Verizon's Anti-Robocall Service Will be Automatically Enabled on Android Phones (cnet.com) 33
Verizon on Tuesday said it'll begin automatically enrolling eligible Android phones in its free Call Filter service. The company said it's making the move after the Federal Communications Commission in June voted to give wireless carriers greater power to "aggressively block" unwanted robocalls. From a report: "We know our customers are sick and tired of the endless onslaught of robocalls," Ronan Dunne, Verizon executive vice president, said in a release. "Our team is committed to developing and enhancing the tools that will help bring relief to our customers. This is another major step in that process." The free version of Call Filter will block robocalls, sending them automatically to voicemail, and put a warning label on potential spam calls. Verizon said auto-enrollment will begin Tuesday for postpaid customers with eligible devices. Prepaid Android customers and iPhone users can enroll in the free service by downloading the Call Filter app. Verizon started offering a free version of its spam- and robocall-blocking tools to customers in March. The wireless carrier also offers a paid version called Call Filter Plus, which costs $2.99 a month per line. The paid service offers additional tools like the ability to identify unknown callers by name and a spam number lookup feature.
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Simply inform them that your main issue with who you vote for is what politician goes less on your nerves, and that this call is one down for their candidate.
Won't solve anything, but it makes me feel better.
Slamming is alive and well (Score:5, Informative)
What they aren't telling you is that Verizon is slamming new device sales with Call Filter Plus. While I'm sure they have "protected" themselves with legalese and buried it in contracts that you can't actually read, the reality is that they are automatically adding Call Filter Plus to lines when a new device is purchased.
I just bought a new LG phone after using my old phone for a long time, then I noticed the per-line price was higher than before because they added Call Filter Plus for $3 per month. I was able to use one of the Verizon "chat me" reps to remove the charge, but it still pisses me off that they slammed me with a new service!
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Generally once you sign a contract with any of these guys you get slammed nightly, without lube. I notice that this feature is not available to those who haven't signed a contract. This sets up a two-tier system that looks to be very beneficial to the phone company.
Personally, I don't envy my friends with $100/mo phone bills. I don't know what they've been told to trick them into paying 5x what I do, for the same thing. But if the phone company were to tell me "Upgrade to the $100/mo plan or you'll get 5 s
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Generally once you sign a contract with any of these guys you get slammed nightly, without lube. I notice that this feature is not available to those who haven't signed a contract. This sets up a two-tier system that looks to be very beneficial to the phone company.
Of course, but nothing can top the phone companies' brilliant act years ago of selling caller ID and also selling the service of blocking caller ID....
Re: Slamming is alive and well (Score:2)
My phone bill is $185 per month...for 9 lines...
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That's not what happened in my case. I got a new Android with Verizon a month ago. It did come with what they called a "free trial" of Call Filter Plus, but it was optional. I think I kept it on for a day and then decided to turn it off just to make sure it expired. It downgraded from there to some basic call filtering. No extra charges on my bill.
Maybe there's a gotcha if you don't turn it off manually, and it's easy to roll up from the free trial to the paid version? I have very little trust for Verizon,
MVNOs (Score:3)
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What they also aren't telling you is that contacting people without their consent, by way of their cell phone, is illegal [fcc.gov]. And when it's done, you can file a complaint [fcc.gov] against the offending company.
Call Filter only for phones purchased from VZ (Score:2)
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Hmmm, I bought an S5 (I know, I know) off of Amazon and was able to install the "Call Protect" without any trouble.
I use the free version and it works pretty well- my scam/spam calls have gone from about 3 or 4 a week down to maybe 3 or 4 a month. When I get one, I report and block it.
How, technically, are they blocking robocalls.... (Score:2)
All Verizon would really know for sure, in that case, was the exchange that the call was routed from, but that hardly identifies the specific originating number... how do you practically block robocalls without also making it impossible to accept any incoming long distance calls, for example?
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All Verizon would really know for sure, in that case, was the exchange that the call was routed from, but that hardly identifies the specific originating number.
There is more to phone calls than the caller ID data you get on your phone. There is also ANI [wikipedia.org]
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ANI is trivially spoofed in most robo call centers.
You're not seeing the ANI. You're seeing the caller ID information. The ANI is used for billing. The caller ID is supposed to tell the recipient who is calling. The two numbers are not always the same, and the bigger the customer the less likely they will be.
T-Mobile is part of this group promising call blocking. Yes, the phone app can block calls based on number alone, but to get any info about the calling number so you can tell if it is one that should be blocked or belongs to someone you know, it's $4/m
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Yes, ANI can be spoofed.
It's perhaps not as trivial as it is to spoof CLID, but the biggest hurdle to overcome is more financial than technological. Someone with a few hundred thousand to drop on setting up their own ANI spoofing exchange could almost certainly do so.
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But they'd get shut down fairly quick if the owning exchange (of the numbers) starts getting billed for their call terminations. Provided that it's a major carrier that has some sort of automated reconciliation against their own call records. Though a small carrier would see a big bill and quickly be able to find that they have no record of originating those calls.
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Actually, all you'd end up seeing is the area code. ANI is already routinely dropped by some providers for operator assisted calls, but there is no technological reason why it could not be automated.
It just takes a shitpile of money to do.
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ANI is already routinely dropped by some providers for operator assisted calls
ANI is intentionally dropped from operator-assisted calls and billing handled on each side of the call separately. Part of that goes back to fraudulent uses of ANI. Really the only spoofing of ANI that I can see any proof of happening and no longer happens because the ANI data would have been typed in by a live operator.
ANI is required in order to bill a toll call period. I don't see how the terminating carrier is going to collect money for terminating the call if they don't have any origination data. I
Not to voicemail! (Score:1)
I loathe robocalls, which quite significantly outnumber the number of legitimate calls I get. Sending them to voicemail, where I have to actively connect and manually delete each one using an annoyingly slow and clunky interface? Oh, please, no.
I've started to get some "calls" that leave voicemail spam without ever ringing the phone, and they are far more irritating than plain old robocalls (which I can just let Google talk to on my Pixel).
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It's cross-platform incapable.
Must be a scam ... (Score:2)
Why would such blocking run on the terminating device rather than in the network? This seems entirely like a scam to me and they are obviously just wanting another method to collect information that they ought not have access to.
In other words it is all just shady shit designed to deceive the user into installing yet more spyware.
Fuck off I say!
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Robocalls (Score:2)
It just sends them to voicemail. (Score:1)
But if you, like me, live off your phone for new sales (almost every caller I get is new to my phone) then I sure hope there would be a way to opt out of it as it can wreck many small businesses.
Think about it. The local plumber
So what (Score:2)
>"The free version of Call Filter will block robocalls, sending them automatically to voicemail"
So, it is pretty much useless. You will still get an annoying notification that interrupts your life, and have to listen to and delete a F'ing voicemail about 50% of the time (because that is how often such calls leave voicemail, in my experience). How is this an improvement?
If it blocked the calls COMPLETELY, that would be something. If it posed a type of CAPCHA to the caller to eliminate recordings and id
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>"Google's Pixel phones actually do this! You can send a caller to a screening IVR that runs on your phone. And if they pass the phone will notify you."
Right. Google gives its OWN apps more access that we are allowed to give non-Google apps. It underlines my frustration.
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>"...more access that we are allowed..."
that = than
tools (Score:1)