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Verizon Will Give Subscribers Free Access To Anti-Robocall Tools (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Verizon says it will give all its subscribers free access to its spam alert and call blocking tools, so long as their phones can support the features. From a report: The carrier originally rolled out those tools over a year ago as part of its $3-per-month Call Filter add-on. But starting in March, subscribers with compatible smartphones (including iPhone and Android devices) will be able fend off unwanted robocalls without having to pay extra. Verizon says it will release more info on how to sign up for the free tools near their launch date.

40 comments

  1. at long last by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is too long in coming. Death to all calls from Alice wanting to lower my interest rate.

  2. And for free . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    These apps will track and keep a log of all of your calls. Safely backing them up to Verizon.

    1. Re: And for free . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Doesnâ(TM)t verizon already have access to this info? I would think using tools from your own carrier would result in the lowest ammount ofadditional data propogation provided it doesnt give them a way around regulatory data sharing rules (are there any?) bia the apps terms of service.

    2. Re: And for free . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They most certainly do. Now can they use it for marketing? Dunno. Could they potentially use this service as an end-run around that if they canâ(TM)t use their call logs for marketing? Maybe.

      But Iâ(TM)m guessing itâ(TM)s better for them to help block these calls that annoy their paying customers.

    3. Re: And for free . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now we just have to block people who can't use proper apostrophes.

    4. Re:And for free . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of your calls are already logged and tracked. They have been since, oh I dunno, several decades ago .

  3. Smart move by olsmeister · · Score: 1

    I wasn't signed up for the $3 a month thing, but if this works well it'll definitely keep me as their customer.

    1. Re:Smart move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Definitely a smart move.

      I just went to my carrier's website to see if they offer anything like that. Found a similar $2/mo plan, but told them "Verizon is changing their's to free... you guys have any plans to do anything like that?"

      If not, this is a switch I'll GLADLY make if it means no more of those f@#*$g incessant robo calls.

      5-6 times a days, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning. I've had it... I'VE HAD IT.

    2. Re:Smart move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's always free cheese in a mousetrap.

    3. Re:Smart move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why not just go with the $2/mo plan then? Switching to Verizon is more than likely going to cost more than that each month.

    4. Re:Smart move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a matter of principle. It's worth far more than even $3/mo that Verizon currently charges just to mute the robocalls and the fucktards calling to sell me an extended warranty for my 6 month old car, but it's something that they shouldn't be charging for in the first place.

  4. "Free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    lol

    1. Re: "Free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does that mean it isnt available in prison?

    2. Re:"Free" by Shotgun · · Score: 2

      How about "decreased network usage"?

      Verizon is like every gym out there. They want to sign you up, and tell you how great their equipment is in order to do it, but they'd really prefer you not actually use it so that they can sell it to even more users.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    3. Re:"Free" by Raistlin77 · · Score: 1

      Congratulations, you've just described every service provider from nearly every industry in existence.

  5. Next month... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Next Month Verizon offers businesses a way to bypass the user controls for approved functions.

    An extra fee guarantees someone will rubber stamp your request.

    Robocalls continue..

  6. What about FIOS phones? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The majority of robocalls I get are through my landline, for which I use Verizon Fios. How about supporting anti-robocalls for that?

    1. Re: What about FIOS phones? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Answer such calls with death threats? Or transfer to Lenny.

    2. Re:What about FIOS phones? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can heartily recommend this : http://www.tel-lynx.com/

      and not tied to any particular carrier / doesn't have monthly charges. Owned by you. Not susceptible to the whims of some corp etc etc etc.

      And yes. I have one...
      Their support is practically non-existant. But their product is golden.

    3. Re:What about FIOS phones? by rkhalloran · · Score: 1

      I'm on AT&T's FTTH service, and have the landline phone signed up on : http://nomorobo.com/ which they don't charge landlines for ($2/mo on mobile). One ring then silence; wonderful...

  7. Alternately by Alypius · · Score: 1

    One could simply whitelist their calls; unrecognized numbers go to voicemail. If it's important, they'll leave a message, call back right away, or both. No app for tracking contacts needed.

    1. Re:Alternately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Clearly you need an app to track contacts, otherwise nothing is there to say if a number is recognized or not.

