Nexus phones now identify suspected spam callers
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It's ridiculous that it took Google so long to implement such a basic feature on their phones.
What's what I'm suggesting.
If it's a spam call, often you will hear nothing until you say hello. When their auto-dialer hears you talk, it connects you to a real person, who informs you that the Windows box you don't possess is infected with a virus or whatever.
I just don't answer the call. If I don't know who you are, and you can't be bothered to leave a message … why should I care?
Empirically, half of upstate New York seems to think my number is the one they're looking for. Back before I stopped answering calls, I had to repeatedly tell one unknown number over SMS that this wasn't the number they were looking for. Over SMS. I hope that that number didn't have a smartphone, as my reply of "This isn't the number you're looking for." would quite probably have been right there on the screen as he typed in the next message, again to the wrong number.
I actually have a few of the more common wrong numbers in my contacts list, and some of them still call regularly. (Never leaving a message.)
https://www.amazon.com/867-5309-Jenny-Song-That-Saved/dp/193...
Tried to do a startup around the voicemails people left on the calls but it never took off.
I understand that there are people in vulnerable situations, but that is not the norm. Perhaps a check-box on the HIPAA form that indicates they need "confidential voicemail and SMS messages" would be a better solution.
Trouble is, sometimes people feel uncomfortable bringing up the subject, so it takes the professional who is calling bringing it up to see any benefit.
I do not think that a checkbox is appropriate - at any point, you might become concerned with the privacy of a matter, or you might not realize that privacy is a concern for you. For instance, consider someone who accidentally listens to a message stating that they are now pregnant, at work. Their employer now has advanced notice of a pregnancy, but no knowledge of the employee's intentions with regard to work. That is going to change the dynamic of the workplace, even if the employer does not intend anything nefarious. I really think the only graceful solution to this is agreed code words.
I agree that code words may be more effective than simply checking a box, but I maintain my position that it should be opt-in. I don't want to have to remember which code words mean what, or which office use code words, etc. I use my phone and email in a secure and responsible manner; explanatory text is my preference.
You're right, of course, that it's your information, and if you want to have it treated less sensitively, that's your decision. But your doctor will likely want no part in that, and will probably prefer wholeheartedly that you do what you want with that information once it is in your possession.
What would be interesting is establishing a secure communication channel for medical information like this. For instance, some sort of encrypted email, where HIPAA violations were not so much of a concern, because you could reasonably assume that no one could easily accidentally send the information to the wrong client, and that the client had sole access to the information. Such things come with their own concerns, though.
There is probably a better way of doing things, but I don't think it's all that hard to remember a code word. Especially since you can leave a callback number, preventing the client from needing to know who the code word was from.
My concern is with a physician's office (or a bank, etc.) calling from a phone that does not provide Caller ID information and leaving a message that goes something like: "This is a message for you, please call us back at your earliest convenience." This would result in a call that I would ignore, followed by a voicemail that I would also ignore. Effectively it would mean that there would be no phone communication between myself and this office, bank, etc.
In my opinion, when you provide a bank or physician's office with your cell phone number and authorize them to contact you via that method, you are agreeing to let them leave the minimum required information. In my opinion, I need to know (1) who is leaving the message and (2) is it important. In a pinch, I will settle for (1). Without either, it may as well be static on the phone for all of the information it conveys. I disagree that I am allowing these offices to treat my information "less sensitively". On the contrary, it's my responsibility to treat my end of the communication channel sensitively.
A code word is an interesting idea, but people are pretty poor at remembering arbitrary information (on the whole). It's common for many people to use the same password for every website, since they have trouble memorizing more than a couple at a time. Code words, I fear, would have the same issue. People who don't need a code workd would forget it and they'd just be confused with the message; I think it would need to be opt-in for those who cannot secure their own side of the communication channel (voicemail, email, etc.)
Some of the electronic medical record (EMR) systems that have a public facing web interface do provide a more secure method of communicating with clinician or their office. In my experience these often mimic email and are secured via SSL, they require the typical username and password (or PIN) combination. These will probably become more popular, but I expect clinicians will still fall back to phone calls if the information is time sensitive.
For those who insist on listening to voicemail via speakerphone, it seems like the smart move is to ask the physician to contact them only through a secure website or email and never via cell phone.
