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I wish spam prevention was a bigger part of Apple's culture. I get spam robocalls on my iPhone and have no way to block them. I have recently started getting

I wish spam prevention was a bigger part of Apple's culture. I get spam robocalls on my iPhone and have no way to block them. I have recently started getting unblockable requests to Facetime with strangers on my Mac -- a service I didn't even know I was logged into. I have an Apple email address that is way behind Gmail on spam prevention. And as noted in the article, iOS notification spam is now an issue. In contrast, Google has anti-spam as a core corporate competency. They know that where there is a profit motive, there will be spam. They truly think like hackers -- "if I were a bad actor, how would I abuse this feature?" Apple needs to pick this up.

spartango 14y ago
I wonder if internally, Google has recognized a business value-prop for fighting spam: One might argue that by combating spam and noisy advertising, Google makes its own advertising less likely to get ignored (lumped in with the spam), and thus higher value. Obviously this is a simplistic perspective, but perhaps there's some version of it that makes Google more incentivized to fight spam than Apple might be. Apple is incentivized by a "what makes for the best user experience" which has a more nebulous set of criteria.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Actually gmail was competing with HotMail/AOLMail and the biggest single thing that would get people to switch was 'better spam control.' All you need to do is to tell a bunch of really smart engineers, "Here is this hugely important problem to solve, you probably aren't smart enough to solve it but we'll listen to what you have to say." And you get every engineer spending their 20% time burning first through the 'easy' fixes which don't actually work and then on to more 'interesting' fixes that kinda do, and finally some real puzzle masters doing things you would not expect but actually nail a lot of spam. And after you've done that then you have a number of people who really get a kick out of this sort of intellectual battle of wits, and you pull them together and make them the 'spam team'. Voila' achievement unlocked.
  - jusben1369 14y ago
    I still remember being blown away when I switched. I'd given up on SPAM. My wife still uses Yahoo and sometimes I'll go into her email to help with something and be shocked by how much she gets. Spam control is also the reason my two daughters have Gmail accounts so Google is capturing the next generation. (On a random side note my kids were actually disappointed when Buzz went away. They were all using it as their first SN experience as they were too young to be allowed access to anything else)
- wickeand000 14y ago
  I was thinking about this just yesterday. I think Google's spam blocking accuracy is just a reflection of their advertising acuity. The better their advertising becomes, the better they can fight spam because they know what you want, and by extension what you don't. Furthermore, any advances in spam blocking technology are also advances in advertising technology.
- JeremyMorgan 14y ago
  Yep. When I hear people complain about spam I usually think "wow, people still get that?" I've been on gmail since 2004 and even direct my @domain mail there.
T-Winsnes 14y ago
In all honesty, I get just as many push notification spam message on my android phone. It's an instant uninstall trigger for me. I see it more of a push notification problem rather than an apple/ios problem. It reminds me of how popups were really useful when they first came out, until they started being used as a marketing tool.
- swohns 14y ago
  I 100% second this sentiment. I think if users start doing this more often, and reflect this in the reviews in the app store (or if the app store could have an "% of app downloads deleted" or some other metric showing dissatisfied user behavior) that would similarly solve the problem.
  - krickle 14y ago
    I gave a one-star review to an app just for spamming me with "like us on Facebook" requests in the app. But the number of reviews it had was well into the hundreds by the time I got to it, so my effect was miniscule. I agree with you completely, but as long as we are dreaming of an ideal world we may as well assume all apps behave in the first place :/
    - swohns 14y ago
      Just saw a pitch in NYC where they said that less than 3% of their users disable push notification, so they reasoned that this means push is the notification of choice. We spoke afterwards, and it seems like outright deletes were low as well (no number here), so it seems like this sort of abuse is not punished (like I think it should be) by users. Unless we get better feedback mechanisms, this sort of abuse will continue.
danielweber 14y ago
Remember when Netscape pushed out its browser with a pop-up blocker? And when you first launched it you got a pop-up ad because their parent (I think it was AOL at the time) demanded to be both their homepage as well as have an exception from the pop-up blocker? I'm coming around to the idea that there is no such thing as free (gratis) software.
msluyter 14y ago
I get spam robocalls on my iPhone and have no way to block them. +1 Indeed. Somehow I've ended up on a number of phone spammer databases, such that I go through periods of getting 5+ calls per day. (Yes, of course I'm on the national do-not-call list and it's illegal to contact cell phones this way.) On Verizon you can block certain numbers (including "unkown"), though I believe it costs an additional 5$ a month. For the last 5 years or so I've been in the habit of not answering any call from a number not on my contact list, but I'd love a good (cheap) way to block spam calls. (And there aren't any good apps for this... I'm guessing Apple doesn't provide an API to actual phone functionality?)
