Eliminating Robocalls

I have had a Google Voice number since it was Grand Central.<p>It has gone on all of my business cards. It&#x27;s at the bottom of every email. I put it on my website.<p>Google does an amazing, world class, mind blowing, job of filtering out robo calls. I get maybe one a week at most.<p>I get more calls direct to my cell number from random call bots that hit every number with mobile carriers than I do through my Google Voice number.<p>It&#x27;s past time for Apple to integrate spam call filtering into iOS and Android users have no excuse for not using Google Voice.

Getting STIR &amp; SHAKEN implemented so we have proper trust of the caller ID is going to be a massive undertaking for the industry as a whole. T-Mobile and Verizon have implemented it in limited forms internally, but they have no interest in making their implementations interoperate, let alone work with the other RBOCs, CLECs and their resellers (Twilio in this case).<p>STIR&#x2F;SHAKEN also can break call forwarding, as a forwarded call may get stripped of the forwarded from header by an intermediary carrier, resulting in an unvalidated caller ID getting passed, causing the call to not ring the destination.<p>Overall, the telcom industry is stuck in the past, with security being a joke. TLS Registration &amp; SRTP are rarely used, most carriers sling calls bare over the internet hoping for the best.

I&#x27;m waaay past trusting that network. I tell companies to text or email me. And texting is also starting to get spammed out.<p>Right now, I can&#x27;t even use apps like Hiya that implement prefix blocking. My method right now is to forward ALL calls to a google voice number, and those are transcribed or what-have-you. If you don&#x27;t leave a message, I don&#x27;t care about you.<p>We need a signal, at the highest of levels to basically make the decision on what&#x27;s going to happen to the phone network, because honestly, a brand new system is what I expect at this point, not a patch.

I don&#x27;t get that many robocalls anymore after I signed up for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.donotcall.gov&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.donotcall.gov&#x2F;</a> . I also make a point of reporting unwanted calls there too (I got two pretending to be from the IRS saying that I was about to be sued).<p>I know that people find it annoying to go through the process of reporting the call, but I consider it to be one of those things that fall under the &quot;All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing&quot; bucket.<p>It&#x27;d be nice if there were donotcall.gov apps for Android and iOS though.

I wrote a tool which uses Twilio to screen out robocalls: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;noah-huppert&#x2F;human-call-filter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;noah-huppert&#x2F;human-call-filter</a>

I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S.<p>But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I&#x27;ve asked about the phenomena.<p>Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardly a problem at all here? Is there a difference in infrastructure, a difference in legislature, ...?

This is why I leave my phone on silent 24&#x2F;7 (no vibrate either). If someone from my Contacts calls me, then I see the missed call and know to call them back when I have time. However I live my life on my time, nothing is ever so important I have to drop whatever I am doing to pick up someone else&#x27;s call right away. You might say, what if there was an emergency? Well how many times has someone called you about an emergency where you could actually do something about it? Maybe some have, but I bet most haven&#x27;t.

It’s 2019. Why has Apple&#x2F;Android not added the ability to reject (or at least send directly to voice mail) all calls outside of contacts, and make this the default setting?<p>Seems like this would solve almost all of these problems.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18118664" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18118664</a>

Interestingly, Robocall algorithms use phone numbers closer to my phone number (either real of fake) and since I live in different Area code, it is much easier to block the numbers.<p>Though it is not recommended to pick up the phone, I have had some success by picking up the phone, wasting the agent&#x27;s time and letting them know that my car is real old and would not need extended warranty.

I wonder why I&#x27;m not getting this barrage of robocalls. I live in Netherland, not the US, so presumably that&#x27;s why, but are robocalls not a thing in Europe? Do we not have these kind of predatory companies? Do we have surprisingly effective legislation to stop robocalls?<p>The only phone spam I&#x27;m getting are people trying to sell me new energy contracts (that&#x27;s something that happens when you have a company for some reason), and tons of British recruiters trying to get me to work in Belgium or Germany for some reason. Very rarely, I get a tech support call from Microsoft India. But always it&#x27;s real people, not a robocall.

&gt; By default, we bill by the minute, not the second, to deter short duration calls and impair the economics of robocalls.<p>Do they really expect us to believe the reason they bill by the minute is to fight against robocalls?

All I really want to do is allow calls through to my phone that are stored in my contacts. If they&#x27;re not in my contacts, I&#x27;d prefer not to be notified and have it sent to voicemail.

I just never answer calls or listen to voicemail anymore. I use WhatsApp etc. and give folks that ID. Maybe in a few years the phone companies will implement some of cool stuff mentioned in the article but until then phone calls from everyone are blacklisted.

Great article, but I jumped there hoping that Twilio had a solution to offer. Not yet, it seems.<p>I&#x27;ve been pestered by Robocalls for the last few years. Lately, I did the mistake of shopping online for health insurance, and signing up with a provider (I ended up not purchasing it from them). Since then (three weeks ago), I&#x27;ve received ~20 calls per day, half of it from robots, half from humans.<p>These people should f*ing go to jail. All of them.

The death penalty for robocalls coming from inside the US, and drone strikes and extraordinary rendition for robocalls originating outside the US are out of the question, right?<p>But seriously, why is it so difficult to eliminate these robocalls. Each operation has to have employees, a call center (to handle the marks), payment processing, etc. It seems like a very easy target.

I disagree with the solution. A simple App that send to voicemail numbers not in my contacts will be far than enough. And it won’t require to change the whole infrastructure!

I&#x27;ve never received a robocall and the whole thing seems dystopian. Is it something uniquely American? Is there EU legislation that prevents this, such as the &quot;don&#x27;t call me&quot; register (bel me niet register)? I&#x27;m not on that, though. General anti-spam laws then? (Since it&#x27;s unsolicited commercial communications directed at consumers). Genuinely curious what&#x27;s different.

