How One Small Company Blocked 15.1 Million Robocalls Last Year

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @10:09PM from the napalm-solves-many-problems dept.

TechCurmudgeon sends this excerpt from an article at Wired: Aaron Foss won a $25,000 cash prize from the Federal Trade Commission for figuring out how eliminate all those annoying robocalls that dial into your phone from a world of sleazy marketers. ... Using a little telephone hackery, Foss found a way of blocking spammers while still allowing the emergency alert service and other legitimate entities to call in bulk. Basically, he re-routed all calls through a service that would check them against a whitelist of legitimate operations and a blacklist of spammers, and this little trick was so effective, he soon parlayed it into a modest business. Last year, his service, called Nomorobo, blocked 15.1 million robocalls.

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Click here! by Aboroth · 2015-01-27 22:21 · Score: 5, Funny

Some regular guy got $25,000 from the government with one weird trick!
1. Re:Click here! by Lord_Breetai · 2015-01-27 23:02 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Some regular guy got $25,000 from the government with one weird trick!
  Robocallers hate him.
  
  --
  "You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
With a name like his by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2015-01-27 22:31 · Score: 5, Funny

I sure hope his hack is free/open-source.

--
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Re:Implement locally? by ThatsMyNick · 2015-01-28 00:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

1) A close family member's cell phone battery dies, they try to call you from a pay phone or a friend's (or stranger's) cell phone.
2) A friend (old friend if you wish) has changed their number, and wants to reach you.
3) Someone who has you as their Emergency contact number had a mishap, and the emergency service wants to reach you..