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> Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the ol
by nadams 11y ago
> Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the old one.
Or an even better idea - transfer the number to a reputable VOIP provider and setup the number so that it rejects calls from all numbers except for the ones you specify. Your loved ones can still call but any other scammer would get a busy signal or whatever you specify as the destination. You could even direct unknown calls to you (you can setup a time condition) - and that would give you the ability to add that number to the whitelist if it was a legit caller.
Added benefit - the service will be vastly cheaper.
> If the old number has been cancelled, the scammers know you're on to them.
I can guarantee you that they don't care if you are "on to them". They just stop calling because no one is picking up the line.
- kbenson 11y ago> I can guarantee you that they don't care if you are "on to them". They just stop calling because no one is picking up the line. I think that depends on how big a fish you are to them, or at least your relative size in their food chain. If you have someone worth a few hundred to you every month, you'll probably put in some extra work if you can't get that money for a month or two to try to recover that source.
- crpatino 11y agoThere's the opportunity cost to the attacker as well. Sure, they could walk around your barriers and scam your relative... or they could shrug it off, carry on with their list, and scam another five or ten people in the same time frame.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoWe could build this with Twilio.
- nadams 11y agoNo offense but I didn't mention a specific VOIP provider on purpose. However, callcentric already has it built and much easier to understand than twilio. I'm not saying that service is bad - but the average person doesn't know what API, cloud, or SIP means (or care). Callcentric makes it pretty obvious what their service is and provides and how to use it.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoI specifically mentioned Twilio because anyone can build a custom solution to address this problem. Someone already has done this (with Twilio) to win the FTCs RoboCall Challenge: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/04/twilio-powered-nomorobo-wins-ftc-robocall-challenge.html https://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/04/twilio-powered-nomorobo-... I also like Twilio ;)
- nadams 11y ago> There are no infrastructure changes, or hardware required. This was one of FTC’s guidelines for the contest. > Unfortunately, Nomorobo is not available on traditional analog landlines or wireless phones at this time. Sounds like he failed the challenge... I don't think his idea is revolutionary - one could setup Asterisk to do what he did.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> I don't think his idea is revolutionary - one could setup Asterisk to do what he did. Twilio is stupid simple to prototype and get up and running with, at which point you could transition to your own SIP provider with a cluster of Asterisk servers when you're at scale.
- patio11 11y agoOne is welcome to ship an Asterisk implementation of it any time one feels like doing so. One has not shipped an Asterisk implementation. One may underestimate to which degree ideas, revolutionary or otherwise, are improved by actually shipping concrete instantiations of them which actually work. Incidentally: NoMoRobo gains some utility specifically because Twilio exists. A trivial example: phone numbers have a history to them. Most customers of Twilio want to buy phone numbers with a relatively clean history, i.e., ones that were not widely distributed prior to their life with that customer, to avoid misdirected calls or e.g. reputational issues. NoMoRobo wants precisely the opposite -- they literally ask Twilio to provision them with phone numbers which are otherwise unsaleable to customers, for example because those numbers are actively getting spammed to death. (Twilio has an entire team of people whose job is telephone number quality. Things you wouldn't have guessed existed in the world, right?) This works great for NoMoRobo's use case, because a phone number getting spammed to death is perfect for them -- it lets them cheaply capture a lot of phone numbers which one has a high confidence are spam rather than ham.
- awakeasleep 11y agoIsn't Twilio more about making sure your 1099 employees can't start a relationship with the people you have them do work with?