Just a few months back someone called me on the morning train and told me they had my debit card that I had forgotten in the vending machine.
This summer I have tipped of a couple of parents about their kids belongings because I found their phone numbers on the stuff and they didn't block me. In one case it was a rather expensive outdoors jacket forgotten by the sea that they had been searching for to no avail.
Having a friend who recorded and remixed phone conversations back in the days might have added to that ;-)
Around here at least it is common to have cards with names printed on them. Some even have photos and can be used as IDs some places.
(No, this is either not my only name or not my real name :-)
Do other phone vendors do this?
How is this basic? At a minimum it requires a database of spam numbers, a way to automatically add new ones, probably some way to deprecate numbers that are no longer spammy, a UI, and I'm sure some legal work to ensure they won't break any laws.
Another feature, which makes me facepalm in Google dialer is inability to block a spoofed number. If the phone number, which just called you, does not match some rules you get "Invalid phone number" pop up when choosing to block it.
Well that's just silly. If you don't recognise the number, don't answer it.
If it's someone you know, and it's important, they'll leave a message and you can call them back. If it's someone you don't know, and they leave a nuisance message, block them.
* If it's a withheld/private number, I don't answer.
* If it's a number I don't recognise, I don't answer.
* If it's a number I recognise from work/a client, I don't answer.
* If it's a number I recognise from a friend, I don't answer.
* If it's a number I recognise from a direct relative, I don't answer.
* If it's a number I recognise from a very direct relative and I've been called several times in the last minutes, I start pondering if I should pick it up or not. I usually do not, but ymmv
Of course if you have children, you'd be paranoid at any number-what if it's school? A teacher? The hospital? That's hairy stuff.
There are other technologies for messaging (hangouts, WhatsApp, etc...). Also, if the issue is friends and family, OP could simply let them know to phone only in case of emergency but to use messaging at all time otherwise.
Complaining that people phone you, people who are close to you, family and friends, and proudly boasting of ignoring the calls feels very immature to me. You don't want phone calls? Don't give out your number, find alternative techs for messaging, or at the very least make it clear to people that you don't want them to call.
That's not how social interaction works. If someone asks for my number so they can text me, I happily give it to them. I'm not going to interrupt the conversation at that point to give them a lecture to never call me. They will get the point when I don't answer.
It's like telling people not to give out their physical address for mail if they don't want people to show up unannounced at their home.
Sometimes I glance at my phone, notice it ringing, and answer it; other than that, it pretty much goes unanswered.
I've never understood people doing this. Why not just answer the phone? It takes 1 second to realize its spam, and you hang up, without risking ignoring your friend or a new doctor's office, and without touching voicemail. I don't like getting these calls either, but 90% of the damage is interrupting what I'm doing, getting out the phone, and looking at the screen.
I can only imagine that for some people there is some sort of visceral unpleasantness with hanging up on telemarketers or something and they'd rather ignore the call.
It's significantly more effort than necessary when you don't recognize a #.
So being the recipient, the initiator intrudes on my time. If I accept this I have (at least in old times, before caller ID) no chance of knowing, if this intrusion has a valid (and for me valuable) reason.
Even today, I have no chance of knowing beforehand, if the caller really is adding value to my day. Therefore if my time used in the call generates added value by whatever the caller tells me (or how I feel after talking to him/her).
So if this intrusion by a caller would additionally be fee-ridden, the risk of taking a call grows exponentially. Therefore I would let go all calls to mailbox and have the person exactly state what they intend to talk about. Even family (I hate social chit-chat calls).
So probably I would not need the phone at all except for mail-checking and in case of an emergency, as after some tries no one would want to call me. The incentive to not take a phone (at least in my case) would lead to that.
To complain later that they're paying $100 per month?
Here's how to have unlimited outbound minutes: call using Google Voice
Paying for incoming calls is ridiculous already, but people really like to shoot themselves in the foot
In Europe (Ireland) 10Euros on pre-paid gives you 7.5Gb per month and unlimited calls (tax included)
Not sure what all these calls were accomplishing.
So I eventually started messing with them. Just wasting their time for a few minutes, acting clueless, until either they hung up or I got tired of it and told them I'd keep wasting their time if they kept calling.