- mikeash 14y ago
  If they have consistent caller ID (big if, I know, but it happens, and it still works if they use several numbers, as long as they're not totally random) then you can "block" them simply by putting them into a contact that has a silent ring tone and a vibration pattern of "None". They'll still show up on the screen when they call (and potentially interrupt you if you happened to be using something on the phone) but it's way less annoying. Just thought I'd mention it in case you didn't know about that strategy and it's helpful for you.
- MrMember 14y ago
  On Verizon you can block up to five numbers for free. For an extra $5 a month you can block up to twenty numbers and get a bit finer control.
- rdl 14y ago
  It's annoying -- the best thing I've found is to use something like Google Voice (or run your own, build it with plivo or twilio), run calls through that, and set your default ringtone to silent/no vibrate, while setting a real ringtone and vibration for calls from the gateway. Unfortunately this means not getting caller-ID for callers.
dredmorbius 14y ago
For Android at least, there are numerous call-blocking apps. I use (though am increasingly frustrated with the privacy policy and feature-creep of) Mr Number, which can block all unknown numbers as well as specific blacklisted numbers. What I'd REALLY prefer would be a way to categorize contacts into priority groups. Family/VIP, who can reach me 24/7/365. Friends who can call most of the time. Other contacts who can reach me daylight/weekday hours. And the rest who roll straight to voicemail. Add a schedulable exception (allow all calls in the next X hours because I'm expecting one from someone whose number I can't identify in advance). Combine this with a visual voicemail (Google's product is good, but they already own far, far, far too much of my life) and I'd bitch a lot less about phones. Increasingly: voice calls are very distracting and annoying. Unless you've got very good reason to call me, don't. I don't even get to "please don't call me" any more, I'll simply hang up (on the rare occasions an unwelcome call gets through).
- saurik 14y ago
  RingerX VIP (for jailbroken iOS devices) isn't quite what you want, but is fairly close. iBlacklist (one of its competitors) may or may not be closer (I don't personally use that one). (They both leave a lot to be desired with respect to the UI for maintaining your categorization.)
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  Tasker can do most of what you want, and it's fairly straightforward to set up, since it's a very common use of the application.
- abraham 14y ago
  Most of that can be done with Google Voice.
- runT1ME 14y ago
  I actually wrote this. Problem is, cheapest VoIP termination is ~$8 a month (not to mention server/bandwidth costs). We had a nice system where you could group contacts and depending on both your location and 'status', certain people would either ring through, be prompted that they may be interrupting and ask if they'd like to proceed, or go straight to the cellphone's voicemail. People loved the demo we'd show them, but very few loved it enough to pay more than a couple bucks a month for the service.
brokentone 14y ago
While I agree with your premise, I don't think it has bearing on this discussion. Whereas unwanted calls, texts, etc are a pervasive problem across all telephony and particularly cellular devices--one that the FTC has taken lead on dealing with, they do not particularly affect and are not preventable by any hardware manufacturer.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  With my Android phone tied to Google Voice I can block specific numbers and Google blocks a bunch of them for me out of the gate: http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115089 http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
  - brokentone 14y ago
    Can you use an Android phone without a Google Voice number? If not then this also exists on iPhones, through the Google Voice app, just possibly tighter integration. Google Voice != iPhone; Google Voice ~= ATT
    - georgemcbay 14y ago
      Different carriers have different support for Google Voice. Sprint has native Google Voice integration where your GV number is your carrier number. On other carriers the integration isn't as tight, but the experience is still superior to the iPhone Google Voice experience in that Google Voice on Android integrates with the standard phone dialer so you just make outgoing calls like you normally would using the standard dialer (or any other app which invokes the standard dialer) and they go through Google Voice.
- lukeschlather 14y ago
  I'd agree that the hardware manufacturers aren't necessarily to blame, someone should be championing a real spam roundup API that lets you easily click a button when you get a text or phone call and report the sender as spam to the FTC. The FTC is the logical place to start that, but I don't see why Apple or Verizon or anyone couldn't get the ball rolling.
saurik 14y ago
I imagine that in a more perfect world, rather than competing with each other to control a vertically integrated solution, the people best at building hardware would instead cooperate with with the people best at building cloud services (and vice versa). I really miss believing that the world we really live in could ever actually work that way. :(
