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Ask HN: How do you reduce unsolicited phone calls?

31 points by jrs235 ↗ HN
Besides registering to be on Do Not Call lists, how do you reduce or eliminate robocalls and scams? If the telecommunications industry isn't going to fix this, surely someone has made a reputable and trust worthy app to address this, no? I hate that we have to default to not answering the phone from unrecognized numbers and wait for a voice mail if it's legit.

91 comments

[ 24.8 ms ] story [ 4592 ms ] thread
ajeet_dhaliwal
I hate that we have to default to not answering the phone from unrecognized numbers and wait for a voice mail if it's legit.

That's what I do, expect if they leave a voice mail I almost know 100% it's a recruiter or a scammer because my family and friends don't live in the 1990s. Everyone else I want to be contacted by is either in my contacts or has organized a specific time to call me via email or some other means first.

kwaldman
Move your phone to ooma.com. service is fast and easy.

My phone bill dropped compared to comcast and I have eliminated spam calls.

Bud
Please explain: why would Ooma service, in and of itself, reduce spam calls?
beamatronic
I had a Comcast phone service a few years ago. Hours after it was activated I was getting telemarketers asking for me by name.
kwaldman
Many options including blocking anyone not in your contact list. Also include spammer blocking service nomorobo. Comcast also allows nomorobo service for free.
belltaco
I have Ooma and I still get the local number(spoofed?) spam calls. What am I doing wrong?
kwaldman
Go to web page and configure max security including nomorobo. I was getting a great deal of spoofed calls. Seems to have worked
dredmorbius
I've ditched my mobile service in part on account of this.[1]

There are landline phones with blocklists of up to 1,000 numbers. None seem to offer the more useful option of whitelisting. (Or whitelist / blacklist / greylist.)

I've been looking into small-office / SOHO PBX or VOIP options which might afford solutions. Asterix and/or Twilio that I'm aware.

Another option is to ditch both POTS and traditional mobile services for ... well, just what tech-based messaging? I'd prefer no vendor lock-in, but the options seem decidedly minimal.

I think we're in the final decade of traditional / offshoot voice comms. Ironically, it's falling costs which are largely to blame. Make this too cheap, and every asset on the planet can beat a path to yor door. Or phone / voicemail / messaging system.

________________________________

Notes:

1. The other reasons: tracking, surveillance, privacy, cost, and always-on stress.

billsimms
If your phone provider/plan supports it then http://nomorobo.com/ is wonderful. But, as with everything else, the industrious telemarketers have begun programming their system to try to evade this. I would prefer if it would show the caller id of the call it was blocking, but it doesn't do that.
spartas
Answer the phone when they call and conference in the Jolly Roger telephone bot http://www.jollyrogertelco.com

The bot will waste the telemarketers time, which is the most expensive thing that these companies are paying for. Do this enough times and the calls drop off rapidly.

ghostbrainalpha
I don't understand how that could be possible.

I'm assuming the companies running these illegal calling scam operations, don't share a DO NOT CALL list.

I could see this working against each company individually. So if its only one bad actor that has your phone number, that would work.

dahart
There's no way I'd pay money for that. I've tried wasting telemarketer calls for years under the theory that it costs them. It's not working anymore, their strategy has changed. They are being trained to detect and hangup, and call back again and again later.

Even the ones that have options to hit '2' and add yourself to the do not call list are not only not adding you to any do not call list, they are confirming there's a human listening and increasing the call frequency. I just had that call 5 minutes ago, after attempting to opt-in to their do not call list twice this week.

OnMyPhone
I've noticed this too.

I used to waste their time when I could, but now I just have to let it go to voicemail.

The best call I had was when they called at 9:30pm... saying I won a trip, and I just needed to give them my cc so they can verify I was 18+.

I talked to them like I was interested, and when they asked for my cc I told them i had to go find it quick.

I put the phone down and watched an episode of South Park and forgot they were on the line yet.

I get back and pick up the phone and tell them I just found the card. I start reading the information off of it, but using the wrong name, and numbers, etc.

He was so excited about it that he kept telling me about all the fun I was going to have. Then he got a sad tone and said the card was rejected. I acted surprised and asked him to read back to me what he had since I had no idea what I gave him.

It got rejected another time, so he suggests we call the number on the back to do a three way call with my cc company to figure out what is going on.

I give him an 800 number that my cousin and I found by accident when we were like 12. I read him a phone sex number. He started to dial it and all of a sudden I heard a recording of some lady moaning. He immediately hung up and never called again.

frikk
I just signed up. Thank you. I don't even care if it works. I get up to 6/day, and if I can turn even just one of those into a bit of fun, it'll all be worth it.

