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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

I'm waaay past trusting that network. I tell companies to text or email me. And texting is also starting to get spammed out.

Right now, I can't even use apps like Hiya that implement prefix blocking. My method right now is to forward ALL calls to a google voice number, and those are transcribed or what-have-you. If you don't leave a message, I don't care about you.

We need a signal, at the highest of levels to basically make the decision on what's going to happen to the phone network, because honestly, a brand new system is what I expect at this point, not a patch.

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Yes - a contact whitelist is all I want from iOS with two features: a button to temporarily allow all calls for 30min (for Uber/door dash) and the option to allow a second call to come through from an unknown number if it’s within 2min of the first.

All other calls should go to voicemail by default.

The way Apple allows you to interact with CallKit makes this hard to implement because a blacklist of numbers is required and a blacklist of all numbers is huge.

Isn't this exact feature available via Do Not Disturb? I have DND on 24/7, and you can quickly turn it off for Lyft/etc if needed. If you make groups within your contacts you can even hone the whitelist and can fairly quickly mod it.

No - DND blocks all notifications in addition to calls which makes it not usable.

I still want notifications for other things (especially text).

I have DnD constantly too and find it convenient.

Not just convenient. I’ve been in DND mode all day every day for months now, and I’ve witnessed a drastically improved overall quality of life. Mostly from the lack of texts and notifications, not just from the lack of phone calls. It has also resulted in my not being glued to my phone responding to everything. I can feel my mental health improving, and I don’t think I could go back to non-DND.

I assume dnd is no notification or signal? I have had this since high school (15 years I guess)? At the time phones weren't allowed so every day my phone had to be on silent and I never turned it off. I started working and phones weren't allowed. Then college and phones weren't allowed. I don't even know what my ring tone is and I only assume my alert messages work because my phone can play music...

DND does not direct calls to voicemail, it just keeps your phone silent and doesn't ring/vibrate while the incoming call screen is showing. I've still accidentally answered calls while in DND mode. Sometimes I just want to turn phone calls off entirely and use my phone like it's an iPod touch with a data SIM card.

The problem is a legitimate urgent call from an unwhitelisted number. Hospital, school, fire, police, relatives, etc.

Don’t care about those - voicemail is good enough, repeated call would get through anyway.

I already don’t answer numbers not in contacts (I think this is true of most people) so no real change in behavior.

I think most people have learned. But every now and then, I'll get a call or text from a clueless individual. They are usually blown away to learn how my number (or a random unknown number) ended up in their call log.

That's what the retry feature is. If it's truly urgent they'll call again within a short timeframe (+3 to +300 seconds; not milliseconds like the 'try to go direct to voicemail' spam calls).

I tell this to everyone I care for as well, if I don't pick up by the third ring, hang up and dial again. (This is to skip it going to voicemail and also differentiate the behavior).

I don't expect scammers to pick up this tactic because it would double their OpEx and also make it more likely that they are targeted for actually trying to call your number with intent, rather than in error.

> I don't expect scammers to pick up this tactic because it would double their OpEx

Except my missed call log is full of back-to-back calls from random phone numbers in my prefix. Either half the folks in Metro NYC (where I haven't lived in over a decade) are calling me to report the other half got hit by a car, or this adaption has already been made.

That's neighborhood spoofing - the prefix may match, but if you're only allowing the exact same number to come through then the call would still be blocked.

Same here, almost every spam call on my list has called again within five minutes, usually as soon as I decline the call.

>like the 'try to go direct to voicemail' spam calls

The practice of leaving messages directly on voicemail bypassing the ability for the recipient to answer is commonly referred to as "voicedrops". I know this because a client asked for my compamy to implememt this ability, using carriers API first and successive calls as a fallback. Current regulations in the US don't explictly define this the same as a call, IIRC Canada does.

