General > General Technical Chat
UPDATED: Well... looks like I've l̶o̶s̶t̶ won the battle against scam callers
BradC:
--- Quote from: Halcyon on January 22, 2024, 05:20:01 am ---Is it just me or has regular telephony just become so polluted with garbage that it's no longer viable?
--- End quote ---
I think it's just you. Of the 30 or so calls I get a week I'm seeing a scam call every other week or so. I still get the odd week of "random" calls when my number gets spoofed, but I find it interesting talking to people from around Australia to see where they are and how their day is going.
I think you'll find most "normal" people, and certainly those with any reason to interact with "the great unwashed" don't have the luxury of forgoing actual conventional telecommunications. It kinda seems a bit severe though. Almost like "Gee I need a haircut, I'll go get chemo".
Glad it works for you however.
Halcyon:
--- Quote from: BradC on January 23, 2024, 07:49:49 am ---
--- Quote from: Halcyon on January 22, 2024, 05:20:01 am ---Is it just me or has regular telephony just become so polluted with garbage that it's no longer viable?
--- End quote ---
but I find it interesting talking to people from around Australia to see where they are and how their day is going.
--- End quote ---
I'm glad you have the time for this. :D
I guess to add to one of your other points you raised in your previous message; Most commercial business I do is online. For example, if I need to register my car, or pay a bill, it's all done online and I get notified via email. With email, you can verify the authenticity of the sender with a high degree of confidence. The same cannot be said for a voice on the end of a phone.
BradC:
--- Quote from: Halcyon on January 23, 2024, 07:55:37 am ---
I'm glad you have the time for this. :D
--- End quote ---
I make time. I'm a consultant, so the next phone call could be from a client with a problem or someone who has a problem and isn't yet a client. I can't afford to ignore the phone because that's where a majority of my work comes from.
Plus, my 102 year old grandfather can dial a phone. Signal? Not so much.
Halcyon:
This problem would be largely solved if Android could just whitelist numbers in your contacts and not allow any others through.
Whales:
--- Quote from: Halcyon on January 23, 2024, 07:44:55 am ---
--- Quote from: Shonky on January 23, 2024, 07:25:54 am ---What is an encrypted phone call?
--- End quote ---
For me, it means calls via the Signal application (but still using my phone number). But Whatsapp and other VoIP services could also fall into this category. Most of my contacts use Signal for messaging and voice/video calls.
--- End quote ---
The term "phone number" is now very confusing.
Traditionally: your phone number is a thing leased from a phone company and centrally managed, so if you get a call to your mobile phone number then it is by definition through your mobile provider. Let's call it mp://614xxxxxxxx for shorthand (Australian mobile phone numbers are in the format 04xxxxxxxx internally but 614xxxxxxxx externally).
These days: some services use your phone number as part of a user ID (that way they offload problems like spam signups & complaints to another company, which saves tremendous amounts of staff & money), and they make it look like you are "receiving calls to your number" even though it's a completely different system. Let's call Signal's example as signal://614xxxxxxxx for short.
Can I now "get a call to my phone number" from any service that includes my phone number in their user id? It's just a string of numbers, it has little or nothing to do with actual traditional number registration systems. mailto://614xxxxxxxx.com http://614xxxxxxxx.net sip://614xxxxxxxx@example.com. From the user's perspective: yes, I got a phone call to +614xxxxxxxx. From a technical perspective: no, you got a call to a completely different thing that just happens to include those numbers in it.
--- Quote ---We'll see how this goes... Is it just me or has regular telephony just become so polluted with garbage that it's no longer viable?
--- End quote ---
Somehow it seems to strongly be a per-number problem.
My shared family home phone (now a SIP phone) has a horrible scam call problem whilst my desk phone (SIP) and mobile phone have never received a scam call.
We've worked around the home phone issue by configuring it only to play a ring when the incoming CID matches someone in the address book. It works wonderfully -- we no longer feel pangs of hatred when the phone rings because we know it is always someone we care about ringing us. Meanwhile it still logs 2-10 different scam call attempts every single day in its logs (not a joke). Failed call attempts don't get billed in Australia, so they probably don't care.
--- Quote ---This problem would be largely solved if Android could just whitelist numbers in your contacts and not allow any others through.
--- End quote ---
You'll need a third party app for this, it's not a builtin feature. They've also removed SIP support from the built in phone app too (as of Android 11 or 10?). Google doesn't give a damn about you.
I would love a world with proper competition other than the Google Apple duopoly. In the meantime: F-droid seems to be one of the best options to get new apps whilst avoiding scams & headaches. You might need to use the search term "blacklist" and then check if the app actually supports a whitelist mode (don't question the level of insanity I needed to work this out).
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