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Comment by ghostpepper | Hacker News Reader

I live in Canada, and I and most people I know receive spam calls from spoofed numbers on a semi-regular basis.

Sometimes the number only a few digits off from my number, but other times it has a name like TOLL FREE SERV. A common lure is claiming they are Service Canada or Canada Revenue Agency (or the nonexistent Revenue Canada), and the call will open with nonsensical threats like “A warrant has been placed in your social insurance number”. I have a hunch they often target wealthy international students, as sometimes the messages are entirely in Chinese.

Recently I received three calls in one day. It’s been happening for years, and the phone companies don’t appear to be able/willing/motivated to stop it. Most people I know have just resorted to not picking up calls from unknown numbers.

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If you are on Telus or any of their other brands you should be able to configure "Call Control". This feature prompts an unknown caller to type a given digit before the call is actually connected. Filters out 100% of all spam and other automatically dialed calls. Very very rarely I had people miss the prompt and as a result not being able to reach me. We're talking like 2 calls in 3 years. They reached me via email and all was good in the end.

I live in Canada too, and these particular calls are rapidly destroying the notion of answering a number that is not in your contact list.

on iOS, the "Silence Unknown Callers" feature has completely eliminated this for me.

I was actually waiting on a call back from a parcel company, so the scam caller in this case just had very lucky timing.

Canadian physician here: yeah, this is hell for us trying to reach patients through the hospital system, which is "unknown" by default. Straight to voicemail and you can't really leave a message. Totally agree though, this problem is very time consuming, if only for the time it takes me to look at my phone and decide not to answer the call - a few seconds of my life each time. My worst day was a few days ago; 7 calls.

Developer here, the cost is more than a few seconds. That call can derail productivity for much longer, like pushing a heavy stone that must gain momentum

You're going to hate me then: I go a step farther than OP: Do Not Disturb mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No notifications, no messages, no phone ring at all. I make sure my voicemail is never full. Leave a message and if it's important I will get back to you.

If I have a sick relative and explicitly expect an urgent call, I can easily and briefly turn off DND mode.

If the concept of a telephone never existed, and "Phone App" was invented today, it would be considered extremely intrusive and likely not (at least on iOS) pass App Store review. Think about it: Here's an app that allows any random person to cause your device to 1. interrupt whatever foreground app you have running with system-level UI (notification or full-screen takeover), and 2. ring and vibrate your device without your consent. If we weren't already familiar with telephones, we would never accept such an obnoxious app!

That is just the android facebook app in lite mode! I tried it for about 24 hours once after much social pressure. Now I just look at my wife's feed if she mentions something interesting.

Out of curiosity - what do you mean by "Can't really leave a message" ?

Not the OP, but if you are a doctor and need to ring a relative or a friend to inform them about a very sick patient, leaving a message without the opportunity for at least brief interaction isn't something particularly pleasant for either party. ( You either leave too nonspecific information that not being sure what to do, or too much that potentially is breaching patient confidentiality or is going to panic the recipient)

Ah that makes sense, thanks. I wasn't sure if there was something I didn't know about blocking unknown calls on iOS or Android that also prevented voicemails

In the US, I've had several problems with physician clerical staff calling me on their personal cellular phones instead of using an office line with proper ID set, then upset because they could never get hold of me. No, I don't answer calls from random strangers, and I don't do answering machines or voicemail, which seems to be something so radical some people have trouble understanding the concept.

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