Except they do this and intentionally. They call, hang up as soon as it rings, and call right back. You are deceiving yourself if you think they are going to change their habits to avoid getting caught. They don't worry about getting caught, because no one catches them. One carrier shuts them down, they pick another. There are plenty to choose from, and plenty of greedy CLECs look the other way or join in.

If it's important they will leave a voicemail message

> and the option to allow a second call to come through from an unknown number if it’s within 2min of the first.

They have (had? still on 10.3 which it claims is up to date) that option under the "Repeated Calls" clicky box -- allow calls if they call back within 3 minutes.

Had to turn even that off since the spammers got smart and were getting through.

I've been using GV since it was Grand Central... love it. I really hope it doesn't get killed, I'd happily pay $25-30/year just for what google voice adds over regular phone service. If they do kill it, I'll probably do a virtual PBX to get at least similar services I can control.

As an aside, I showed the email thing to a coworker pretty early on, it was pretty wild in the old days.

Related, Hangouts has started to be spammed. The spammers create a group hangout with a few dozen people, draw you into it, and then you see the welcome message. There's no blocking contacts from unknown people: rather, it seems like that was the business model of G+.

Granted, hangouts is almost gone now, but it demonstrates there's a way to spam almost anything and ruin it.

It happened a lot with AOL/AIM as well as Yahoo messenger, and even MSN messenger back in the day. To a large extent, I really miss those days... would love to see something like Yahoo messenger come back with voice chat rooms, maybe over WebRTC or similar.

Facebook Messenger is about all I use, and even then rarely... I use hangouts for mostly the occasional screen share or for SMS with my google voice acct (I don't even have my actual cell phone number memorized).

> If you don't leave a message, I don't care about you.

Unfortunately spammers have started leaving messages, for me, in the past ~2 years. Prior to that, this heuristic worked very well!

It's still less annoying to have voicemail spam than picking up the phone to a spam.

I'm actually hoping that robocalls are the downfall of the PSTN and big telcos. They are immovable monsters and have outlived their reign in this world.

Except when we provide you 4g and 5g coverage, ensure societies have working critical infrastructure to communicate peer to peer and in addition gives you a nice fiber pipe to your house and handle all the carrier dealings of broadband interconnectivity. Oh yeah and tie this all together with advanced roaming deals and functionality which connects countries around the world. It's also us who pioneer and really implement GDPR and stand in the trenches for privacy governance.

Telecoms are far from all that bad. But I understand why everyone hates their phone bill and of course agree that we need to act against predatory pricing, and such.

> pioneer and really implement GDPR and stand in the trenches for privacy governance.

And then go sell location data to all sorts of shady characters?

A few examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18857220

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=phone%20location%20data&sort=b...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bounty&sort=byPopularity&prefi...

I am not advocating for US mobile operators. The world is vastly broader and greater - US cell phone carriers are just that, US carriers.

My argument was the economic utility which the infrastructure a telco provides to society. Both with pipes, technology and know-how of how to operate critical infrastructure 24/7.

I cannot wait for SpaceX' Starlink to become operational and we will see some disruption happening in (this) space.

> Telecoms are far from all that bad.

Speaking of US telecoms, they are simply awful and abusive companies. Yes, they provide a critical service, but they sure do take their pound of flesh for it and constantly engage in activities that are harmful to society.

I for one was not speaking for US Telecoms whatsoever.

Fair enough! That's why I limited my comment to US telecoms -- they're the only ones I have any experience with.

Gmail's spam detection basically eliminated spam on email, and it seems best characterized as a patch.

Why would you trust email? I have a few service providers who refuse to send a paper bill. I have nearly perfect credit because I always pay everything off on time, for literally decades. I have missed 2 or 3 email bills in the past year because they didn't get to me. While it's certainly possible for regular mail to go missing, my experience is that it happens orders of magnitude less frequently than losing emails. I now have to set up my own reminders to pay the companies that refuse to send me a paper bill because it's too risky to rely on them actually getting the bill to me electronically. (And I'm not giving anyone permission to withdraw money directly from my account.)

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