Then in one call after I messed with them a few minutes, they said "Thanks for playing <my phone number>, you will continue to receive phone calls."
Let that sink in.
They knew I was just wasting their time, they knew how many phone calls they had made, they were fine with me wasting their time.
The flaw in their plan was identifying my phone number when they said that. I had 3 or 4 numbers going to my cell phone (Google voice, an old home number via Asterisk). This call came while I was switching from Verizon to Project Fi on my Google Voice number, and they identified that they were calling my Verizon number. I loved Project Fi, so I cancelled my Verizon number.
Pity the foo who got that number assigned to them.
Your spam filters probably catch the occasional false positive. This is pretty much the same tradeoff.
It's NOT ignoring your friends if you don't pick up the phone every time they call. Regardless, my friends numbers are in my contact list. Crazy huh?
I might leave a meeting to ask my mom why she's calling in the middle of the day, but I'm not going to answer my phone for an unknown number and I'm mostly pretty annoyed by anonymous calls. They're very clearly a second class citizen for my attention.
As for why I don't answer the phone in general, the idea that someone thinks they can commandeer my undivided attention for _any_ amount of time is offensive to me. I respond to IM/email quickly enough that I'm confident I won't miss anything urgent and unlike voice, those media are asynchronous and won't interrupt whatever I'm doing.
But you're participating in the framework that permits such commandeering by carrying an addressable cell phone. Society's general expectation is that someone who volunteers to buy and operate a voice-enabled phone is willing to be called.
Why not buy a data-only SIM if you disagree with that fundamental premise?
Plus there's the fact that many official forms require a phone number of some sort, and it seems less evil to provide a number you own but don't answer than a random one.
- Being able to call out is handy for interacting with antiquated infrastructure at e.g. banks, government agencies and cable companies.
- There are times when I'm willing to receive scheduled calls from e.g. my accountant, my bank (fraud checks) or phone number verification for online services.
- Being able to receive SMS is handy for verification and notifications of things like Amazon deliveries and Lyft pickups, while not being intrusive.
- I haven't found a data-only SIM that gives me unlimited bandwidth.
And I disagree that "someone who volunteers to buy and operate a voice-enabled phone is willing to be called", despite it being the norm in the past. A phone is no longer the voice + SMS device that it once was (and when it was, I would have agreed with you). It's now a small, convenient and easy to use computer, that just so happens to have a phone built in (and impossible to acquire without it).
Theoretically if someone were to knock, I would check through the peephole and then decide whether to open the door. If not, I'd tell them to leave. If they decide not to leave, I would contact law enforcement, regardless of the knocker's intent.
Alternatively, use a google voice number, turn the apps on only when you need to call / receive a call.
Unfortunately this doesn't work. If the number itself has ever been used before (it has), it's already on a bunch of lists. Many banks and credit card providers will also share it with marketers.
I don't know but ignoring a call feels very unsatisfying. It keeps gnawing at me.
I'm not affiliated with them in any way; I just find it useful.
When I give my number to someone, I am aware that my number is going to end up with Facebook/Snapchat/LINE/whatever but does everyone think like this?
we recently had an election here and the amount of spam calls from candidate campaigners and election polls was crazy. truecaller saved me! (I also go to report the ones that fell through)
I haven't given them access to my contacts yet though so I end up looking up numbers in the app. Loathe to give this information to yet another vendor yet back when I joined WhatsApp I didn't even consider the privacy implication. Illustrates the heightened awareness of privacy we have now.
I'm trying to sell them shit before they have a chance to finish their pitch. Or I hang up on myself (hangup when I'm speaking) and see how many times they call me back (current record is at 4 before the guy figured it out). Or pretend that I don't own a phone while on a phonecall with them. Or ask them for their personal cell number so I can call during lunch and discuss this.
BTW Randy Pausch gets credit for most of those.
It'd be cheaper to use a service like Jolly Roger to keep them busy:
I don't mind them getting paid as long as I can have a good time at their expense. And hey, maybe me laughing at them will cause them to reconsider their chosen profession (but not holding my breath).
EDIT: typo.
Maybe their 'chosen profession' has less in terms of freedom of choice than you think it does. There are only so many low-wage jobs available and I figure most call center operators are happy with the crappy job they've got rather than with the high moral standards one they don't or can't get.