- cageface 14y ago
  Unfortunately for Apple it seems to be easier for Google to catch up in OS and hardware design than it does for Apple to catch up in services.
fierarul 14y ago
Yep, Apple imagines people are just as perfect as their own devices. On the iPhone I had to make a custom app (https://bitbucket.org/emilianbold/noblocked/wiki https://bitbucket.org/emilianbold/noblocked/wiki ) just to block calls from hidden numbers. I guess the current iOS 6 with "Do Not Disturb" might help with that. It's only been 2 years(!) since I wrote my app so I should have waited :-| Oh, wait, iOS 6 doesn't even run on the iPhone 3G this was intended for.
- iamdave 14y ago
  Yep, Apple imagines people are just as perfect as their own devices. Peter principle of consumer electronics?
microtherion 14y ago
I get SMS spam on Google Voice somewhat regularly, and occasionally also voice mail spam. As for Google's concern with "bad actors", any search with "ebook" or "download" would tend to demonstrate that as long as they get their vig, Google is quite flexible on what constitutes a "bad actor".
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I was shocked to get my first spam text in 3 years over the weekend. I was pretty surprised as my number is in plaintext on my blog, Facebook and is found with my name in Google searches. On the other hand, not a single human being other than my mother know my real mobile number and I get a spam text once a month. That and a quick look at my Gmail Inbox/Spam-folder indicates that they're still winning the fight.
bad_user 14y ago
Part of Apple's culture? How about allowing apps that block calls in the app store from third-parties? A year and a half ago I passed on buying a new iPhone, even though I owned a 3GS and out of frustration I've gone out of my way to buy a Galaxy S. The Android Marketplace (as it was called back then) had several apps for blocking calls, some of them broken on my Galaxy S, but I could find one that worked and solved my problem. So you know, I'm sure that one day Apple will wake up and provide the very best experience for blocking phone calls and SMS messages. But that's something I've been doing for at least 1 year and a half already, which goes to show just how fucked up is Apple's gatekeeper culture. "So this expensive gadget doesn't solve your real problems, but look how user-friendly it is".
- maxjg 14y ago
  As frustrating as it may be, an app that has that type of low-level access would probably be just as abused (if not more so) as push notifications. I can't blame Apple for not wanting to be blamed for the inevitable app that phones home your call log.
jlturner 14y ago
Maybe Apple just needs to screen push notifications sent by apps better? Or maybe just a way for users to report spam push notifications to Apple?
biturd 14y ago
Here's how I block numbers on an iPhone, regardless of OS version. First, you can do so in your AT&T account. I've never tried this but number blocking showed up as a feature a few months ago. I would bet they charge for it, restart your contract, and use it as an excuse to disable any grandfathered unlimited accounts. On your phone create a new contact called "z_telemarketers of shame". Any time you get a call from a telemarketer, robocall, etc., add that number to that contact. I use the "other" label. And feel free to create more granularity such as robocallers, telemarketers, spam, and so on. I then set the option for that contact to silent at all times by turning the vibrate and ringer, settings both to none. In iOS 6 you can take it a bit further by creating a group in your Contacts. You can't create groups on the phone so you will have to do this on your computer. You can then add these callers to this group and configure them as part of your "Do Not Disturb" settings. I don't do this as I prefer to use the feature as intended. They do still call, and you will still see them light up your phone, but if you aren't paying attention, you won't notice. Aside from within your AT&T account, at this time, I don't know any way to block before they get to your phone. ( Unless you jailbreak ) If they have a tendency to leave voicemails it can be a bummer. What I have noticed after doing this is you can get them to stop. The trick seems to be to never answer, let it ring all the way through, don't "clip" the call, shooting them to voicemail right away. Don't give them any indication there will ever be someone to answer the call. Revert your voicemail message to the default so you aren't speaking. I've gone from several a day down to one every few months with this technique. It took about six months to work. I have about 100 numbers in various callers that start with "z_", which is a convention I made up to push the name to the bottom of the list and keep it mostly out of sight.
- willvarfar 14y ago
  does this have interesting side effects on the "social" apps that want to import your contacts? Any fun stories to be found there?
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  > The trick seems to be to never answer, let it ring all the way through, don't "clip" the call, shooting them to voicemail right away. There's a trick that works on all of the phones I've checked so far; instead of answering or rejecting the call, push the volume button - it will let the call ring through, but it'll silence the ringtone and stop vibrations. I find it to be one of the most useful (and frequently used) features of my phone.

