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posted by mrpg on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the hello-this-is-Lenny dept.

AT&T yesterday unveiled free robocall blocking for postpaid smartphone customers.

Named Call Protect, the service blocks some fraud calls at the network level before they reach customers' phones. In other cases, when it's less clear whether the call is fraudulent, Call Protect doesn't block the call but shows "suspected spam warnings on the incoming call screen which let customers choose whether or not to answer calls that originate from a suspected spam source," AT&T's announcement said.

At least for now, the service is available only for AT&T postpaid wireless customers with iPhones or Android phones that support AT&T's HD Voice technology. Call Protect is not automatically enabled. Instead, customers can add the feature in their AT&T account settings or the Call Protect app for iPhone and Android. Some Android users complained in the Google Play store reviews that Call Protect doesn't support unlocked devices like the Google Pixel.

Coming in 6 months, AT&T premium business service for companies that want to circumvent Call Protect.


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:47AM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:47AM (#445351) Journal

    Agreed there will soon be ways for Robocallers to pay their way around this blocking.

    It will probably start with a law suit by some political party (campaign calls already get an exemption from Do Not Call list regulations).

    There is likely to be a service charge sooner or later.

    Then there is this nugget in the announcement:

    AT&T warns that the network-level fraud blocking "[m]ay inadvertently block wanted calls,"

    So not unlike AT&Ts regular cellular service then?

    I've regularly have calls drop over to my answering service (which is Google Voice) even when I'm sitting in my office with a strong signal. It just decides its not going to handle this call and sends it off to google to handle on my wifi connection.

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  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:59AM

    by Francis (5544) on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:59AM (#445356)

    It's AT&T are you sure that's not just the network dropping the call because it's AT&T and their network regularly drops calls? That's a problem I had with AT&T and it's not something that's happened a single time with other carriers.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 24 2016, @08:01PM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 24 2016, @08:01PM (#445641) Journal

      I never get a dropped call on AT&T. Never.
      If it connects the connection is solid and remains so for my longest calls.

      The problem I am describing is a call that never arrives, or never rings, but goes straight to voice mail, which in my case is google voice, and which immediately rings through to my phone's Google Voice App. (My GV number is not published, so I know all these calls bounced off of at&t).

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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:37AM

    by edIII (791) on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:37AM (#445367)

    This is just AT&T at the network level performing what Asterisk enthusiasts have been doing for some time now. Just like you can fire off a DNS request to check against RBLs, you can check an incoming phone number against quasi-RBLs for phone numbers. It doesn't block calls unless you want to. The smart thing is to send it a voice mail and watch the telemarketers answering machine detection fail. When the voicemail message is playing, and the other side talks like they're not listening, it's a pretty good indication that it can be flagged as spam.

    It all means jack diddly shit. Only Mississippi has made Caller ID spoofing illegal, so telephone pests can just shift their numbers around and dial out.

    Wake me up when I can subscribe to a RBL and it works off public input.

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:44AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:44AM (#445370) Homepage

    I'm not sure this is even an issue in America anymore, I've had one robocall (from a political party, regarding the election) in the past 10 years.

    Do you all get more robocalls? Is robocalling a big problem for corporate customers?

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:21AM

      by Francis (5544) on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:21AM (#445383)

      That's about how many political robocalls I've gotten to my cell phone. I get a fair number of scammers calling, but in terms of people who are technically allowed to, they're extremely rare.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:14AM (#445450)

        > That's about how many political robocalls I've gotten to my cell phone.

        Robocalls to cellphones are explicitly illegal. They must be dialed by a human. No exceptions, not even for politicians.

        > I get a fair number of scammers calling,

        Yep, they don't care about legality, so they will robocall the shit out of cellphone numbers.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:31AM (#445409)

      Could be where you live or party affiliation. As an Iowan, I got at least 1 robocall a week on average and at least 1 a day during the waning days of the election. I'm still getting ones to congratulate me for voting for the future or to help stop Republicans.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:45PM (#445614)

      I'm not sure this is even an issue in America anymore, I've had one robocall (from a political party, regarding the election) in the past 10 years.

      I'm in America (NYC area) and I get 10 - 15 automated scam calls per week. Being on the DNC list doesn't matter. I just ignore any number that isn't in my address book (which is easy when I have "Who Could It Be Now" as the default ringtone for unknown callers).