    2. Re:Alternately by wwphx · · Score: 1

      The problem is volume, and people like my wife who receives calls from people outside the observatory who need to get ahold of her whom she doesn't have in her contacts. And as she's an astronomer, she has weird sleeping hours and Do Not Disturb hours don't work well for her.

      But our major scourge of robocalls, like many, are forged from our local area code and prefix. I'm really hoping that this service will help with that. Had I known about the $3 service, I would have subscribed to it ages ago for her! Me, I let any unrecognized number go to voicemail, the look it up on 800notes.com then deal with it as appropriate. I have a VERY long block list on my phone.

      --
      When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
    3. Re:Alternately by markdavis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >"One could simply whitelist their calls; unrecognized numbers go to voicemail."

      And you get a notification for voicemail, then have to stop and go into that app and wait for it to load it, then play it back, only to find the message is a robocall, then delete it. And yes, about 1/4 of such annoying calls leave messages on both my home and cell phone.

      I would much prefer to have:

      1) No more number spoofing- or at least a huge improvement.

      2) The ability to completely silently throw a captcha at any incoming number not in my contacts or whitelisted. Something like "dial 32 to continue" or "press 1 to hang up, 2 to ring through, or 3 to hold" or a list of names with which button to press, only one being correct. Having more than a few would be helpful.

      3) The ability for it to then HANG UP on any failed captcha calls with NO ability for them to leave annoying voicemail. Logging is good, though.

      4) Bonus for doing something similar for texting (seems to be much less of a problem, however).

      This should be possible, all locally, with a local app, if Android allows the correct permissions (like to prevent ringing AND to hang up on a call). No servers. No monthly fees. No data dependency. I seem to remember this being a problem on unrooted Android, though.

      Of course, that wouldn't do much for land line- but there are already similar devices available for that:

      http://www.tel-lynx.com/

    4. Re:Alternately by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

      I tried a "not in my contacts" app for a while, the problem was it could only kick in after the call was received by the phone. I expect some sort of internal segmentation between apps and the core phone function. As a result, sometimes the phone would ring once then go to voicemail, and I would still get the 'missed call' notification. So not a big improvement over simply not answering unknown numbers.

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    5. Re:Alternately by Falos · · Score: 1

      I answer unknown numbers.

      Muted.

      If it's a human, they'll call out in confusion. If it's a robot, either they're silently waiting for audio (and will eventually hang up) or they'll launch into a spiel. And eventually hang up.

      Detecting a premature call termination is trivially easy, and identifies you as a hot number (OMG WHY DO I GET SO MANY CALLS ensues). Let them hang up. Gag the volume, put the phone down, go back to whatever you were doing, and let the robot talk itself out. They give up quickly.

      A few are advanced enough to open with a cheery "Hello! This is Michael." but you can usually tell. Real humans are confused at the odd silence and speak accordingly.

    6. Re:Alternately by markdavis · · Score: 2

      The main issue is that I have already been interrupted. I don't want to be interrupted in the first place nor later with bogus voicemail. I want technology to screen the calls for me to ensure that it is an actual legit call before getting my attention with a ring OR allowing voicemail.

      This is why dumping to voicemail fails.
      This is why "DND" fails.
      This is why ignoring calls fails.
      This is why existing anti-spam call apps fail (because they ring through once and/or still allow voicemail).

      We have the technology now, we just need to use it. I hardly ever give my mobile number out to anyone, certainly not any business of any type. Yet I give my work land-line number out freely and never get ANY automated calls and rarely get human spam calls. Why? Because my work number is answered by an auto-attendant and they must enter my extension number to get to me. So all the robocalls get trapped at the front door. Doing something similar in a local app should be exceedingly easy now.

