Other ideas welcome.
There is no safe response to scam calls. Some of them are mapping when the phone is being picked up to identify unoccupied houses for burglary. So do whatever entertains you.
Other ideas welcome.
Other ideas welcome.
Nuke 'em from orbit... it's the only way to be sure.
So how do you cut their lines? Obviously right now it makes economic sense for all the players to be involved in this. The phone companies sell connections. The scammers get enough hits to pay off. The hit on carriers from illicit connections is not high enough to cause them to invest in countermeasures.
Somewhere the chain has to be broken or we will be inundated with this crap forever. Anti-scam phones are just a temporary fix just like caller ID was only a temporary fix.
So how do you cut their lines? Obviously right now it makes economic sense for all the players to be involved in this. The phone companies sell connections. The scammers get enough hits to pay off. The hit on carriers from illicit connections is not high enough to cause them to invest in countermeasures.
Somewhere the chain has to be broken or we will be inundated with this crap forever. Anti-scam phones are just a temporary fix just like caller ID was only a temporary fix.
I don't know if you have played/experienced Amazon Echo (Alexa), or the competing Google version.
But, if you have, one can imagine, in the (hopefully) near future. Being able to have phones, with built in functionality like that, which can initially answer unknown/unexpected phone callers (via their phone number), and check them out. Using the speaking AI.
Then only ring your phone, if the caller checks out.
tl;dr
If a friend/relative/work phones, it lets the phone call straight through.
But if it doesn't recognize the callers phone number, it asks them questions (AI), to check them out.
I.e. A call screening device, with voice recognition and AI.
We need to look for analogies to the trap door functions used in cryptology. Something which is really easy on our side, that make immense extra effort on the other side.
I can't help but wonder if Lenny is a real elderly person, and that perhaps he doesn't know he's been immortalized in this way. If so, I hope his name isn't really Lenny. That would be really mean and evil.
Call screening can be defeated by falsifying the Caller ID. Already widely done. The only added step needed is to identify each phone's white list. With a cooperative network of thousands of random callers this can be built by brute force methods pretty easily. I suspect this is also happening. A limited form already is as the false Caller ID is often chosen from a list of local numbers.
It is sometimes hard to realize the total magnitude of the effort that goes into these scamming operations. To think that the Amazon/Google AI will be up to the task seems overoptimistic. It also seems the wrong way to attack the problem. An ongoing technology war which means an ever increasing investment in the defensive end of this isn't a real win for us.
We need to look for analogies to the trap door functions used in cryptology. Something which is really easy on our side, that make immense extra effort on the other side.
In theory I/we could design something to help out, which screens (removes the SPAM) calls for everyone.
In theory I/we could design something to help out, which screens (removes the SPAM) calls for everyone.
How would you do that? Unless you work at one of the telcos, where you could potentially disable the transmission of fake caller IDs, I don't see how you would identify spam calls?
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How would you do that? Unless you work at one of the telcos, where you could potentially disable the transmission of fake caller IDs, I don't see how you would identify spam calls?
Intercept the call and play a voice prompt along the lines of "press or say 1 to leave a message or 2 to continue the call." (Customizable, of course.) And in the case it's a spam call from an actual person, some sort of on demand noisemaker (e.g. smoke detector in easy reach) also comes in handy.
Intercept the call and play a voice prompt along the lines of "press or say 1 to leave a message or 2 to continue the call." (Customizable, of course.) And in the case it's a spam call from an actual person, some sort of on demand noisemaker (e.g. smoke detector in easy reach) also comes in handy.
I must be missing something here. How do you distinguish between a spammer pressing '2' or a friendly caller pressing '2'?
Intercept the call and play a voice prompt along the lines of "press or say 1 to leave a message or 2 to continue the call." (Customizable, of course.) And in the case it's a spam call from an actual person, some sort of on demand noisemaker (e.g. smoke detector in easy reach) also comes in handy.
I must be missing something here. How do you distinguish between a spammer pressing '2' or a friendly caller pressing '2'?
Spammers don't generally hang around to press '2'. Having said that, a mate of mine put together a very nice and complex IVR with Asterisk that unless you choose menu 4, then menu 2 will lead you round in a very long and convoluted loop. Does the job and I never have trouble remembering which menus to press (you can shortcut the process with the correct menu entries up front).
My Phone is rather clever (I believe it's a fairly common feature on Android phones?), if I receive a call from an number that's not in my contacts list, it works out who the caller is and shows me, for instance I called a new restaurant yesterday and it shows in my call list as 'Ming Moon', there's a mobile number it's flagged as 'Potential Fraud', it's rather clever and allows me to decide if I want to answer or someone back.