Google Assistant will screen spam calls on the Pixel 3 | Hacker News Reader

Google Assistant will screen spam calls on the Pixel 3

theverge.com

31 pointsjbredeche11 comments

It would be really amazing to have an option to engage with suspected telemarketing callers using Google Duplex.

User experience: * Get a suspected telemarketing call * Ringer silent while the in call UI waits for user to pick up * If ignored, call us picked up and Duplex engages the caller to know about the offer and get other details * Call transcribed; Optionally summarised and saved in cloud for later access by user

What Google gets: * More widespread use of Duplex with associated improvements * Data from telemarketer, voice as well as offers information which can be further analyzed for any beneficial purpose

99.9% of the telemarketer calls I get are robocalls, and not likely to be of any use to Google Dupelex. I suspect it's only a matter of time before that google thing is weaponized against civilians by telemarketers paying google for the service.

When you tap the “screen call” button

Uhg, no thanks. How about stopping them without interrupting me, or requiring an action from me? My entire family gets these calls, my kids get the most. I had to put their phones into "do not disturb" mode and only allow calls from contacts which is a terrible band-aid.

As the article mentions, there is also call blocking for suspected spam: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/13/17569544/google-phone-app...

I missed that! thanks - most likely I was thrown into a blind rage when I got to the "When you tap the “screen call” button" and stopped reading. Shame on me.

Since I use an older iPhone, I'm trying YouMail (now) but am not impressed. Going to try Hiya next.

And presumably this is for the difficult cases we're Google can't block it because they're not sure it's spam, and you yourself are also not sure if the call is legitimate.

I almost hate to say it (thought doubtless it will be thought of, regardless), but the spammer will know your number is a cell number. Cue the text messages, et al.

Not intersted. Give me a freaking white listed callers only mode. Don't need cloud, google or anything complicated for that...

That's built in already as part of the do not disturb feature. You can set a list of important contacts that can always get through.

In stock Android, it doesn't quite work that way. Ideally, there would be a built-in option to allow only calls from folks in your contact list. You miss out on all notifications (e.g. from email, etc) when you use 'do not disturb' this way.

I can't wait until they start blocking people suspected for "online hate speech". That's just one step away from filtering people's physical speech in real time. Perhaps Google should make a pair of lightweight noise-cancelling headphones that only allow government and Google-approved speech through. What a time to be alive.

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