I've become irrationally irritable because of these calls. I have started subconsciously turning off my ringer, causing me to miss actual important calls. Jolly Roger may be my saving grace.

spartas
I have varying degrees of success with it. I do have a few recordings of calls (JR will email you an audio recording of the call after you hang up) that are quite hilarious.
the_arun
In US, you could register your phone in Do Not call list from Federal Trade Commission - https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0133-cell-phones-and-d...
java-man
did not help.
dionian
please file FCC complaints
colinbartlett
Despite having a mobile phone and being on the do not call list, I get 10 to 20 unsolicited telemarketing calls PER DAY.

Each one requires a detailed form to fill out on the FCC site which I send off into the oblivion only to have the call volume go unchanged (or increase). Sorry, tragedy of the commons and all, but it's just not worth it to me to take the time to do this.

themoat
How do I accurately file FCC complaints for spoofed numbers? How can I hold the actual caller responsible instead of the normal person like me who had their number spoofed?
slenk
I don't know who is supposed to enforce it, but I feel as if its almost a list of "hey this person will be MAD if we call, this could be fun"
RightMillennial
That doesn't help. I'm on it, and I regularly get spam calls that are all conveniently from my area code and a similar exchange code.
thanatos_dem
Yup, this approach of using mostly similar numbers to the victim’s phone number is the new hotness in robo-calls. NPR had a piece on it last year - https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

Relevant quote from FCC Chairman Pai: “Which is the ultimate solution, I think, to this problem, which is to find a call authentication standard.”

And there’s no timeline when that’ll happen. So buckle in, we’ll be here a while.

CameronBanga
On my iPhone, I've been using Hiya to help, and it's been pretty good so far.
bsharitt
I have this, but recently "local" spam callers have been getting through a lot more. I don't know if they're spoofing or buying up blocks of numbers but most of them have "valid" caller ids in Hiya.
jchw
They're spoofing. You might even find SPAM calls for your own number if you look. I got a text from a confused person with the same first 6 digits (area code + part of the number) asking why I called, and had to explain that I didn't.
MrMember
Yep, I occasionally get the same sort of texts.
timr
I find that 99% of spam calls (at least for now) can be eliminated by simply not answering any numbers that match the first six digits of my own telephone number.

I don't know why telemarketers decided this would be a good strategy to increase conversions, but it certainly makes things easier for me.

lainga
Because it's the 1950s, and it must be someone calling from the local exchange, probably the butcher's down the street at KLondike-0130...
ja27
That's my biggest source of callspam right now. So close to writing an iOS call blocker that just blocks those except a whitelist (though I think they automatically whitelist contacts with that API).
dethswatch
WinCE (lol) had a feature that would let you change the ringer for unknown numbers.

I could tell instantly, without picking up the phone, if I knew that person.

Wish my current phone had that.

beamatronic
For the same reason spam contains misspelled words and grammatical errors. If this turns you away, you aren’t the target audience.
timr
I suspect that argument will win the day for about 15 microseconds, before everyone adapts and they're on to the next idiotic tactic.
blhack
At my old office, we bought phone numbers in blocks, so there was a good chance that if the first six digits matched, it was somebody from the office calling.
heywire
I'm on AT&T mobile, and they have an app called AT&T Call Protect.
Uberphallus
I have Sync.Net installed on my phone. It has an option for automatically declining calls from numbers that have been flagged by other users.

Disclaimer: it's very sketchy because it takes your contact list and uses it for other users in the reverse lookup feature. Which is a neat feature, you get FB picture and name of the caller on each call, but still a privacy concern.

maxerickson
I answer and ask to be put on their do not call list (or if it's a scam bot, I press the remove button).

People say this just confirms you are a real person, but I'm pretty sure they haven't tried it successfully for months the way I have. I still get calls of course, but it's a couple a week and not from the same parties over and over and over.

alex_duf
>I press the remove button

what is that?

maxerickson
"Press 9 to be removed" or whatever the recording says.
khedoros1
I do the exact opposite, with the same results. I just let the call ring. There is one number that has called me about twice a month for the past 4 months, but all of the others spoof their numbers, and it's impossible to tell if it's the same entity, or another one.

I sometimes go weeks without a scam call, but I also sometimes get 3 or 4 in a week.

dahart
I'm fairly convinced that the only way this gets fixed is if enough people complain loudly to the phone companies & cancel accounts. Verizon / AT&T / T-mobile / etc. absolutely have the power to fix this, and they're choosing instead to largely ignore it, and productize the solutions for anyone who cares enough - let the spammers pay to create the problem, and let the consumers pay for the remedy. Telcos win on both ends.

