Crowdsourcing junk calling numbers?

[kiran6680]

Good people of TE,
Many of us are fed up with the junk call menace peddling personal loans, property, stock market advisory, car selling and many other things. Reporting to 1909 is fine, but full of loopholes. By the time action will be taken , if at all, against any of those numbers, the spammers will have traumatised many innocent people with junk calls.

How about, we crowdsource the numbers of these spammers ? In Android, the app "NoPhoneSpam" allows import and export of the phone number blacklist. There may be other solutions that I'm unaware of.

To help prevent innocent numbers from being blacklisted in list, something like git/GitHub would help more easily identify who submitted which numbers.

We victims can submit the phone number of our junk caller, along with the reason it was identified as junk. I propose not relying on Truecaller to identify them as junk, but actually talking to them so that mistakes of Truecaller will not affect us.

I'm open to ideas.

 

[n1r0]

You don't need an up to date Blacklist when you can use your saved contacts as a Whitelist. In the fringe cases of when someone you know is trying to reach you from an unknown number, they can simply text you first.

TRAI limiting SMSs to 100(?) per day has reduced spam texts to zero. Reporting calls to them made no difference for me at least. Not answering calls from unknown numbers did the trick for me.

And don't give your name & number at random places/websites. It is too easy for someone to make a copy of it and sell to telemarketers.

I no longer use True Caller. Don't even need the inbuilt Google thingy. I get very few calls from unknown numbers now, which I happily ignore. Of course the exception is when I'm expecting a courier/delivery/callback

 

[kiran6680]

You don't need an up to date Blacklist when you can use your saved contacts as a Whitelist. In the fringe cases of when someone you know is trying to reach you from an unknown number, they can simply text you first.

TRAI limiting SMSs to 100(?) per day has reduced spam texts to zero. Reporting calls to them made no difference for me at least. Not answering calls from unknown numbers did the trick for me.

And don't give your name & number at random places/websites. It is too easy for someone to make a copy of it and sell to telemarketers.

I no longer use True Caller. Don't even need the inbuilt Google thingy. I get very few calls from unknown numbers now, which I happily ignore. Of course the exception is when I'm expecting a courier/delivery/callback

Yeah, if that works for you, then you are lucky. Many people need to take calls from unknown numbers most of the time. Then, I'm always expecting a courier/delivery

 

[Crapmypants]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but is it not possible for the phone service provider (of the spammer) to be able to identify a spammer by the high call volume originating from the number? So penalizing the service provider for allowing spam calls would solve this issue right?

 

[TinTinSnowy]

No solution. Crowd sourced data is not enough. May be wait for TRAI's caller id. Not sure if that will make any difference.

Sorry if this is a stupid question but is it not possible for the phone service provider (of the spammer) to be able to identify a spammer by the high call volume originating from the number? So penalizing the service provider for allowing spam calls would solve this issue right?

They don't want to forego their revenues. I used to report all spam calls to TRAI DND service via a tasker task. Service provider would hardly take action. Most of these calls were marked as non spam by Service provider. I had call recordings also. Action taken on an average was 1-2/10 reported. I guess those remaining had some setting with the service provider.

 

[n1r0]

Yeah, if that works for you, then you are lucky. Many people need to take calls from unknown numbers most of the time.

Unless TRAI makes spamming impossible, you're SOL for the simple fact that every time a number is blocked, they will go get a new number. Even if you crowd source and update the list every few hours, a lot of calls can be made in that small period, and spamming is still profitable for them.

I used to report all spam calls to TRAI DND service via a tasker task. Service provider would hardly take action.

Same. I decided to not waste my time reporting.

 

[roadrash99]

Is a good idea but going to take a lot of work. You are going to need some sort of processing to actually determine which numbers are spam as the blocklists alone are not enough, for example it will have people that are blocked for personal reasons. You will also need enough people to install your app and only the small minority of privacy conscious users will use it over truecaller.

No solution. Crowd sourced data is not enough. May be wait for TRAI's caller id. Not sure if that will make any difference.

They don't want to forego their revenues. I used to report all spam calls to TRAI DND service via a tasker task. Service provider would hardly take action. Most of these calls were marked as non spam by Service provider. I had call recordings also. Action taken on an average was 1-2/10 reported. I guess those remaining had some setting with the service provider.

