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New Apps Fight Robo-Calls By Pretending To Be Humans (nola.com)
"While lawmakers debate what to do about the roboscourge, engineers have cooked up some clever ways to make bots work for us, not against us," writes the Washington Post, taking a look at apps like the $4-per-month RoboKiller -- which offers malicious "answer bots":
They're voicemail messages that try to keep robots and human telemarketers on the line, listening to nonsense. Answer bot options range from Trump impersonators and extended coughing sessions to someone doing vocal exercises. Even better, RoboKiller will send you an often-hilarious recording of the interaction. (It only uses these recordings when it's very sure it's a spam call.)
Another service, called Jolly Roger, doesn't sell itself as a robocall blocker but takes this auto-generated annoyance idea a step further by actively trying to game the spammers' systems, such as when to press 1 to speak to a human. It calls this tech "artificial stupidity." It costs $11.88 per year.
It's possible you're better off not engaging with a robocall in the hopes the dialer with decide the line is dead. And it's also not clear how much these actually cost the people placing robocalls. But any time robocallers spend with your bot might be minutes they're not calling someone else, so you can think of it as community service.
I'm also not sure this does any good -- but the Post's article also includes a run-down of other robocall-blocking services available from both wireless carriers and independent companies. It recommends starting with the free YouMail app, which collates data from 10 million registered users to determine which calls to block -- and in addition, "tries to trick known robocallers into taking you off their lists by playing them the beep-beep-beep sound of a dead line."
If you live in America, you can also add your phone number to the Federal government's official "Do not call" registry. "It won't help much," writes the Post, "but it only takes 30 seconds so why not?"
Another service, called Jolly Roger, doesn't sell itself as a robocall blocker but takes this auto-generated annoyance idea a step further by actively trying to game the spammers' systems, such as when to press 1 to speak to a human. It calls this tech "artificial stupidity." It costs $11.88 per year.
It's possible you're better off not engaging with a robocall in the hopes the dialer with decide the line is dead. And it's also not clear how much these actually cost the people placing robocalls. But any time robocallers spend with your bot might be minutes they're not calling someone else, so you can think of it as community service.
I'm also not sure this does any good -- but the Post's article also includes a run-down of other robocall-blocking services available from both wireless carriers and independent companies. It recommends starting with the free YouMail app, which collates data from 10 million registered users to determine which calls to block -- and in addition, "tries to trick known robocallers into taking you off their lists by playing them the beep-beep-beep sound of a dead line."
If you live in America, you can also add your phone number to the Federal government's official "Do not call" registry. "It won't help much," writes the Post, "but it only takes 30 seconds so why not?"
I just don't answer any calls that I don't recognize. Period.
Everything else, goes to voice mail.
Some hilarious examples :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue8l8yI-vAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aWPozeIaj4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDhegPZzbuw
Clicked TFA.
The Washington Post, tag line "Democracy Dies in Darkness". Embedded content showing me an ash background with a terse message: "This content is currently not available in your region."
The irony is striking.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
press whatever number to connect me with someone and then ask to describe what their pussy or cock looks like. They usually hang up right away. My wife tends to get mad though. Hey they called me.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
He seems more of an autist Mormon.
My policy is, don't waste any time on people that simple exist to mess with you like spam calls and the like.
Sure messing with them can be amusing and is pretty easy. But isn't there literally anything else you would rather be doing? Don't let spammers steal the thing that is even more valuable to you than money - time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... all the telephone lines will be tied up by robots talking with robots. Nobody will be able to make actual calls.
I tend to rant.
I can't prove that, but I signed up years ago and then renewed just to be safe, and unfortunately I get several robocalls someday.
Hang up
That's what I do when I am called by anyone.
Corporatism != Free Market
Because trivial programming means 'DIAL ALL' phone numbers
on planet earth. Or at least in the so-called wealthy developed world.
From overseas no law can touch them. And its got to take at
least 10 minutes to set up another virtual shop with all new numbers
and locations.
and That's Why Not.
When they can do this I'll be thrilled to get one of these services.
The ones being malicious are the callers. This is defense and that is never "malicious".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Color me intrigued... But I cant help wondering how ANY app can determine if a call is from a spam site.....
Sure, there may be a a few call centers that actually give their correct numbers when they call, but in my experience majority just use VOIP and switch to a different (spoofed) number every few hours. So even by alerting eachother to the fact that "robocaller x is now using phonenumber y", we would still be answering the calls a few hours later.
No app on the market seems to be able to differentiate between a spoofed call and a non-spoofed call. It's more or less like the good old spam days before SMTP authentication.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
He set his answering machine message to play the "not in service" tones, and the telemarketer calls dropped pretty quickly after that.
" . .You successfully registered your phone number ending in 1212 on July 04, 2003. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date."
Trump in charge! Can't expect better.
Or, you know, you could just make a shitty business model that everyone hates, wastes resources, time and nerves and is a haven for scammers illegal. Like most of the rest of the world. Every time I hear about this phenomenon, I shake my head in disbelief. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of unwanted commercial calls that I've received in my life. But then, I don't live in the land of the free-to-play, pay2win.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
(It only uses these recordings when itÃ(TM)s very sure itÃ(TM)s a spam call.)
If you're never going to fix the character encoding, fine. But for fuck's sake, "editors", preview the stories before posting. This shit is embarrassing. It's not like this isn't a known issue here.