However, if you extend it a bit further it might mean that the inability to get a better job justifies you taking one that hurts other people - some of those telemarketers are selling useless shit, scamy subscriptions, etc. I don't fall for those but I'm not the only one receving those calls.
At least they've done it. I haven't heard a peep about this functionality coming to the iPhone.
Right now with Google Voice I get a dozen hang up calls per day, it's always from a different number. When I don't answer, Ive got a dozen 2 second long voice mails. I used to spend a lot of time setting these to spam or being blocked, but between Google Voice and Hangouts simply asinine and beyond incompetent integration where some calls show up in Google Voice but not Hangouts and vice versa, I'm losing interest.
So recently I just decided to make the default behavior for the Google Voice number not ring any of my phones or Hangouts, but set up contact groups where friends and family should ring through. Well that's not working, I'm still getting spam and hangup calls, and some friends ring through, others don't, and client calls don't.
It's really craptastic.
It's probably part of the Dialler app, which many other manufacturers replace with their own application.
That said they should charge me for more features! If it had pro features that worked for $35/year I'd do it.
I'd pay $35 a year for the f'n basic features it has now to work as they should, but don't. I'd pay a one time fee of $35 to see Hangouts die a fast death.
But you can download the Nexus dialer from the Play Store now: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Although the gv voice prompt "state your name" seems to help immensely.
I have exactly this problem too and I have no idea where they are coming from. I'm constantly waking up to 1 or 2 empty 2 second voicemails from random numbers. Sometimes a single number does it 2 or 3 times. I guess I an turn off voicemail, that is probably the only reasonable fix.
My Google Voice, luckily, didn't have that problem (Grand Central era) - but my new T-Mobile Cell phone number gets tonnes of crap calls.
If that is the case, I wonder why that is!
If you threaten them with reporting to the TPS (Telephone preference service) and they're not just a robot, they sometimes stop bothering you.
As far as I know, numbers aren't recycled, so maybe the number is in such an old range that spammers don't bother calling it. I'm careful about who I give the number to, but I do share it.
No problems with a UK mobile number while I lived there. Seems like mostly landlines are affected there?
I'm not sure what happened, but lately they've been rare (I suspect there's a lot of pressure on voip providers to up their game and stop selling to scammers), but in 2015 I had one or two per day, easy. These people often faked caller-id and had different numbers each time. It was difficult to block, so I just stopped answering calls I didn't recognize.
Worse, if you answered and treated them civilly like "No thank you I'm not interested in this please remove my number," they just hang up on you and then you get a new call from a different agent an hour later reading the exact same script.
The callers were obviously Indian call centers using scratchy sounding voip connections usually pretending to be your insurance company and asking for personal information or trying to sell you no-name car insurance.
As Murphy's law would have had it, got my first spam SMS after posting this. THEY ARE WATCHING US.
I don't get talking on the phone. It's the lowest quality form of communication - it's ephemeral, and unlike actual face-to-face communications, all nuance and body language goes out the window. Not to mention the all-too-often piss-poor audio quality, mics that don't work half the time, and the "Can you hear me now? What was the last thing you heard?" and "Sorry, I was on mute" dances.
If it's taking too long to type, my suggestion would be to get better at typing, or distill out the wheat from the chaff of what you're trying to say. That's what really drives me up the wall with speech - the information density is typically incredibly low, and too often people let noises tumble out of their face-holes without trying to piece together a coherent thought. I realize that's harsh, but I've lost patience for rambling, stream-of-conscience external monologues. Which promptly dissolve back into the hot air from whence they came, since there is not a readily reviewable, indexed, searchable record created automatically in the process of such bloviation.
Most phone conversations seem to be more of the former.
Besides, when I need to talk to a client, it's almost always faster and easier for me to make a call. 5 minutes of talking can easily bypass 15-20 minutes of writing an email.
Texting is fine for discrete, concrete information conveyance or things that don't require an immediate response. Sometimes dragging out a low-priority conversation via text is fine, but it can also be a time sink.
And while you may lose body language, you still have all the nuance of vocal inflection in voice that is lost in text.
Maybe not for everyone. Yet.