spartango 14y ago

I wonder if internally, Google has recognized a business value-prop for fighting spam: One might argue that by combating spam and noisy advertising, Google makes its own advertising less likely to get ignored (lumped in with the spam), and thus higher value. Obviously this is a simplistic perspective, but perhaps there's some version of it that makes Google more incentivized to fight spam than Apple might be. Apple is incentivized by a "what makes for the best user experience" which has a more nebulous set of criteria.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Actually gmail was competing with HotMail/AOLMail and the biggest single thing that would get people to switch was 'better spam control.' All you need to do is to tell a bunch of really smart engineers, "Here is this hugely important problem to solve, you probably aren't smart enough to solve it but we'll listen to what you have to say." And you get every engineer spending their 20% time burning first through the 'easy' fixes which don't actually work and then on to more 'interesting' fixes that kinda do, and finally some real puzzle masters doing things you would not expect but actually nail a lot of spam. And after you've done that then you have a number of people who really get a kick out of this sort of intellectual battle of wits, and you pull them together and make them the 'spam team'. Voila' achievement unlocked.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  I still remember being blown away when I switched. I'd given up on SPAM. My wife still uses Yahoo and sometimes I'll go into her email to help with something and be shocked by how much she gets. Spam control is also the reason my two daughters have Gmail accounts so Google is capturing the next generation. (On a random side note my kids were actually disappointed when Buzz went away. They were all using it as their first SN experience as they were too young to be allowed access to anything else)
wickeand000 14y ago
I was thinking about this just yesterday. I think Google's spam blocking accuracy is just a reflection of their advertising acuity. The better their advertising becomes, the better they can fight spam because they know what you want, and by extension what you don't. Furthermore, any advances in spam blocking technology are also advances in advertising technology.
JeremyMorgan 14y ago
Yep. When I hear people complain about spam I usually think "wow, people still get that?" I've been on gmail since 2004 and even direct my @domain mail there.

T-Winsnes 14y ago

In all honesty, I get just as many push notification spam message on my android phone. It's an instant uninstall trigger for me. I see it more of a push notification problem rather than an apple/ios problem. It reminds me of how popups were really useful when they first came out, until they started being used as a marketing tool.

swohns 14y ago
I 100% second this sentiment. I think if users start doing this more often, and reflect this in the reviews in the app store (or if the app store could have an "% of app downloads deleted" or some other metric showing dissatisfied user behavior) that would similarly solve the problem.
- krickle 14y ago
  I gave a one-star review to an app just for spamming me with "like us on Facebook" requests in the app. But the number of reviews it had was well into the hundreds by the time I got to it, so my effect was miniscule. I agree with you completely, but as long as we are dreaming of an ideal world we may as well assume all apps behave in the first place :/
  - swohns 14y ago
    Just saw a pitch in NYC where they said that less than 3% of their users disable push notification, so they reasoned that this means push is the notification of choice. We spoke afterwards, and it seems like outright deletes were low as well (no number here), so it seems like this sort of abuse is not punished (like I think it should be) by users. Unless we get better feedback mechanisms, this sort of abuse will continue.

danielweber 14y ago

Remember when Netscape pushed out its browser with a pop-up blocker? And when you first launched it you got a pop-up ad because their parent (I think it was AOL at the time) demanded to be both their homepage as well as have an exception from the pop-up blocker? I'm coming around to the idea that there is no such thing as free (gratis) software.

msluyter 14y ago

I get spam robocalls on my iPhone and have no way to block them. +1 Indeed. Somehow I've ended up on a number of phone spammer databases, such that I go through periods of getting 5+ calls per day. (Yes, of course I'm on the national do-not-call list and it's illegal to contact cell phones this way.) On Verizon you can block certain numbers (including "unkown"), though I believe it costs an additional 5$ a month. For the last 5 years or so I've been in the habit of not answering any call from a number not on my contact list, but I'd love a good (cheap) way to block spam calls. (And there aren't any good apps for this... I'm guessing Apple doesn't provide an API to actual phone functionality?)

