I think the bigger problem is why is the phone system configured in such a way that anyone can just claim to be calling from a number they don’t own? There should be some sort of authentication protocol built into the system to prove the person calling actually is from that number. Then it would be easier to charge someone for violating the Do Not Call registry. Once I had a call that Google identified as being a small local bakery, but on the other end was someone trying to sell me an extended warranty for my car. I’m sure the scammer’s software just picks random numbers, and it hurts legitimate phone users in the process.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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Because the phone company's profits would go from $99.99 billion to $99.98 billion.
Nah. This is a carrier issue. Let it burn down.
It won't burn down, carriers won't care. To them its a customer issue, they're providing the service just fine, so their job is done. Whether or not your number is blocked by other clients is your problem. Only class of customer they might care about is business lines, because you're paying them to have better services, uptime, etc, etc.
You’re right but at some point regulation gets brought up.
This is going to become an increasingly impactful problem if we keep using phone numbers as identifiers while most phone number users don't keep the same number for decades.
Hahahaha, you're about 20 years behind if you're just now realizing this.
And Android has had phone number blocking database apps for 15 years that I know of.
Everyone has a phone number. Everyone would have to stop using that number as an identifier.
How you gonna do that?
You can unblock numbers if you need to, its not forever?
I have ~100 blocked numbers, statistically, its extremely unlikely that a legit person will attempt to contact me from one of those numbers. And the number of legit contacts from a random phone number (not a contact) is pretty close to zero.
It's extremely unlikely ... YOU, sure. But it's absolutely certain that legit people will be blocked from contacting from those numbers to hundreds or thousands of other people.
Yeah, I've had my number reported as spam before from someone impersonating my number, and I've run into several customers through work whose numbers had been reported as spam as well. I've also gotten calls from people who supposedly missed a call from me, that I had never called before. Most likely they missed a spam call that was impersonating my number.
Thankfully it wasn't too hard to get off of the spam call registries, and you can even preemptively register your number with them as a non-spam number to try to avoid getting caught in this. But it's still frustrating to have to deal with this at all, and it's far too difficult to realize your phone number has been flagged as spam. The people you frequently talk to probably have you added as a contact and will never get a chance to see you've been flagged as spam. And if you call anyone new, they probably won't answer your call because it shows up as spam. End result is you just have trouble getting in touch with people you haven't already swapped contacts with, and never get a good chance to learn why.
Good, I already don't answer the phone anyway.
Oh, a timed block list is a great idea! (Not sarcasm)
Mastodon has timed muting, but only permanent blocking.