Google’s Call Screen is a new way to thwart telemarketers (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Google’s Call Screen is a new way to thwart telemarketers (2018)

inc.com

10 pointsaxiomdata31612 comments

> You can also mark spammy incoming calls as "Spam." That way, if you ever get a call from that number again, it will come with a big red interface reminding you that you've previously pegged the number as suspicious.

Spam callers often id as fake numbers with your area code and prefix. I've even had a spam caller come up as a friend's phone number. This feature would be all but useless for the spam calls I receive.

> The caller will either hang up--in which case it's probably not important--or provide an answer, which will then be transcribed and displayed on your screen.

I let unknown numbers go to voicemail, which accomplishes the same thing. I don't see how this is useful except you can choose to answer instead of call back. I guess maybe if your friend is calling from jail or a payphone (do those even still exist?).

How does phone number spoofing work? Sounds like a leak in the system to me if anyone could just fake anyone's phone number.

That's a US only thing.

It's 2018 rather than "just revealed": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18177145

But since it's back, I'm curious - is anyone using it often? Are you happy with how it works?

I've been using it for a year or so and it's brilliant. I love that I can screen calls in a meeting without anyone knowing.

Disclosure: I work for Google.

I got 34 calls before noon a few weeks ago - all of them unknown numbers. I clicked the 'screen call' option or ignored it. One single person left his name and message - an old friend. Everyone else I marked as spam, so the next person may get a warning, and blocked. It works great.

I use it off and on and it works pretty well. Typically the caller (robot) hangs up almost right away before you get the satisfaction of screwing with them though and when that happens you don't get the easy option to block them as spam either because the screener quits right away.

It seems like the more damaging part for Telemarketers is not that they won't be able to reach people—if you're going to fall for their scams, I don't think this will help—it's that the calls that they get nothing out of will take more time, and therefore cost more.

This feature has been out for a long time, I've been using it for months...

Why does this article have no dateline?

Because it's old news, but they don't want you to know that.

Can we get a less clickbaity headline for something that was announced last year? (It's Call Screen for Pixel devices.)

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