mikeash 14y ago
If they have consistent caller ID (big if, I know, but it happens, and it still works if they use several numbers, as long as they're not totally random) then you can "block" them simply by putting them into a contact that has a silent ring tone and a vibration pattern of "None". They'll still show up on the screen when they call (and potentially interrupt you if you happened to be using something on the phone) but it's way less annoying. Just thought I'd mention it in case you didn't know about that strategy and it's helpful for you.
MrMember 14y ago
On Verizon you can block up to five numbers for free. For an extra $5 a month you can block up to twenty numbers and get a bit finer control.
rdl 14y ago
It's annoying -- the best thing I've found is to use something like Google Voice (or run your own, build it with plivo or twilio), run calls through that, and set your default ringtone to silent/no vibrate, while setting a real ringtone and vibration for calls from the gateway. Unfortunately this means not getting caller-ID for callers.

dredmorbius 14y ago

For Android at least, there are numerous call-blocking apps. I use (though am increasingly frustrated with the privacy policy and feature-creep of) Mr Number, which can block all unknown numbers as well as specific blacklisted numbers. What I'd REALLY prefer would be a way to categorize contacts into priority groups. Family/VIP, who can reach me 24/7/365. Friends who can call most of the time. Other contacts who can reach me daylight/weekday hours. And the rest who roll straight to voicemail. Add a schedulable exception (allow all calls in the next X hours because I'm expecting one from someone whose number I can't identify in advance). Combine this with a visual voicemail (Google's product is good, but they already own far, far, far too much of my life) and I'd bitch a lot less about phones. Increasingly: voice calls are very distracting and annoying. Unless you've got very good reason to call me, don't. I don't even get to "please don't call me" any more, I'll simply hang up (on the rare occasions an unwelcome call gets through).

saurik 14y ago
RingerX VIP (for jailbroken iOS devices) isn't quite what you want, but is fairly close. iBlacklist (one of its competitors) may or may not be closer (I don't personally use that one). (They both leave a lot to be desired with respect to the UI for maintaining your categorization.)
chimeracoder 14y ago
Tasker can do most of what you want, and it's fairly straightforward to set up, since it's a very common use of the application.
abraham 14y ago
Most of that can be done with Google Voice.
runT1ME 14y ago
I actually wrote this. Problem is, cheapest VoIP termination is ~$8 a month (not to mention server/bandwidth costs). We had a nice system where you could group contacts and depending on both your location and 'status', certain people would either ring through, be prompted that they may be interrupting and ask if they'd like to proceed, or go straight to the cellphone's voicemail. People loved the demo we'd show them, but very few loved it enough to pay more than a couple bucks a month for the service.

brokentone 14y ago

While I agree with your premise, I don't think it has bearing on this discussion. Whereas unwanted calls, texts, etc are a pervasive problem across all telephony and particularly cellular devices--one that the FTC has taken lead on dealing with, they do not particularly affect and are not preventable by any hardware manufacturer.

georgemcbay 14y ago
With my Android phone tied to Google Voice I can block specific numbers and Google blocks a bunch of them for me out of the gate: http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115089 http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
- brokentone 14y ago
  Can you use an Android phone without a Google Voice number? If not then this also exists on iPhones, through the Google Voice app, just possibly tighter integration. Google Voice != iPhone; Google Voice ~= ATT
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    Different carriers have different support for Google Voice. Sprint has native Google Voice integration where your GV number is your carrier number. On other carriers the integration isn't as tight, but the experience is still superior to the iPhone Google Voice experience in that Google Voice on Android integrates with the standard phone dialer so you just make outgoing calls like you normally would using the standard dialer (or any other app which invokes the standard dialer) and they go through Google Voice.
lukeschlather 14y ago
I'd agree that the hardware manufacturers aren't necessarily to blame, someone should be championing a real spam roundup API that lets you easily click a button when you get a text or phone call and report the sender as spam to the FTC. The FTC is the logical place to start that, but I don't see why Apple or Verizon or anyone couldn't get the ball rolling.

saurik 14y ago

I imagine that in a more perfect world, rather than competing with each other to control a vertically integrated solution, the people best at building hardware would instead cooperate with with the people best at building cloud services (and vice versa). I really miss believing that the world we really live in could ever actually work that way. :(

cageface 14y ago
Unfortunately for Apple it seems to be easier for Google to catch up in OS and hardware design than it does for Apple to catch up in services.