    7. Re:Alternately by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      I used to run this on my home phone back in the day. I the Asterisk Open Source PBX system installed on my computer and a PSTN-to-SIP gateway plugged into my phone line. This allowed me to present a simple voice menu that none of the automated/cold callers ever seemed to make it through. For all a smartphone's "Smarts", I don't seem to be able to replicate this on one of them. Maybe I should just build a Raspberry Pi "phone" that only connects to wifi and uses that connection to monitor a VOIP line with Asterisk. I'm not sure the world's ready for a phone that's just a phone and doesn't try to track you or intrude on you with advertising every second of the day. Oh wait, that's what our old timey wired phones were.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    8. Re:Alternately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use a device called a Sentry. If the number is white listed the call rings through, if not the phone rings 1 time, caller hears a record message that says to press 1 to leave a message. If it isn't a robocall and they leave a message, one press of a button and they're added to the whitelist. Robocalls don't press 1.

    9. Re:Alternately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With Asterisk that is almost exactly what I do for a few months now with my landline at home. And works wonders. So far 0% spam got through with 100% legit calls accuracy.

      For mobile still is a pain in the ass to filter out spam calls even if you can use some apps that check a huge database of spam numbers which are updated every day like https://unknownphone.com

      Or you can homebrew your own. Telemarketing_RoboCall_Data.csv

    10. Re:Alternately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right now at home as soon as it's in range my cell phone connects automatically via bluetooth to my Asterisk PBX using the chan_mobile module which then automaticaly filters out all calls and block spam robocalls in it's tracks without even ringing a single time.

      The pain starts as soon as I go out, so was thinking to build a portable PBX with a similar setup with a RPi0w or some cheapo OrangePi for the car or office.

  8. Remind(tm) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And at the same time,verizon is charging Remind fees to combat text message spam. Though they may be reversing course?

  9. Compatible phone? by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

    What are the features required on the user's phone? I expected this could all be implemented on the carrier side.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    1. Re:Compatible phone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect the carrier side is getting too much money from the spammers to implement it there.

    2. Re:Compatible phone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are the features required on the user's phone? I expected this could all be implemented on the carrier side.

      Going by their description, the features required are being able to install an app from either Googles play store, or Apples app store.

    3. Re:Compatible phone? by vlueboy · · Score: 1

      What are the features required on the user's phone? I expected this could all be implemented on the carrier side.

      It's not so simple anymore. Remember the big hoopla a few weeks ago over the emergency broadcast system? that's not just a "text" you're implementing, but something that Android and iOS must expect from the carrier, and place appropriate options for in the GUI.

      I never got bothered by one of those semi-mandatory alerts on my older phone running Android 4 because there was no hardware support on the phone side and nothing the telco could do would force me, since the commands wouldn't be understood.

      My breakage-replacement phone ended up being an intro-level non-Samsung Android a couple years back that happened to run the newish version 7.
      I was disappointed to find that root is required to edit the system xml file that allows "ignoring" the broadcasts enabled by this government-centric carrier / OS pairing. The non-root OS allows me to disable all but the presidential alerts, for instance. Again, the feature is carefully planned some work

      Then there are little things like
      * GPS support for 911 calls (I recall that prior to some specific boating-related death in the US, GPS wasn't even a must on dumb cellphones)
      * Wifi calling (this is stupid for the most part but makes some sense if your carrier allows one of the few rare plans with international support when you go abroad and don't want a local phone sign-up --or just have a poor signal at home and need your router)
      * High Quality voice support (Not sure how much closer it is to that ol' landline quality since actual music still won't come thru like we all took for granted with our wires decades ago... it seems to require the same company on both ends for me so far, but I've had this work with a friend who uses iOS on a newish iPhone while mine runs version 7)
      * Video calls from the built-in dialer app (another same-company (in my small sample-sized experience so far) but it's cool that the option is there without needing to add stupid ephemeral apps from Google's ecosystem for tracking)

  10. nomorobo.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's free and it's fantastic.

  11. Good move by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    I'm sick of the robo calls, scammers, and telemarketers. I have one calling me everyday at 10am without fail. It's always a company trying to sign me up for Lyft. I never answer anymore. Since I have enhanced name ID, I can see the name of the person calling me and it's already someone different whom I don't know so I just don't answer anymore. Unfortunately, my carrier charges for this enhanced service but it's only two bucks. Not breaking the bank.

  12. "Free" tools, but you still need to sign up? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shouldn't it be just available and enabled for everyone?

  13. Verizon MVNOs too? Or only Verizon proper? by RockyMountain · · Score: 1

    Anybody know?