
This Guy Found a Way to Block Robocalls When Phone Companies Wouldn’t - kungfudoi
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/guy-found-way-block-robocalls-phone-companies-wouldnt
======
nmeofthestate
People complain about email being 'broken', but it's working great compared to
phones.

I'm at the stage where I automatically reject all phonecalls where I don't
recognise the number, and then Google that number. 99% of the time I then end
up adding the number to my Contacts with the name 'Spam'. Why isn't anyone
fixing this?

Bonus anecdote: I used to never use my work phone, but our work phones were
recently replaced with Microsoft Lync phones - now I get spam phonecalls at
work.

~~~
mtmail
Is it possible to mute those numbers? Set a silent ring tone for any contact
in a group maybe? Of course an app for this scenario would be better.

~~~
bradleyankrom
iOS give the user the ability to block a phone number, which I usually do when
an unknown number calls. Like a commenter above, my process is reject and
google, with the last step almost always being to block the number. I don't
know how much good that does, though, because it's pretty easy for a company
to work with a pool of numbers, so if I block one I can't necessarily block
them all.

~~~
GordonS
Android also lets you block numbers.

You can also register them as spam numbers, so any unsolicited SMS messages go
into a spam folder. Not sure how much of a problem this is in the US, but here
in the UK I almost daily get texts from PPI claim companies, dodgy law firms
and the like.

~~~
bradleyankrom
I think spammy text messages have become a significant issue for consumers in
the US -- at least on T-Mobile (my carrier). Around the holidays, I was
getting half a dozen obviously junk/spammy/malicious text messages with links
to .rus. It's died down considerably over the last couple of weeks, but I
still receive them every few days. At least in TMO's case, part of the problem
was that the messages weren't coming from reportable phone numbers, they were
being sent via TMO's antiquated email infrastructure.

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biff
(from the article:)

 _In fact, late last week, the CTIA wrote the FCC to tell it that the kind of
blacklist approach taken by Foss’s company wouldn’t work. According to the
lobbying group, it raises privacy concerns—and causes other problems too._

 _“Even assuming an accurate database of blacklisted and whitelisted numbers
can be compiled and maintained, the ease with which modern equipment and
software can allow a caller to spoof a caller ID would present significant
challenge,” the group says._

I thought the phone companies had access to more information than caller ID
for the calls they handle. Surely you can't fake caller ID details to dodge
your phone bill? I'd love it if they'd give out a star code we could all dial
after a call we didn't want to receive that would, if enough people did it,
disallow future calls from that entity from reaching any phone line for which
a customer has requested the blocking of calls reported as bothersome. No
exemptions for charities or politicians either.

~~~
tinfoilman
Telecoms guy here.

Firstly CLI blocking is easy to get around. Faking CLI is very easy. There is
a field within SIP that is refereed to as P-assert. The idea is that this
field always contains the billable number.

However I know of at least 3 sip carriers you could sign up today with, have
numbers within 10 minutes and they allow you to put ANY CLI and P-assert. Then
you can bridge in to the TDM and almost untraceable.

CLI faking is very common. There is a requirement in the UK that no calls gets
in to the network without a p-assert but the network is to complex these days,
there is always a way to get a call in with what ever information you want

We have been working on a blacklisting service as well. we have 2 types, the
personalized white and black list (so a parent can have a white list for their
kids phone): i think i agree with the FCC that global block lists are a bad
idea (too easy to get someones number blocked for lulz). The second looks up
the CLI and checks a number of those "who is calling me sites" if the number
is know for spam it does not get to the phone and starts reading the comments
back to them about their number (cli will get round this). Both ways have
issues. The reason I bring this up is because we become an MVNO and in turn
run our own sim cards. This meant that we could have had the
blacklist/whitelist without messing with the call flow to much. This also
allowed you to dial 9 to block the last number that called you was sexy but
meh too much work to run an MVNO and just no money in it.

We will see. Lots of changes will be happening in telecoms in the next 5-10
years. webRTC could flip the existing telecoms models on their heads, if only
someone could get some traction.

Ramble Ramble, i rare have anything to say :/

~~~
mtmail
Phone systems are also global. You create legislation and fines for not
setting that value, but calls from legacy systems around the world still have
to be supported. Or has anybody ever tried to call a number and got a "sorry,
your phone is too old, you need to upgrade" response?

~~~
gallerytungsten
I used to have this great little compact cell phone made by Sony. At some
point, it just stopped making calls, and Sprint's explanation was that their
network no longer supported this phone.

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sdramsey00
Having managed the "global black list" for a major VoIP company (millions of
subscribers) I can tell you it does make customers happy. However ... if you
implement one you will inadvertently block valid calls. The FCC and big phone
companies are correct about that. It's just not possible for someone like AT&T
to take the risk.

Real life problems you will see and have to deal with: \- blocking of valid
calls from legitimate voice broadcasts (i.e. schools / municipalites) \-
managing trouble tickets from other phone companies opening tickets constantly
for "blocking the call" \- managing trouble tickets from customers about not
getting calls they should have \- how to deal with call attempts that do not
provide proper signaling information (i.e. "anonymous" as the actual caller ID
and not using RPID, PAI, or SS7 appropriately)

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snarfy
When I had a land line, I changed my recorded message to the three tones and
"We're sorry, the number cannot be completed as dialed" message and eliminated
pretty much all spam calls.

~~~
Vendan
Hah, I did that, though it was just the tones and then a normal voicemail
message. The robodial stuff at the time just listened for them, so it was
quite effective.

~~~
jimktrains2
In case anyone was curious, they're called Special Information Tones[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tones)

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Gargoyle888
There is a technical solution to this. Hashcash

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash)

was created to stop email spam but is equally valid for phone calls. It
/could/ be fully implemented by your phone carrier.

~~~
teddyh
If it is “ _equally valid_ ”, why didn’t it succeed in stopping spam? Is the
reason it failed maybe equally valid when applied to phones?

~~~
Gargoyle888
My guess is that - with email, both the sender and the receiver must be using
clients that are capable of negotiating the challenge-response wall.

Interestingly, with phone service, the recipient doesn't need anything (other
than to tell their phone provider to turn it on if it's provided as an
option.)

Of course, this doesn't completely answer your question but it does mean that
the decision and implementation of the technology needed to provide this kind
of wall is in the hands of phone companies rather than the unruly mass of
ignorant individuals who use email.

But then, the phone companies who could implement such a scheme probably don't
have a financial incentive to do so.

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ianetaylor
+1 for using Google Voice. They catch most spam and call screening gets the
rest. Only close friends have my actual cell number.

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wnevets
Google voice blocks most of this crap for me. Much like gmail, Google knows
when something is spam before it ever reaches me.

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tmaly
Its is funny seeing one of your college friends on a wired article. Aaron is a
good guy.

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deanclatworthy
Have we really reached the point where a reputable publication liked Wired
magazine is using clickbait titles?

~~~
morganvachon
I was wondering the same thing. I almost reflexively avoided the link because
of the title's phrasing.

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chatman
The tone of the article sounded like a marketing blog post for Nomorobo (or
whatever his company is called).