I registered on the US national do not call list a decade ago. I'm not sure how much it helped over the years, but in the last few years, the phone calls illegally ignoring that list are increasing like crazy. All the telemarketer strategies are changing too, to get around whatever blocking method you have. They're spoofing random local numbers now, so you can't use your phone's number blocking feature. They're hanging up and calling back later to avoid time wasting. They're offering fake do not call lists to confirm a human is listening. I think it's hopeless, my only strategy now is just decline any call not in my address book. If it's someone who needs me, they'll leave a voicemail.

alex_duf
>If it's someone who needs me, they'll leave a voicemail

Then the next step is for spammers to leave voicemails

ceejayoz
iOS now transcribes voicemails (I suspect Android does the same), which makes it incredibly easy to go through them.

"Hi! This is Rachel from card[DELETE]"

dahart
Ugh, you're right. The political robo-calls have already started doing that to me, I keep getting calls from the Orrin Hatch campaign. If it starts happening with all of them, I'm going to resort to whitelist only. Auto-block all unknown numbers.
greggarious
I made the mistake of donating during the presidential election and now I get loads. It's especially problematic since each Senator/Rep has a separate opt out list - every time I tell one to stop a week later a different campaign is hitting me up.
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delecti
I get several voicemails a week from unrecognized numbers that are ~3-5 seconds of silence. I suspect it's the spammers' autodialers not recognizing that there's not an actual person on the line, and giving up once there's a few seconds of silence (post "leave your message at the beep" beep).
MrMember
Christ, I hope not. I get enough spam calls that I ignore, I don't need them leaving voicemails too.
greenyoda
The next step has arrived already. I never used to get voicemails from phone spammers before, but now I'm getting voicemails in Chinese from what's apparently the "Chinese Embassy Scam":

https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/beware-of-the-chin...

I'm not Chinese, so I'm definitely not being personally targeted by the scam. But apparently, there are enough Chinese speakers in NYC to make randomly calling people and leaving voicemails in Chinese a viable form of crime. (I've also had the same cell number for 17 years, so I know it hasn't been recently owned by a Chinese person.)

bluGill
How do we get their attention though? Right now they are lieing and saying there is nothing they can do about it, and have convinced congress that they cannot. (in fact it is easy, it just require that they filter the from numbers that companies are allowed to use - it would however cost them money to implement the filter for each company and they prefer profits)
dahart
In theory the things that help are a critical mass of public opinion, and/or a critical mass of loss of sales, and/or a competitive advantage.

As an individual, getting critical mass is beyond most of our energy levels, but it helps to talk about it, with your friends and family, on HN, etc.

You could call your telco and complain about as many spam calls as possible. Their support time is expensive.

You could request better spam blocking services. I'm on Verizon and they offer blacklisting for a fee. This is completely ineffective now, so a total waste of money. Cancel your account and switch to another provider, cite the phone spam and their lackluster service as the reason.

Maybe things could get better if there was a new telco, or if one of them broke ranks, and offered great spam protection. Not holding my breath, the spammy business accounts are probably worth more money.

What sucks is it takes a lot of energy to fight this no matter what.

bluGill
I don't think you can start that spam protection phone company, unless you only allow your customers to receive calls from other customers. As soon as you allow calls to originate from any other phone company you have to trust the other company and they are not doing verification.

You might be able to do a trace origin on all incoming calls, but I don't know how far that gets to figure out who the spammer is.

Symmetry
My understanding is that the regulation of phone services in the US is fairly prescriptive and it would be a violation of FTC rules for a phone company to just go ahead and cancel accounts without legal authorization. Or to proactively screen your calls and not deliver the ones the phone company thinks are spammy. Though presumably the phone company could also tell your phone "Hey, we think this is spam" and let you know before you decide to answer.
dahart
I was suggesting that consumers close their accounts, not that the phone company should close spammer accounts.

Also the telcos will not violate any rules by allowing consumers to opt into a service that blocks calls originating from companies reported as spammy by a large number of other consumers.

It is absolutely within their power to give consumers some control and choice about receiving spammy phone calls. The reason they are choosing not to give consumers this choice is because it would effectively eliminate their income from phone advertising, the public by and large does not want unsolicited phone calls.

Symmetry
> It is absolutely within their power to give consumers some control and choice about receiving spammy phone calls.