But where a phone was for a time a liberating device, it's become what many of its early (and I'm talking about late 19c and early 20c critics said, not late 20/early 21) critics claimed: an insistant, rude, inconsiderate, and noxious nuisance.
A phone can ring at any time, from a call initiated anywhere in the world. Low (or zero) costs mean the caller has very little reason not to call, and even a very slight probability of a positive financial return can support all measure of spam.
The fact that carrying a phone subjects you to sub-minute location tracking, puts an always-on microphone in your pocket, and leaks your identity, location, habits, and interests to the highest bidder (or marginally competent hacker) makes that a non-starter.
For the past several years, I've simply not carried a phone when I could possibly manage to, and the liberation is tremendous. (The trauma of having been on-call for years may or may not have contributed to my intense distaste for the devices.)
There are other options -- virtually any modern electronic kit has multiple messaging capabilities, from email to IRC to various messaging applications to full VOIP and voice/video messaging. Carrying a non-phone Android tablet affords some utility without the tremendous disutilities of a phone.
But, and this speaks to recent pain, the device (a Samsung Tab A 9.7" WiFi-only) is itself locked down -- not rootable, bootloader locked, and so far as I can tell, no CyanogenMod images available for it. I'd bought it whilst travelling under some duress, as an affordable and, so far as I could tell, least-bad option.
But without the ability to actually control the system, I'm still subject to spam, crud, poor management tools (simply being able to allocate and manage storage rationally appears beyonds its meagre capabilities), etc.
What Google are offering is very little, very late. And the fact that other telcos are failing to step up and address the massive disutilities of their projects is another immense failing of the market. Realising these are the same unspeakable idiots who'll be shoving Internet of Shit devices down our every orifice makes me cry for the future.
I've had a Google (Voice) number for... hard to even say now, 8 years? And i.. well, i think i've only gotten a few calls to that number, ever.
In fact, i have a normal cell number (i don't link my google and cell provider numbers), and i get texted spam to it maybe twice a year, but i can't recall anything really.. ever, to my Google number.
To my knowledge i don't have any anti-spam settings enabled on Google Voice (though, they do exist). I wonder what the root cause for this is?
I often forget that "in this day and age", call spam is still an issue.
I haven't had a landline since we got one in college, in the early 2000's, mostly because it came free with the internet service, and I was going to plug in an answering machine with amusing messages.
My uncle was an early supporter of Ooma and my parents have a box that provides their landline number that they've had for 25+ years, and they don't pay anything in terms of a monthly fee.
In spite of how great of a deal it is, the spam calls have gotten to be so bad that my parents are considering getting rid of it. It's not worth the hassle, even when it's essentially free. At least half the calls that come in are spam.
(Quick aside: Ooma deserves praise for their product. I hope they succeed and can pivot properly to other products as telephones naturally die. They contribute back to the FOSS Asterisk project and their products are reliable.
Here's a cool blog post I've come across where someone hooks their Ooma box into a local server running Asterisk. You could probably do some really cool home-automation with this: http://www.adrianandgenese.com/blogger/2010/04/23/how-to-set... )
Most of the calls are from "one way funding" and "this is shelly, your local yahoo and google listings specialist."
Kaiser also leaves me voicemails in English and Spanish, and sometime waits for me to press a number. Very annoying.
I wonder if Google is doing anything beyond simply crowdsourcing spam reports based on CallerID, at least for Google Voice numbers since they own that network so may have access to some data (ANI?) that's not normally available on regular phone lines?
Sure?
Is this feature going to send all my incoming phone call numbers to Google - to compare it against a list of "known/suspected spammers"?
Will this only work in the United States or will it work internationally?
The feature has been available for a long time and is fantastic in my opinion. When an unknown number dials it gets replaced on the screen in ~1-2 seconds with the business name, which is really useful.
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon?from_sear...
So there you go. Money making good people do bad things again.
Google's implementation also warns you about potential spam callers. Google maintains a list of spam callers and you can report phone numbers to this list.
And are political calls and surveys considered spam? I certainly consider them spam.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/relea...
> CallKit. CallKit also introduces app extensions that enable call blocking and caller identification. You can create an app extension that can associate a phone number with a name or tell the system when a number should be blocked.