fierarul 14y ago

Yep, Apple imagines people are just as perfect as their own devices. On the iPhone I had to make a custom app (https://bitbucket.org/emilianbold/noblocked/wiki https://bitbucket.org/emilianbold/noblocked/wiki ) just to block calls from hidden numbers. I guess the current iOS 6 with "Do Not Disturb" might help with that. It's only been 2 years(!) since I wrote my app so I should have waited :-| Oh, wait, iOS 6 doesn't even run on the iPhone 3G this was intended for.

iamdave 14y ago
Yep, Apple imagines people are just as perfect as their own devices. Peter principle of consumer electronics?

microtherion 14y ago

I get SMS spam on Google Voice somewhat regularly, and occasionally also voice mail spam. As for Google's concern with "bad actors", any search with "ebook" or "download" would tend to demonstrate that as long as they get their vig, Google is quite flexible on what constitutes a "bad actor".

drivebyacct2 14y ago
I was shocked to get my first spam text in 3 years over the weekend. I was pretty surprised as my number is in plaintext on my blog, Facebook and is found with my name in Google searches. On the other hand, not a single human being other than my mother know my real mobile number and I get a spam text once a month. That and a quick look at my Gmail Inbox/Spam-folder indicates that they're still winning the fight.

bad_user 14y ago

Part of Apple's culture? How about allowing apps that block calls in the app store from third-parties? A year and a half ago I passed on buying a new iPhone, even though I owned a 3GS and out of frustration I've gone out of my way to buy a Galaxy S. The Android Marketplace (as it was called back then) had several apps for blocking calls, some of them broken on my Galaxy S, but I could find one that worked and solved my problem. So you know, I'm sure that one day Apple will wake up and provide the very best experience for blocking phone calls and SMS messages. But that's something I've been doing for at least 1 year and a half already, which goes to show just how fucked up is Apple's gatekeeper culture. "So this expensive gadget doesn't solve your real problems, but look how user-friendly it is".

maxjg 14y ago
As frustrating as it may be, an app that has that type of low-level access would probably be just as abused (if not more so) as push notifications. I can't blame Apple for not wanting to be blamed for the inevitable app that phones home your call log.

jlturner 14y ago

Maybe Apple just needs to screen push notifications sent by apps better? Or maybe just a way for users to report spam push notifications to Apple?

biturd 14y ago

Here's how I block numbers on an iPhone, regardless of OS version. First, you can do so in your AT&T account. I've never tried this but number blocking showed up as a feature a few months ago. I would bet they charge for it, restart your contract, and use it as an excuse to disable any grandfathered unlimited accounts. On your phone create a new contact called "z_telemarketers of shame". Any time you get a call from a telemarketer, robocall, etc., add that number to that contact. I use the "other" label. And feel free to create more granularity such as robocallers, telemarketers, spam, and so on. I then set the option for that contact to silent at all times by turning the vibrate and ringer, settings both to none. In iOS 6 you can take it a bit further by creating a group in your Contacts. You can't create groups on the phone so you will have to do this on your computer. You can then add these callers to this group and configure them as part of your "Do Not Disturb" settings. I don't do this as I prefer to use the feature as intended. They do still call, and you will still see them light up your phone, but if you aren't paying attention, you won't notice. Aside from within your AT&T account, at this time, I don't know any way to block before they get to your phone. ( Unless you jailbreak ) If they have a tendency to leave voicemails it can be a bummer. What I have noticed after doing this is you can get them to stop. The trick seems to be to never answer, let it ring all the way through, don't "clip" the call, shooting them to voicemail right away. Don't give them any indication there will ever be someone to answer the call. Revert your voicemail message to the default so you aren't speaking. I've gone from several a day down to one every few months with this technique. It took about six months to work. I have about 100 numbers in various callers that start with "z_", which is a convention I made up to push the name to the bottom of the list and keep it mostly out of sight.

willvarfar 14y ago
does this have interesting side effects on the "social" apps that want to import your contacts? Any fun stories to be found there?
TeMPOraL 14y ago
> The trick seems to be to never answer, let it ring all the way through, don't "clip" the call, shooting them to voicemail right away. There's a trick that works on all of the phones I've checked so far; instead of answering or rejecting the call, push the volume button - it will let the call ring through, but it'll silence the ringtone and stop vibrations. I find it to be one of the most useful (and frequently used) features of my phone.