Are you sure about that? I thought that the carriers being unable to discriminate between incoming phone calls, for whatever reason, was the whole point of common carrier status. I'm pretty sure that there's a business opportunity for a cell carrier that could offer spam filtering as a selling point and if it's a small mobile only carrier there wouldn't be any phone advertising that they'd be giving up by doing that.

dahart
> Are you sure about that?

Pretty sure, but by no means certain, I'm not a lawyer and I don't know all the laws. Common carrier status does mean that FCC regulations must be followed by companies placing phone calls. Since they are already illegally ignoring the US Do Not Call registry and spoofing phone numbers, there's plenty of room for enforcement of the existing regulations.

Telcos could also advocate for stronger regulation. They don't now and they won't in the future, but that is in their power.

Telcos could provide an opt-in system for sending & receiving calls that are verified to be from legit businesses that adhere to the do not call registry, actually stop calling people when asked, and generally aren't shady. They could provide the consumer with more information, without having to block any calls or violate common carrier rules.

They definitely have the power to try, and they definitely have a financial incentive not to. They are choosing to pretend like their hands are tied.

> I'm pretty sure that there's a business opportunity for a cell carrier that could offer spam filtering as a selling point and if it's a small mobile only carrier there wouldn't be any phone advertising that they'd be giving up by doing that.

Yeah agreed, I hope someone comes along and tries!

dredmorbius
The telcos write the rules.

AT&T's lobbyists include Joan Marsh and Robert Quinn, and a few others:

Wayne Watts, Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel, James W. Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President—External and Legislative Affairs, Robert Quinn, Jr., Senior Vice President—Federal Regulatory, David Lawson, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Hank Hultquist, Vice President—Federal Regulatory, Michael Paradise, Vice President—Global IP Operations and Infrastructure Services, and Gary Phillips, General Attorney and Associate General Counsel, of AT&T; and Richard Rosen and Maureen Jeffreys, of Arnold & Porter LLP.

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/60001116224.pdf

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342942A1.p...

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1011263448484/Status%20ATT%20ex...

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521067059

basch
>All the telemarketer strategies are changing too, to get around whatever blocking method you have.

My phone is in do not disturb mode, if i expect a call (2fa) i turn it off temporarily. They havent got around it yet. I can whitelist saved contacts. Check missed calls with Hiya or equiv.

LyndsySimon
> I think it's hopeless, my only strategy now is just decline any call not in my address book.

I've gotten about a half dozen calls this week where the spoofed caller ID shows that they are in my address book. One of them was ostensibly from my wife. I figure they've gotten ahold of my social graph, associated phone numbers with some of my friends, and are targeting their spoofing to me.

spodek
I've accepted that they are a part of living in a system that doesn't value my privacy as much as corporate profit when the interests conflict.

I've registered with Do Not Call and I don't answer calls beginning with my 6 digits. The next steps would take too much effort.

I don't like accepting something I find repellent, but I have other priorities and I'd rather happily work on them than angrily be distracted.

Meanwhile, I'm working on cutting my incoming junk paper mail. I downloaded PaperKarma, but it doesn't work (it takes pictures but fails to upload them). I emailed them two bug reports but no response. Does anyone know what I can do instead?

sjg007
On Mobiles you can get a block list. Otherwise it’s worth transferring your number to something like google voice and have it ring your main line or lines.
greggarious
Airplane mode when not expecting a call.

Many of these services will only call "hot" numbers - numbers that pick up/give some interaction. Hitting "decline call" actually gives them an indication the line is hot, since the call went to VM earlier than if it had timed out, and will lead to more calls.

So I let the calls ring until the other side ends the call.

Having the spam call ringing is annoying though, so I've taken to leaving my phone in airplane mode if I'm not expecting a call.

(Most people communicate via email or Signal with me anyways)

In my experience if you leave your phone in airplane mode when not expecting calls for a week or so, it'll drastically cut down on the robocalls.

cimmanom
On iOS, at least, you can silence a call without sending it to vmail by hitting the power button once. I assume there's something analogous on android.
jeffmould
Outside friends, family and a few important contacts (i.e. kids schools, doctors, etc...), I don't give my actual phone number out. I use Google Voice with message/call forwarding turned off. If I need to give my number out to a company or something I use that number. Really the only other companies that legitimately should have my number are my bank(s) and credit card company. They can call, leave a message, and I will call them back. Everything else gets pretty much deleted. If I notice the number of spam calls increasing (rarely) I just change the Google Voice number (probably have only done this 2-3 times) and update those who had it accordingly.

