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AT&T Is Adding a Spam Filter For Phone Calls (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today, ATT introduced a new service for automated blocking of fraud or spam calls. Dubbed ATT Call Protect, the system identifies specific numbers believed to be sources of fraud, and will either deliver those calls with a warning or block them outright. Users can whitelist specific numbers, although temporary blocks require downloading a separate Call Protect app. The feature is only available on postpaid iOS and Android devices, and can be activated through the MyATT system. Phone companies have allowed for manual number blocking for years, and third-party apps like Whitepages and Privacystar use larger databases of untrustworthy numbers to preemptively block calls from the outside. But ATT's new system would build in those warnings at the network level, and give operators more comprehensive data when assembling suspected numbers. More broadly, marketing calls are subject to the national Do Not Call registry. Specific instances of fraud can still be reported through carriers or directly to police.
Except the spammy douchebags are just spoofing local numbers to fool people into picking them up. They seem to change them weekly or so.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Some providers are already doing something similar, and have been for a while. Ooma has had this as part of their 'premier' service for years.
http://support.ooma.com/home/call-blocking-meta-article
This unfortunately doesn't help for all the spoofed callerIDs that are being used though - especially for pure fraud (not just simple telemarketing).
Yeah right. They just want to get their share for incoming spam calls from both parties. First the phone owner pays for protection from spammers and spammers pay fot ATT that they get trough.
You mean an AT&T PR rep quotes from a press release they sent to the Verge and you post it for mad duckets.
you did get mad duckets, right?
Does anyone know if political calls are exempt? I'm asking for a friend.
They should shadow-block them! If you block them it gives the spammers feedback that the number they're using is burned and they will cycle onward to more numbers. If you shadow-block them instead and hang up after a "typical" number of seconds it'll make it much harder for them to know if they've reached an actual person or are being spambinned.
Seems like it's rife for abuse. The "numbers" used by spammers are just spoofed local phone numbers, and heaven help you if you have one of the numbers they spoof, you won't be able to call anyone.
Plus, I'm sure this will be used to block communications from subversi^W terrorists and everyone else they deem unworthy of being able to communicate.
Or they could just stop charging people to not be listed...
"Do Not Call Registry" is a joke. I have all my numbers on it and I still get tons of calls...
So how do I enable this on a landline?
Or ATT still operating under their policy of !@#$ landline users?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The art of being a middleman.
It's not in AT&T's best interest to limit phone spam, because they're customers.
Who would be best able to detect and prevent boiler-room callers? The phone companies.
I'm worried that If I ever meet "Heather from Card Member Services" I may not be responsible for my actions.
Design for Use, not Construction!
we'll see...
Karma: Bad
I wonder how much AT&T will charge telemarketers to get around the spam filter?
Or does everyone think AT&T is adding this feature to help customers?
Log in or piss off.
ATT allows for spoofing of phone numbers. Fuck ATT. Don't do business with them.
This is merely a rebranded version of Hiya, which still requires surrendering your entire contact list and conversation metadata to a third party without any masking.
Then again, even if each phone number was stored as a PBKDF2 hash, since there are only 3-4 billion legal phone numbers in the NANPA numbering system (given 370 area codes). I estimate this would take under 45 minutes on a quad-GPU system (divide by the number of nodes in your cluster). I suppose this is a decent hurdle, but not quite good enough to make me happy. Maybe the solution would be to also include the victim's area code's primary state in the hash (which would then require 12-36 hours to break), but then you'd have limited utility when dealing with interstate regions like the DC Metro area or the Tri-State Area.
Security and privacy often butt heads, but I think that the right design can facilitate the right balance. The same goes with security vs freedom (we all know the Ben Franklin quote, right? "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither"). None of these are opposites.
I'd feel a lot better if Hiya had a regular transparency report, but I can't find such a thing.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The spoofing issue makes a blacklist almost as useless for phone spam as for email spam.
What I want instead is a whitelist. Everything goes to voicemail, without ringing my phone, not even once, unless it's on the whitelist.
If someone not on the whitelist wants to talk to me, they can darn well leave a message, or I will never know or care that they called.
People I call automatically go on the whitelist unless I say otherwise
And, just to mess with <redacted> robocallers, my voicemail message is "Hello?" (pause for response, repeat "Hello" a few times if there isn't a response) Then, when they pause, "This is an automated answering service. Do you have any other message for the people at this number?"
(Yeah, this means they'll show up in my voicemail rather than silently vanishing from my universe, but I want to screw up their business model of cheap robo-calling, and only bringing in an expensive agent when someone answers.)
Ooma has "Contacts only" calling! I'm definitely going to have to check that out.
That approach doesn't go over very well with a work phone.
Server is offline, app won't run. Typical AT&T crap.
For various reasons, I must maintain a POTS line. It rings incessantly with scammers, spammers, politicians (but I repeat myself), and bill collectors looking for someone I don't know but has the same last name.
Simple solution: A DTMF circuit and a PIN, and turn off the ringer. Someone calls in, gets a message "Please enter the extension you are calling", and if they don't enter the correct pin, it hangs up the call. If they enter the correct pin, then the Pi fires a buzzer and the answering machine. Whitelisted numbers go to the Answering machine direct. If I'm home, I'll pick up.
Lately, Rachel from Card Services and the NRA are calling my cell phone.
Yes, all numbers are on the DNC list. No, it just seems to focus their attention.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
"What I want instead is a whitelist."
What I want is real fucking ownership of my own god damned phone. A real working FOSS OS. So that whitelisting, and easy to use ditributed reputation weighted under full device owner control blacklisting, fully programmable voicemail menu systems, fully programmable 0-20+ ring before local device storage based voicemail system, no unneeded(=no) unencrypted data or metadata leakage to the phone company, or Google or Apple.
What I want is for the brutal tech overlords to die. Now.
And if anyone is bothered by the whole white/black terminology on this issue, I'm totally open to suggestions. passlist/blocklist I suppose.
Squeezes Bandit's slit BEFORE it can utter a curse word.
If you didn't pay at&t for the number you are spamming, at&t will filter yo spam shit.
at&t sold my numbers to spammers (BBB spammer admitted it) to which I received 5-10 spam calls per day. at&t only allowed me to block 19 numbers. Since moving my phone business elsewhere, I have unlimited number blocking at half the at&t expense for the same services. Bonus - received only 5 spam calls in the last 4 months.
at&t is criminal and should burn eternally.
Doesn't work for business accounts, so no good for folks that put their mobiles under a business account (like many consultants).
I'm using a Raspberry Pi and some modified software located here:
https://murphy101blog.wordpres...
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.