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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.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:37AM
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.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.