The problem isn't that it makes you look like amateurs. The problem is it makes you look like you don't give a shit.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
VISA/MasterCard Service Center
"National Medical" about your Social Security
"Customer Services"
"Support Services"
etc
Remember the folks playing a ship's horn sound and selling trips? The CRTC sued the company who was paying for the ads, the advertiser failed to defend themselves in Canada, and so lost. The US honored a Canadian court order and seized their bank accounts. Poof! No more advertiser! This also worked on a different scammer in eastern europe.
davecb@spamcop.net
I started using Jolly Roger almost two years ago:
https://tomwoods.com/ep-937-ho...
They work well with SIP.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Don't ever leave a call back number. My fax machine will dial you back for hours. Amazing how many of the young call center workers don't know what the fax "boop" means. Any time spent occupying the person or taking a position up in the queue is time that some old person won't get scammed by "Microsoft Support", "The IRS", "Apple Care" or "Car Warranty". That last one took 30 full minutes of scam baiting to get the actual price of $600 per MONTH. I did point out I could get a whole new car for that....in my persona as a senile old guy with a hearing problem.
If you can get away with only answering numbers you already know, that's great for your privacy, but does indicate a rather narrow economic existence. My income, jobs, connections rely on being a little easier to connect with than you are. Too much communication of real value is nearly ephemeral, something you probably won't believe until you start engaging in, and profiting from, it.
Generally no... It's different lists in each country. Usually they get a list of numbers from someone who already had a robot call all numbers and verify that there is a person on the other end. That person probably got his list from milking a local directory service. That's why the "pretend to be a dead line"-thing occasionally works.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
Yes. I, personally, am not stupid enough to not know that a call is unwanted spam. But an app that relies on artificial intelligence, how can IT tell the difference, unless it answers ALL of your calls (including the ones you wanted to get through) ?
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
Long long ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
... for a social problem.
Unless this is not only illegal, but aiding them is illegal as well (Telco's) this will not stop. Furthermre, if people are not held acountable at every level, this will not change.
This is like standard spam. If the income is higher than the cost, it will continue.
I work abt a company that uses robocalls. We are located in Belgium and are limited in what we can do. Mainly we use it to inform customers about forgetting to do payments. We are aware that people do not like them. They also do not like getting late payment fees, so ...
And in the 20 or so years I have a cellphone, I have not had a person calling me with a commercial offer, let alone a robocall.
And I am not even on the http://www.robinsonlist.be/ where all (legal) companies who do outbound calls will have to look. It also helps that the caller always pays, so no cost for the person who owns the cellphone.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I was literally getting 20+ robocalls a week. I switched from Verizon to Cricket and haven't gotten a call since. It's been 3 weeks now and 0 robo/spam calls.
I was previously getting on average 2-3 robocalls per day. Now I get fewer than 3 per week. I've had the same phone number for over 20 years, and the same carrier for most of that. I didn't change a damned thing, they just don't call as much. I didn't answer them before if I didn't recognize the number (or have a reason for a call to come from an unrecognized number at that time), and don't answer them now either. I just have far far fewer calls. The drop in frequency doesn't correlate with any particular event here in the US either (as I would get lots of calls around election season).
Has anyone else seen this as well? I'm certainly not complaining but I'm wondering why I'm seeing this. When the robocalls do ring my number they still often get the tag "scam likely" from T-Mobile, and they almost never leave a message.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I have not an app, but a device ( on my home landline :P)
http://www.tel-lynx.com/index....
It's a wonderful device which has a *major* benefit - and the reason I bought it.
A call comes in, the device looks at the number. If it's one you've previously let through ( Gran'ma, wife, sprogs, etc) then it simply passes the call through to your phone.
If not - it plays an announcement, asks the caller to press a number, identify themselves ( by voice ) and THEN rings your phone with the provided info.
On picking up your own phone, you get to either a) let the call through b) send it to voicemail c) send a 'fuck off' message and drop the call
Since robo-calls can't press #6 when asked to identify themselves, it effectively drops ALL robo-calls and the big thing is : IT NEVER RINGS YOUR PHONE.
Marketing peeps who are people, recruiters who *really* want to offer you a job etc etc - can identify themselves and get through.
The only time I've found where it doesn't work well is where you have one of those web-ex meetings and choose the 'call me on my number' option for sound - you get an automated telephone call to your line but which cannot identify itself. The device has the ability to turn off call screening for a period of time (say an hour) to cope with that too.
It's leaps and bounds ahead of all the other 'call blocker' things I could find. All of which seem to work on a 'get a call you don't want? Press this button - gets added to a blacklist. Blacklist is 1000 numbers long!!!!" - but we all know, that's worthless since spam calls are just spoof'd local numbers which continually change.
Sadly... the product itself - while absolutely awesome - is now incredibly hard to source. Amazon had it listed as 'out of stock' for months and months when I first found it. Their web page also had it out-of-stock for the longest time, and I only managed to get one because I was showing a friend and the 'buy' button was lit. I snapped it up straight away.
I suspect shenanigans - shortly after and even now - they are all listed as 'retired'. I suspect someone whapped them with a frivolous lawsuit or they simply got bought out by someone who's interests are... shady.
I'm convinced that the phone carriers originally allowed robocalls to flourish on the landline market to force people off them onto their more expensive cell services. Now, however, they're hassling their cell services too: but they still don't care, because where the hell else are you going to go?
I believe that some of them dial an area code followed by random digits. Some area codes in the UK are so highly populated that they would get a >50% hit rate. I confess I once, out of curiosity, tried random numbers following a London area code and it did result in about that rate of hits (when I said "Sorry, I dialed a wrong number").
Since moving to a rural area with a low populated area code, I rarely receive a cold sales call - they don't bother with such an area.