Also they had a DND registry that you could sign up for and it actually worked for a number of years, around 2020 is when I started getting these calls even though I was signed up for DND. Till that point, amazingly, these guys did respect that.
Personally I have surrendered in this battle, not only have I had to become a truecaller user but I'm also paying for truecaller premium, because you can't auto reject spam calls without that.

 

[atg666]

Look, if people actually submit proper spammer's numbers to these services, then all works well. If they submit say, mine or OP's number, or the number of a person who has spurned their romantic advances, then this goes to shite rather quickly.
Things online are not as simple as maintaining a list of spammers.

I say that the major mobile manufacturers need to get their act together and get this mess sorted out. This should be handled in the Phone app of our phones itself. Why can't we have an option to block out a series of phone numbers within the app? Truecaller had that back in 2016. This is how I stopped policybazaar retards from harassing me back then. I think Mobile phone manufacturers have become complacent and have neglected the basic app of their device, the Phone app. Sure, have one hundred features in the camera app, but Phone app is quite basic. Is it truly a "phone", then?

DND worked wonders till TRAI started a register for telemarketing. Now-a-days most complaints of spam calling are met with a response about me already opting in to the telemarketing by signing up to some website (which obviously is false).

 

[kiran6680]

You will also need enough people to install your app

No app is required. Using their existing mechanisms to block calls, they can black list numbers or number patterns. Just one of those mechanisms is the app NoPhoneSpam.

 

[blr_p]

I no longer use True Caller. Don't even need the inbuilt Google thingy. I get very few calls from unknown numbers now, which I happily ignore. Of course the exception is when I'm expecting a courier/delivery/callback

And what do you do in the case of couriers?

Disable the whitelist for the expected day?

 

[n1r0]

And what do you do in the case of couriers?

I have had my area postman's number saved for years now. I'm familiar enough with Amazon and Delhivery folks that they know my location and won't bother me unnecessarily. Besides, most couriers send an SMS when it's out for delivery, so it's not a big deal to look out for their call.

Disable the whitelist for the expected day?

By whitelist I meant just not answer unknown numbers, not automatically decline calls, sorry for the confusion. Rejecting calls will also put you on an active list of potential target numbers, so let it ring fully. You can either silence the ring, or disable ringing for non-Contacts if your phone has that feature. Else Tasker is always there.

 

[blr_p]

By whitelist I meant just not answer unknown numbers, not automatically decline calls, sorry for the confusion.

Ah so that means the phone rings but you ignore it.

Besides, most couriers send an SMS when it's out for delivery, so it's not a big deal to look out for their call.

This works so long as calls aren't disabled or otherwise routed.

You can either silence the ring, or disable ringing for non-Contacts if your phone has that feature. Else Tasker is always there.

If you do this you will miss the calls of delivery people who called and I find with swiggy half of them can't find my place.

And if you do see the call but don't pick up then calling back doesn't always work as their system uses some central calling. I don't know if the delivery guys can actually see the clients number or not.

So you either let calls come through and use something like true caller. The few that get through can be added to true callers block list. This way you don't miss any calls and are not disturbed by known spammers. True caller already implements what the OP is trying to do.

Or do what you propose with programmed disabling of calls not in your list and potentially miss a few...

 

[nRiTeCh]

I usually prefer to harass these spammers in return to the tune that they disconnect their nos. and have to think about a new no.
Latest case is fake mngl spam/scam.

 

[n1r0]

If you do this you will miss the calls of delivery people who called and I find with swiggy half of them can't find my place.

Swiggy app gives you a notification about a minute before the DP reaches your place. You can answer unknown numbers only between ordering being picked up and delivery.

And if you do see the call but don't pick up then calling back doesn't always work as their system uses some central calling. I don't know if the delivery guys can actually see the clients number or not.

Use the in app call button if they are using a proxy to protect your number.

Or do what you propose with programmed disabling of calls not in your list and potentially miss a few...

This is a zero sum game: your FOMO on calls is exactly what spammers rely on. Every call is either spam/not spam.
Since there is no perfect solution that works in every situation, you either end up missing a few legit calls, or answering a few spam calls.
The choice is up to you. Unless you get a personal assitant to answer your calls, you will never be 100% rid of spam.