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Comment by thatswrong0 | Hacker News Reader

I would love to be able to block all numbers coming from my area code and the first 3 digits of my number.. all my robo calls come from a number that looks just like mine.

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There is an app on the Apple App Store called Exchange Blocker, it automatically blocks all calls from your area code and first 3 digits. I use it, and it works great so far

Or send to Google Assistant screening. It's the best feature ever but they need to open it up to rules for automation (i.e. all unknown numbers from XXX area code).

I don't want to send all my calls to google

Call Screening is done locally on the phone, the call audio and transcripts are not sent to Google.

They need to make the audio available to the user. Their text to speech engine never maages to get a decent transcript figured out. That or people are just yelling gibberish into the phone when I screen them. Until I can review the call audio I'll never know.

I very much want to believe this. But I can't. This is a sad state of affairs.

There's also the Google call spam reporting.

The last thing I want to give google is access to all of my phone call data. I just want to reduce my footprint with that company.

Audio, transcript, and other call screen data is stored locally on your phone, not sent to Google or anywhere else: https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9094888

It really is a nice little feature.

Have you tried Hiya? That works for me...it’s called “Neighbor Scam Protection”.

That would be a problem for me as plenty of people I know have the same first six digits as they were allocated to Verizon Wireless about 20 years ago.

You could have an exception for people in your contact list.

I just switched to Hiya from Nomorobo and the premium version allows for this, referred to as the "neighbor scam". It's worked really well, between my number and Gvoice I was getting 50 of these calls a week.

Mind saying a bit more about making this switch? I use Hiya now and am open to something better. You seem happy with the move?

I'd used Nomorobo since inception but found more calls getting through, mostly neighbor scams. Went looking for a new call blocker and they are all similar. Hiya had built in support for neighbor scam which was a huge percentage of my inbound spam. It's worked as well as Nomorobo plus it blocks neighbor spam, so I'm ahead at the moment.

Thanks!

I use an app called WideProtect. It's not free, but it's also not a subscription. It lets you do exactly what you describe.

As a side note, CallKit on iOS doesn't support wildcard blocking, so WideProtect literally adds all the possible numbers within your specified range to the blocking database. This doesn't impact performance as far as I can tell (maybe calls ring another 100ms after they would normally), but there seems to be a delay of a few minutes after installing for it to show up as a block extension under Settings.

Hear hear. An interesting corner case is when the call is from your exact number.

I wonder if the keepers of the POTS (plain old telephone system) can start putting in safeguards to curtail the ability to fake your source phone number. I get that there are myriad instances where this is above board and even necessary, but nobody's proposing any changes.

Ajit Pai recently announced the FCC is pushing carriers towards this type of system.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/ajit-pai-slams-s...

> "Under the SHAKEN/STIR framework, calls traveling through interconnected phone networks would be 'signed' as legitimate by originating carriers and validated by other carriers before reaching consumers," Pai's press release explained. "The framework digitally validates the handoff of phone calls passing through the complex web of networks, allowing the phone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify that a call is from the person supposedly making it."

I use an app called Should I Answer? It uses crowd sourcing to collect robocalling numbers. My phone doesn't even ring for most of the robocalls now, and the ones it misses, I can add to their database so others won't get them.

How does the database work, when it’s just your own number with the last two digits different?

I've literally been robocalled from my own number before. I don't think this would work

Depends on the carrier. Proper equipment should be like “WTF? This is obviously spoofed” and reject the call but then again the entire telco industry is fucked up.

back in the 2000s, you used to be able to get into most peoples' voicemail by calling someone's phone with it's spoofed number. Lots of people didn't use voicemail passwords.

"I would love to be able to block all numbers coming from my area code and the first 3 digits of my number."

Very easy with Twilio. As I mentioned elsewhere in this HN thread, I ported my number to Twilio about 18mos ago and use-cases like this are quick and easy to implement.

In fact, I have noticed the same behavior (spam calls coming from the same NPA+prefix as my number) and I might just implement that this evening ...

Certainly the native OS should support this. But I n case you are not aware, third party apps such as Hiya will do this exact thing.

That's a nice heuristic for some folks but it's a big failure on rural phone numbers. My neighbors and half the businesses I interact with all have numbers in the same prefix as my land line. For cellular numbers, you're basically talking about blocking 1000 random other cell phones in your city.

There’s a free app called Hiya that does this

That sounds very useful. But with one exception. As tempting as it may be, my ex should still be able to call me.

More recent robocalls that I've been getting have had the same area code and a slightly different prefix. More difficult to ignore. I assume it's just as easy to fake these numbers as others.

There are apps that do exactly that, e.g. NumberShield for iOS. Blocking calls from numbers with the same first six digit as mine has substantially reduced the amount of robocalls I receive.

The most common scam call I’ve been getting for the last month is my mobile number on the caller ID, saying they are my carrier and that my account has been locked.

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