skip work on yours that day or that whole week. So it's not win/win. It's very much win/lose.

genevra 3y ago
A good tactic I use is as stated + if you see a number you don't recognize is to answer and then put yourself on mute and wait. Typically robocalls just hang up after a few seconds of silence.
- motoxpro 3y ago
  I struggle to do this cause it shows that the number is valid. Always leads to an increase in calls for me :(
  - nazgulsenpai 3y ago
    Not answering also lets them know the number is valid, unless they receive some sort of error after dialing.
- seadan83 3y ago
  Call centers will dial multiple numbers and connect to only the ones where someone responds. Sometimes they will still hang up on you because multiple calls responded. Probably a wash whatever you do after picking up.
mathgradthrow 3y ago
my strategy is to live in a different place than my area code and only pick up from number that do not share my area code. This is pretty clise to working but I did almost miss an instacart delivery because they happened to be from my home town.

officeplant 3y ago

I try to live this way, but people have become increasingly bad at actually leaving voicemails.

whyenot 3y ago

It's great when it works, but when my mom was in the hospital and they needed to reach me, I got burned by this big time and don't do it anymore. It's too easy to miss a call that could literally be life and death (my mom is better now).

batch12 3y ago

I do the same thing usually. If I do pick up an unknown number because I am expecting something, I usually press speaker and mute and just wait. If it's a person, I'll get an awkward Hello? And if it's an auto dialer usually I get nothing or the waterdrop beep and drop either way.

dorkwood 3y ago

This method unfortunately falls apart if you get a phone call from a hospital. They'll leave you a voice message, but when you call the same number back you'll get the front desk instead of the doctor who left you the message. They'll patch you through to the ward your Dad's in, but they won't be able to give out any information over the phone, so you'll need to wait for the doctor to call you back. They're out doing their rounds at the moment, but they'll get back to you as soon as they can.

solardev 3y ago

On Pixel phones (or was it Google Fi? can't remember), this is automatic. If it's not someone in my contact list already, known spam gets auto blocked and everyone else gets redirects to the voice assistant that takes a message and transcribes it. Cuts down on spam like 99% for me. I had an iPhone for a few months and the spam was so bad, even with the third party spam blockers. I switched back to Android shortly after.