On 12/19/19 11:27 AM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
On Thu, 2019-12-19 at 11:02 -0800, William Herrin wrote:
I call your phone number.
Your phone company compares my number against your whitelist. Ring
through on match.
If no match, "You have reached Name. Press 2 to leave a message.
Press
3 to enter your code. Press 0 or stay on the line for an operator."
Ring through on a valid code.
If 0, the call connects to a call center where a live operator
evaluates the call. Who am I? Why am I calling? Do I meet the
plain-English criteria you've established for calls to allow through?
If no, the operator offers to connect me to your voicemail. If yes,
the operator dials you, explains who's calling and asks your
permission to connect the call.
It really doesn't (currently at least -- until robocallers start using
voice recognition to defeat my system) need to be this complicated or
over-engineered. A simple audio captcha works wonders.
Hello. If you are a telemarketer, press 1. If you want to speak to
somebody at this number, press 5.
Anyone pressing 1 gets their caller-id added to my blacklist and is
asked to add our number to their do not call list. In reality all
telemarketers use robocallers so they don't even get that far.
Anyone pressing 5 rings through (with additional processing described
below).
There are robocalls that you want to get. Here in california, our
wonderful electric company sends out robocalls when they are going to
cut our electricity so they don't get blamed for burning down cities
(and then still manage to anyway). I'm not sure if our earthquake alerts
can robocall or not, but that would certainly be another one that you'd
want to get. There are plenty more examples.
Mike
