Dunno what I said the last time a call violated the do-not-call list and woke me. They actually called back later to tell me how shook up they were, and that they'd been discussing my response with their lawyers.

I don't see a difference between kidnapping one person for a week, and taking ten seconds away from 56,874 people. I'd support similar penalties.

I decided to fix this problem.

Phone.com is aimed at small businesses; if you have three extensions in your house they default to ringing separately like cubicles. However, any HN reader will have no trouble customizing their service.

I have one service spanning homes on both coasts. The phone number I give out has a white list, or answers with a recorded message to press 7. Apparently this is enough to evade all robocalls. Successful callers ring the extensions where I'm scheduled to be, and the Phone.com app on my cell phone.

My cell phone is otherwise set to "Do Not Disturb" so it only rings if you're in that address book. The Phone.com app is a bit clumsy (it doesn't track switching to AirPods once the call starts, for example) but for answering calls it works.

Some legitimate businesses robodial numbers before putting on a human. They don't get through. Life goes on. They should know better than to appear to be a robocall.