Seems like this is much worse in the US - I&#x27;ve had the same number in the UK since 2000 and not had a robocall EVER. The occasional human spam call comes in (like once every two or three months) but I tend to just hang up and usually Google offers to block them (my Pixel 2 has the spam call blocker built in)

If it is an area code outside of 4-5 I block it. If it isn&#x27;t in my phonebook but in that range, I check the voicemail then 99 percent of the time I block it. Sometimes I answer and mess with the caller to waste their energy and ruin their numbers.<p>What irritates me is the spoofing of numbers. That should be a felony and charged in criminal court. They steal real people&#x27;s numbers briefly in my experience. Either arrest and throw the person calling in prison or blacklist that Carrier.<p>And fine the carrier you use for allowing it to even happen.<p>EDIT: on a side note you are not able to block Texas and Florida. I could block those two entire states without worries and I&#x27;d receive a lot less calls.

I have resorted to using DND mode as a whitelist. If a caller does not identify with a number in my contacts list, the phone doesn&#x27;t ring. I feel whitelisting is the only thing that&#x27;s going to stop the calls... extreme or not.

BTW, in Russia labor is cheap so spam phone calls are usually done by people, not robots. I have to keep phone always in silent mode due to lots of such spam, sometimes 2-3 calls per day from different companies.

As usual, it&#x27;s not that complicated, and it&#x27;s not that simple.<p>The simple solution would be for the network providers to validate the caller ID numbers for its subscribers, but that requires changes to punish the ones that don&#x27;t do it.<p>I&#x27;ve worked with telephony for 15 years and I know the big providers do this for most common telecom protocols, but VoIP providers tend to be more lax. But that&#x27;s where they shouldn&#x27;t, and the ones that break this shouldn&#x27;t be allowed on the network.

I use Robokiller on iOS -- it screens the calls and answers spam with prerecorded scripts paced to match response times and then sends me the recording of the interaction.

I&#x27;ve solved the robocall problem personally, by simply not answering my phone.<p>I&#x27;ll answer the call if I&#x27;m expecting one, if it&#x27;s from someone who has texted me that they&#x27;re going to call (this covers 99% of the legit calls I get), or if it&#x27;s from one of a very tiny number of people who might call me due to an emergency.<p>Otherwise, it goes straight to voicemail and (thanks to Tasker) doesn&#x27;t even make my phone ring.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ACbgAD1oehQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ACbgAD1oehQ</a><p>&gt; FCC Chairman Ajit Pai explains the importance of the FCC&#x27;s proposed new rules banning illegal spoofed text messages and international calls. The proposed rules would enable the agency to address consumer concerns about unwanted text messages and scam calls from overseas.

Here&#x27;s very simple idea for Apple:<p>Let only calls from known contacts ring, the rest auto-goes to voicemail.<p>Why is this so F<i></i>*ING hard for Apple to implement?

I&#x27;ve actually blocked all telephone calls. This might be ill-advised, but I haven&#x27;t been burned by it yet.

I am guessing that the direction this is heading in is twilio somehow coming up with a solution that they can implement and sell to someone. Maybe the multi part blog post is part of the way to gather thoughts in order to learn more and incorporate ideas and reactions from people.

Maybe there ought to be a robocall service for ~anonymously targeting the callback numbers provided in robocalls. Many years ago, I setup an autodialer to hit an 800 number provided by a persistent robocaller. And pretty soon, they stopped calling me.

&gt; By default, we bill by the minute, not the second, to deter short duration calls and impair the economics of robocalls.<p>That sounds like marketing BS to me. Why can’t they just create a one way fingerprint of the audio and block duplicates.

I wonder what % of robocalls are run on Twilio. My sense is a non-insignificant #

I get none, our house has an asterisk box that does voicemail and provides individual VM for everyone at home - it means that anyone calling in has to dial a single digit extension, I haven&#x27;t had a robocall in years

&quot;TrueCaller&quot; App

I&#x27;d love to take the robo-callers on a long winding road to nowhere. Is there a conversational AI robo-answering app based on something like Google Duplex? If not, should I build one?

I consider articles like this, which don&#x27;t answer the point in the title, and then say you have to wait for Part 2 to presumably get the answer, no better than Robocalls and spam.

The solution is to use a whitelist for phonecalls.

Reply All (podcast) had a recent episode about the increase in robocalls. It&#x27;s a fun listen. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gimletmedia.com&#x2F;reply-all&#x2F;135-the-robocall-conundrum#episode-player" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gimletmedia.com&#x2F;reply-all&#x2F;135-the-robocall-conun...</a> (The TLDR is a law changed.)<p>Also, I&#x27;ve had success running Calls Blacklist (app) on my android phone - it&#x27;s set up so that it will block any call that&#x27;s not from one of my contacts. I haven&#x27;t had a spam call since I started using it.

Is there a way to only let the phone ringing if it&#x27;s a number which is in your address book?

I was hoping this would be a blog post on using Twillio to block robo callers.

I&#x27;ve posted about this before. There is a solution to this.<p>Google &quot;Robocalls Cash&quot; and you&#x27;ll see it has been featured in several news outlets.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;robocalls.cash&#x2F;ref&#x2F;keven&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;robocalls.cash&#x2F;ref&#x2F;keven&#x2F;</a>

Great blog post, actually looking forward to the second part.

Was there a reason the author redacted parts of the robocall phone numbers? They&#x27;re robocalls, the numbers should be garbage by definition.

Sounds like a technical solution for a problem that just needs regulation and laws. I&#x27;m in Germany. I <i>never</i> had a ad&#x2F;scam call on my cellphone number in basically 20 years. I get some kind of poll call every two months on my landline number. That&#x27;s all.