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Comment by mjmahone17 | Hacker News Reader

> According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview.

More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls. If you only get one unexpected, unknown call a month you will almost always answer it. If you get three a day you will almost never answer it.

We are allowing private businesses and scammers to steal the “commons” of our societal attention. We are doing a very poor job of keeping useful communications channels open: almost every communication medium people rely on for important information gets cluttered with must-ignore spam, making it decreasingly likely an important message is actually received.

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I got an automated message from my local states's department of health services. It simply said they're "trying to contact me and the interview will only take 5 minutes." However, having not scheduled any interviews with the government I had no idea what they were talking about, so I chalked it up to spam or polling attempts and ignored several similar calls.

I'm now wondering if it was an attempt at contact tracing. Had they simply stated what they wanted in the message I would have been pretty likely to call them back myself or answer a later call.

I have no idea where they got my cell phone number from, but the whole thing seems poorly handled at best. Anyone with legitimate business will state the nature of that business and allow for a return call. There's just so many solutions to this problem but nearly zero aligned with incentives.

Privacy regulations (HIPAA) may forbid them from saying "Hey we think you might have COVID" on your voicemail, unless you've already filled out paperwork saying "It's okay to leave a message on my voicemail with detailed health information."

Your doctor's office can do it because you probably have an existing patient relationship, and you already filled out that paperwork on your first visit.

But in the situation of a cold-calling contact tracer, you haven't signed anything at all, so all they can say is "This is the health department and we want to talk to you."

It simply said they're "trying to contact me and the interview will only take 5 minutes."

Yep. That was probably about COVID. Health privacy laws prohibit even the vague mention of a condition. The caller has no way of knowing if they have the right phone number, and the last thing you want is "Attention, Rando McUltrarunner at 42 Crustacean Crest Drive, Cleveland, Ohio! You have been infected with COVID! Run, don't walk to your nearest testing facility!" on some stranger's voicemail. Or worse, "We are following up to see if you're doing well after your abortion" ending up on the voicemail or texting app of a 15-year-old girl whose parents might have access to her phone.

Source: Recently completed my company's mandatory annual HIPAA training.

how would authentication work when you/someone does pick up the phone?

Sadly, it breaks down. You ask someone if they are who they are, and that's about all you can do. Someone can lie. Has it ever happened? Probably, but I've never heard of it, and my legal department is pretty good about keeping up on these things. But the way the law is written, asking the question absolves the caller of legal liability.

It's not IT-grade authentication, but for wetware it works.

I have seen some companies that call have pre-loaded Caller ID. Why don’t Apple or Google provide a service that guarantees that the Contact tracing service always calls with a Caller ID, and Apple/Google could even mark it as verified. I think many businesses would pay for this service as it saves money on having to contact existing customers and reduces fraud.

I believe they already do this.

Then why aren’t pollsters and contact tracers doing this so none of miss those calls?

I don't want pollsters calling me. Nor contact tracers. They can send an email if it's essential.

One thing that comes to mind, if a call comes in accompanied by screen message of a kind that I have never seen before I'd be twice as alarmed as with just some random unknown number calling. I might end up googling recently updated apps for news of a malware takeover instead of answering the call.

But it would be a good idea nonetheless, it only requires to be accompanied by a serious information campaign preparing first time receivers for the surprise.

Semi related, but some services (trapcall, for one) offer a very cheap service that punches through called ID spoofing via AMI, and offer blocking on public and private lists, really help.

I imagine contact tracers would at least leave a voicemail? I always let numbers I don't recognize and aren't local (my cell phone number is out-of-state and spam calls usually originiate from that area code, not my current local) go to voicemail since I assume if they're important, they'll leave a voicemail.

I've got enough IRS and social security calls on my voice mail as to ignore them all too. If I don't know the voice and I'm not expected the call it is ignored.

That only works if you have and check your voicemail. Many people either don't have a voicemail or don't bother ever setting it up. When the carriers start charging you a lot of money to have a voicemail, plenty of people will forgo it, and instead say things like "if it's important enough they'll call back" or "they'll send me a text message".

> Many people either don't have a voicemail or don't bother ever setting it up.

I actively turned my voicemail off completely.

There is simply no-one who I want to talk to who would choose to leave me a voicemail if I don't answer.

FWIW I get lots of spam voicemails, to the point where the 'new voicemail' notification doesn't glass any confidence that a human called me.

I can, of course, listen to every voicemail, but that's not much better than just picking up the phone when I get a spam call.

I would say 95% of the voicemail is spam. The other 5% also sends me an email if they couldn't reach me.

So basically the only reason I check my voicemail is to get rid of the notification on my phone

It's funny how you remain completely unaware of the merits of your country's set of laws unless you hear from how things are elsewhere. We do have spam calls, but they are rare enough that people bonding over spam call infuriation might reference one that happened a year earlier.

yeah it's a total shitshow in the United States; I get 20-25 spam calls a week unless I shell out for a service to block them (TrapCall, Robocaller, etc.)

I'm sure there are bills in the works, but those same bills are likely bundled along with completely unrelated nonsense.

Use something like Google Voice that gives you a transcript. In fact, I bet Google could probably automatically flag spam voicemails if they tried.

Of course, you may not be comfortable with giving Google access to this data...

I have transcripts, but I still have to read them. You're right though, it's better than listening to the audio.

We already have contract tracing scams. I got a call claiming to be a contract tracing call asking for my SS# to tell me if I was at risk.

No clue how widespread this is, but I can't exactly blame people for assuming any call or voicemail they get is a scam, there are so many out there.

That's...both unsurprising and super disappointing.

I have a similar problem with voicemail: the spammers leave voicemail too so I don't want to check that either.

Yeah, I use Google Voice and just read the transcript since that takes a lot less time.

> More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls.

Yep. I never answer unrecognized numbers anymore, and nobody I've talked to about it does, either.

Welcome to what society looks like when social trust declines. It will keep getting worse unless and until people discover that the commons actually matters and is more than something to scam and find some way to parasitically monetize.

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