Americans got 26.3B robocalls last year, up 46 percent from 2017 | Hacker News Reader

Americans got 26.3B robocalls last year, up 46 percent from 2017

washingtonpost.com

50 pointsbyproxy27 comments

This is just ushering in the end of voice calling entirely. Not too much longer now.

Alternatively, one day Apple will add a service to prevent this in a simple way, turn it on by default, and overnight the entire industry will be dead.

> and overnight the entire industry will be dead.

And nothing of value will be lost. Unfortunately the perpetrators will find a new channel.

But fortunately for Apple users, it won’t be iMessage. :)

Don't the Google Pixel phones already do this?

The kicker is the robocallers now use phone numbers which match the first six of your own number (area code and first 3 digits). When I was in the process of interviewing with a company and therefore waiting for phone calls, this was incredibly frustrating.

To me, this functions as a giveaway. If I see the first six digits match my number, I'm confident it's not legitimate. (I decline any number I don't recognize anyway, but in this case I'm a pinch more confident it's spam.)

European here: our (mobile) phone numbers are "random". Are yours too or are they matched to a subscription area ?

Typically when you sign up for a mobile line in the US the carrier will assign you a number whose area code (first three digits) is "correct" for your address. But it's not strict, and you can keep that number anywhere you move after that.

I got my first cell phone when I was living in central Missouri, so my area code is 573 even though I no longer have any ties to that area. Identifying this type of robocall is very easy for me.

I use WideProtect on iOS to block any calls with that match my area code + first 3 digits. It's been working pretty well for over a year.

T-Mobile has automatic spam block, it's reduced the number of spam calls for me drastically. Super easy to turn on, just dial #662#

Only for those on a post-paid plan. I'm on a pre-paid plan that they'll have to pry out of my cold, dead fingers ($30/month, unlimited data+text) which doesn't receive it, unfortunately.

> $30/month, unlimited data+text

Whaaaat? I'm on the T-Mo 5Gb + 100 min talk + unlimited text $30 pre-paid plan, where'd you find this unlimited data one?

I'm also on the T-Mobile $30 plan from some Walmart promotion from years back!

Well, after posting that comment I decided to check out their current offerings which led me to discover Mint Mobile. It's an all-around better deal, provided you don't mind paying for a year up-front. I think I just may switch next month!

🧨

The fact that this is a non existent thing in Austria where I live means it could be solved by legislation and enforcement. If I had to guess the telcos have somehow gotten themselves off the hook here even though they probably profit a lot

Why don't we just institute a national call tax of 1/2 cent per call? It would be negligible for any legitimate call, but it would totally break the business model for robocalls which require millions of calls to get through. I assume an extremely small percentage of people actually buy stuff from robocalls. am i missing something?

Maybe, it really depends on exactly how tight that robocalling margin is.

I don't know if it's available to all Android users, but the automatic spam detection and manual call screening has been extremely effective at reducing the amount of robocalls I answer.

edit: pixel 2

What model do you have? I don't believe I have that feature on my XZ1C.

I have it on my Pixel 2. It seems to help a lot.

by "automatic spam detection" do you mean sending the incoming caller details to a 3rd party server for analysis? That was an option on my device, but after reading the T&C and privacy policy, I opted not to use that service.

My carrier does, however, mark a lot of calls as "Scam likely" which has been very helpful.

Well, I think it increased more than 50% since last year. I get 5-10 calls each and every week from unknown numbers. All of their VMs are robocalls! Well, I block the numbers immediately. I think the authority should do something about them. I have also read a nice article at https://www.whycall.me/news/consumer-wins-massive-229500-rob.... People might find this useful.

https://nomorobo.com and https://donotcall.gov

nomorobo was crowdfunded and works well on old-school voip lines where it 1 rings on spam calls.

Why does the existing phone system allow for robo-generated numbers?

Because there is no financial incentive not to.

Because large corporations sometimes substitute their internal numbers with a more public number when dialing out so that if you call back you connect to the appropriate incoming call center. And also because this caller ID system is super old and therefore has no real authenticity checks.

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