Goddamn. The Onion is so good I did a double take thinking it was real for a split second.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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It's embarrassing that we haven't solved spam calls yet.
It is absolutely a solved problem. All phone numbers have a paper trail, there are known lists of spam numbers, ergo you know the people responsible for it. If anyone in the FCC wasn't getting filthy rich off of the current model, it would be trivial to block those numbers and prosecute those companies.
Marketing companies and phone carriers make a lot of money from it. Spam calls are a whole industry. Nobody has made a serious, major attempt to solve the problem because too many people are getting rich off of it.
It is fixed with STIR/SHAKEN. It's up to politicians to force the telcos to implement it.
This subtle (but important) distinction is what I’m talking about. STIR/SHAKEN is a plan, but it hasn’t been implemented. Plans are great, but if nobody ever carries them out, their mere existence doesn’t actually fix anything.
The point is, is that nothing is going to get done unless the politicians pass a law that forces them to.
I actually think I'm on an internal "do not call this guy, he just wastes our time" list, cause I haven't gotten a spam call in years.
phone number/email aliases basically solve it, which I think apple provides?
I’m not sure. I’ve used the email aliases, but I’ve never looked into whether telephone ones are an option.
We have. It's up to the politicians to force the companies to comply.
Android phones block most of my spam calls and texts.
Some Android phones have call screening
verizon is actually doing a decent job with this. i'm down from 4-6 a day to 1 or so a week, and those few that get through are usually labeled 'potential spam'. guessing that's due to implementation of 'stir/shaken' cid verification.
Google Fi has pretty much eliminated spam entirely. And even when the occasional spam call makes it through -- all unknown numbers to the Google screener. My phone pretty much just eats all the spam and lets me know when it does with a passive notification, if anything at all.
I agree completely. I think this is one of those situations where people are saying similar things but in slightly different ways. Thanks for your patience!