
The DOJ Is Finally Suing US Telecom Providers for Robocalls - ecliptik
https://www.wired.com/story/doj-sues-us-telecom-providers-for-robocalls/
======
grzm
From 2 days ago, over 300 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22175019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22175019)

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mifreewil
I got pretty fed up with robocalls and none of the existing iPhone apps that
use a blacklist approach really worked since robocallers and spam callers can
just fake their number or use recycled numbers.

I created an iPhone app called MyHumans that takes the opposite approach with
a whitelist using your phone contacts. Other callers are sent to voicemail
without ringing your phone. It has an easy to access switch where you can
temporarily disable any blocking for a time period, like an hour, if you're
expecting a one-off call from a recruiter or whatever.

It works really well for me. Spammers rarely bother leaving a voicemail and
legitimate businesses leave a voicemail that I can follow-up on later.

[https://www.myhumansapp.com](https://www.myhumansapp.com)

~~~
TuringNYC
Serious question - do you ever worry that perhaps you'll get a call from a
hospital about a loved one, or from a school about a hurt child, etc?

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mifreewil
It's a legitimate thing to consider and something I've thought about. If the
call comes from a loved one's phone then the call won't be blocked. If it's a
major emergency where the call is from a hospital line then they will leave a
voicemail and I'll find out soon enough when I glance at my notifications
(although not immediately).

~~~
cooljacob204
Which is exactly what I do would do anyways. If it's an unrecognized number I
send it straight to voicemail and check it later.

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gwbas1c
Reminds me of the time I went to career night at my high school. I went to the
seminar on running your own business, and the speaker was a guy who ran a
telemarketing shop.

This was the 1990s when telemarketing was new, and there were still a lot of
people in the US who tolerated it.

The speaker had absolutely no shame about what he did.

Anyway, halfway through his session he went around the room soliciting
business ideas. My idea was a telemarketer blocker. He quickly interrupted me
to move on to the next kid.

If I was a little older I would have raised a huge stink.

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AdmiralAsshat
These days, my voicemail greeter is quite literally a CAPTCHA:

"Hello! Due to the number of robocalls that have been spamming my phone, I
will not answer any call I receive if I do not recognize the number. Please
prove to me that you are a human by leaving a voicemail, and I will call you
back!"

Surprisingly, I have missed very few important calls. Real people are more
than happy to leave a message.

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codegeek
What if we built an app in Twilio that is like the "firewall or Cloudflare for
phones". Unless you are whitelisted or in the contacts, the call will be
routed to voicemail automatically. You can get creative with that and may be
even add things like voice captcha. "Thanks for reaching out. Since I don't
know you, please press 1 to proceed further". This will weed out the auto
callers/robots ?

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sarora27
I just met a founder in StartupSchool who is building this exact thing.

Here is their product: [https://www.callstop.com/](https://www.callstop.com/)

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MockObject
I look forward to a future when I can answer my phone when it rings.

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gambiting
It seems to me like such a uniquely American problem for some reason. I've
gotten maybe a single spam call in my life in the UK, most people I asked also
say they either never got one or got very few. But you go on HN and it seems
like people get a deluge of spam calls all the time.

~~~
codegeek
It is a major problem in America for the past 4-5 years. It wasn't this bad
before then but nowadays, you get like 2-3 spam calls a day at the minimum.
The worst part is that the spammers use your local area code and sometimes
even matching up to the first 6 digits which creates more doubt if it is
coming from someone local or not. Absolutely hate this. I don't ever pick up
an unknown number anymore. If is it really important/urgent, they will leave a
voicemail and I check that immediately to ensure it was not a
genuine/emergency call.

~~~
jschwartzi
The best part of having an area code from when I was a kid is that if someone
calls me from that area code I immediately know it's spam.

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davidajackson
Based on the research I've done over the past year, the solution here is a few
different features:

\- Whitelisting, with the ability to request to join someone's whitelist,
which sends a push notification within the app to the recipient.

\- The ability to toggle filtering off and have it automatically resume

\- Easy usage of PINs you can share with loved ones or groups.

\- The ability to send via email call invites, where the recipient can only
call you starting 5 minutes before and up until 5 minutes after the meeting
time is over.

This is why I built CallStop, which is Superhuman for your phone number:
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callstop/id1455892856](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callstop/id1455892856)

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dredmorbius
Recent discussion of DoJ cases:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22175019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22175019)

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jerkstate
I have a phone with an area code far away from where I live. If I get a call
from my phone's area code or one in the surrounding area not in my address
book, it's spam. If I get a call from an area code where I actually live, it's
usually not spam.

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ConcernedCoder
+1 for trying to do something about it

If anyone from DOJ is reading this, could you sue the broadcasters next for
continuing to present TV advertising at a higher decible level than the
content it is embedded in - even after AFAIK law(s) were passed to try to
combat this... what did they do to get around the legislation ( that you
probably let them "help" you write ), say they were "decreasing" the decible
level of the content instead of "increasing" the decible level of the
advertising?

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msla
I predict a lot of people calling the DOJ telling them to leave the poor
telecom providers alone.

/s

From the article:

> The US Department of Justice has filed lawsuits (PDF and PDF) against two
> small telecommunications providers that have allegedly connected hundreds of
> millions of fraudulent robocalls from Indian call centers to US residents.

I wonder if this could be used as precedent to sue ISPs that deliver spam from
foreigners.