I used to carry a secondary phone that I would use for non-life-critical contacts, but have since stopped carrying that phone, although I still keep basic service active on it.

baochan
I basically protect my phone number like I would my social security number. I was getting 5+ spam calls a day. Ended up changing provider and phone number to get away from them. I haven't added my new number to the Do Not Call list (none of these calls were legitimate businesses; just scammers with spoofed caller IDs) and have resisted giving my new number to anyone. Pretty much just my bank and a few friends have my real number, everywhere else (where they need a phone number associated to an account or for a retail store bonus card) I just use my old number. I think of the Do Not Call list as a public list of phone numbers guaranteed to be valid - not worth the risk. I think maybe adding it to my resume on job sites got the number out there as well.
bluGill
Does this actually do anything? A computer that can dial all phone numbers in the US is not hard anymore. (the computer will probably get all numbers in North America, but what do scammers care?)
baochan
In the last year I've only gotten 2 spam phone calls. So either Google Fi is doing a better job at blocking them than Verizon was, or the scammers that targeted me stick to known numbers. Either way I'm not taking my chances. It was seriously frustrating being on their victim list.
catchmeifyoucan
I have a Google voice number.

I decide as I were giving a junk email or my real email out. Google voice is great because it looks real, it can do SMS codes and I can stop using it when I want to.

dazc
Leave phone in silent mode by default. If someone wants to speak to me then we have to agree a day and a time for that call.

This is, admittedly, extreme but I already have an aversion to using the phone and can manage just fine (99% of the time) with email.

For me, an unwanted call isn't just inconvenient for the duration of the call but for quite a long period afterwards because my train of thought has been interrupted and I can't just pick up where I left off.

saosebastiao
So I've stumbled onto this by accident, but this works for me:

Most spam calls that I get are using local number spoofing. I have an area code from where I grew up, but live in a completely different state now. I can recognize the spam numbers immediately: if it's from the area code where I grew up, and it's not in my contacts, it's spam. Everything else I let through.

ktosobcy
I read the whole thread and... it seems that people are looking at the solutions at the wrong angle: we have lot's of unwanted marketing/spam calls so we need to find a way to block them. Then they spammers get smart and generate more and more spam - vicious circle. Wouldn't it be better to motion solving the problem at the other end - ban all non-personal calls that are made without your explicit consent? Something similar is done in Europe/Poland and I virtually don't receive any unsolicited calls. Of course this would cause all the "poor" telemarketing companies to cry outloud how they are "persecuted and not free to work normally, bla, bla, bla" and probably there would be a huge lobbying involved not to make it happen…
MrMember
A lot of these calls come from people or companies trying to scam people (illegal), ignore the existing Do Not Call list (also illegal), and spoof themselves as legitimate, often local numbers (you guessed it, illegal). I doubt banning non-personal calls would deter them much.
cimmanom
This can be difficult to manage, though.

Yesterday my doctor called because they had to reschedule an appointment. Would I have to have remembered to whitelist them? What if they have multiple outgoing numbers?

What about all the other businesses I interact with? The computer repair place saying my laptop is ready to pick up? The cable technician calling to let me know that he'll be 30 min late? The hotel I made reservations with calling to confirm?

ktosobcy
Well, those are related with the business with have them (even informal 'word of mouth') - they provide you service and to comply with it they call you.

It's completely different for unsolicited calls - you don't have any business with them and they don't provide you any service.

Having severe fines for the latter should work just fine: they call you, you report them, they receive a fine that put them out of business.

It seems to work just fine in Europe so should be doable in US as well.

Imagine the "Do Not Call list" but with an angle that everyone are on that list (so no company can call you). You make an appointment with dentist - they ask you for your number and they call you to reschedule, you also provide the phone to the company/technician to install your cable.

It feels cleaner

prograhammer
1. Get your phone number in another city that you don't live in. Make sure the area code is the most common for that city. Now all the calls you get on your phone from that area code are spammers so ignore them.

2. Callers you don't recognize can leave a message if they want to talk to you.

3. If you do end up in a call with a spammer, then work your way into the conversation to get a real business name out of them. While you are on the phone, you can press them to help you find their business on the web. You may even find a BBB rating on them and inform the caller that the BBB rating is pretty bad. Or you can ask them for a callback number (which they probably won't give) and you will call them back to continue the call. All of these questions should prevent them from calling you again and if you are lucky you have a business name you can further report on the web as a spamming company.

alyandon
I gave up. There is no defense against local exchange number spoofing so I switched my phone to send all callers not on my contact list to voice mail.

Anyone of importance that I talk to is already on my contact list which will ring through and anyone else that is really trying to get a hold of me for a legitimate reason will leave a voice mail.