Google Voice Will Now Warn You About Potential Spam Calls (theverge.com) 28
Google has announced that it's adding a red "suspected spam caller" warning to Google Voice calls if it doesn't think they're legitimate. From a report: In a post on Thursday, the company says it's identifying spam "using the same advanced artificial intelligence" system as it does with its traditional phone app for Android. If the spam label appears, you'll also have the option of confirming that a call was spam -- in which case any future calls will be sent straight to your voicemail -- or clarifying that it wasn't, which will get rid of the label for future calls.
Google Voice has had the ability to automatically filter calls identified as spam to voicemail for years, and has also allowed you to screen calls before actually picking them up, but those options may not have been great if you're the type of person who gets a lot of important calls from unknown numbers. Google does say that you'll have to turn off the Filter Spam feature by going to Settings > Security > Filter spam if you want the automatic spam labeling.
Google Voice has had the ability to automatically filter calls identified as spam to voicemail for years, and has also allowed you to screen calls before actually picking them up, but those options may not have been great if you're the type of person who gets a lot of important calls from unknown numbers. Google does say that you'll have to turn off the Filter Spam feature by going to Settings > Security > Filter spam if you want the automatic spam labeling.
The real shocking news: (Score:5, Funny)
Google remembered that Google Voice exists.
Which means we're only months away from them killing it off.
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I use it.
Around ten years ago, I was switching carriers and ported the old number to Google Voice and got a new number from my carrier. I thought I'd let it hang around for a year a few months so I could see if I missed giving my new number to anyone, but then I realized I can give it to all the stores that want a phone number to ID me. If there's a confirmation text, I'll go look at it and then go back to ignoring the number, so I don't care if they're selling the number. It's never getting answered.
A d
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Mod parent Funny, and I like it as an FP, too. I had forgotten it still existed.
A little late to the party (Score:2)
It's not that I like Verizon, but I've had spam warnings on my android phone for quite a while now. Yes, it helps. No, I'm not going to pay my phone carrier for the "privilege" of not receiving unwanted calls - but at least the warnings are free.
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T-Mobile does it, too, and for free. I liken this announcement to Elon Musk announcing the latest thing he's invented that already exists.
How much? (Score:3, Interesting)
And no, it will be free to you, the question is, how much for a scammer to not trigger the warning?
I'll assume it's the same deal as with their adblockers and ads?
Re:How much? [Where is the money, Lebowski?] (Score:1)
At least that's how I'm attempting to interpret your unclear comment. So it's time for my terrible old joke again:
I blame Al Gore for the spam. They should have thought about the money when they were designing the Internet, but Senator Gore kept telling them not to worry about money and he kept it flowing from Congress. Yeah, a good investment, but... We got stuck with the spam.
And I still think the solution is to follow the money and make sure the scamming spammers don't get any. Then the spam problem will
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Google has had this for many years on their phones. It uses crowd sourced data to flag up likely spammers.
There doesn't appear to be any way to get off the list of spammers, other than to stop being a spammer so people stop flagging your number.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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I get 1 to 6 spam calls a day where the person/bot leaves no message. Why Google can't filter these out is beyond me. Does it require A.I. to recognize 6 second of silents.
Only 6? Mine is up to 30+ a day, and most are only 2-3 seconds. No background noise and no baseline noise.
There's 552 new voicemails right now, and I cleaned it up just before thanksgiving.
I'll bet a dollar that not a single one has sound in it.
Worse, I suspect this is a highly specific attack targeted only to googles voicemail system.
Silence detection has been the standard mitigation for shoddy dropped-call detection for at least three decades now, likely longer.
The bots are doing something very intention
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Wrong approach (Score:4, Interesting)
The way potential scam calls are handled is wrong. The service should not allow the call to go through and instead say a message to the caller, then terminate the call. The message should be something to the effect of: "You've been marked as a potential spam caller. It's your responsibility to figure our why and fix it. We truly don't care. K. Thx. Bye."
the biggest spammer on the internet (Score:2)
only in the US? (Score:2)
All around the world you need to present an ID to get a number (you'd know if you travel and keep buying local SIM cards). That quite efficiently eliminates fake caller-id and hance spam and phishing (this and better privacy laws). So is this another only-in-USA thing?
Atrophy (Score:2)
Like muscles, brains waste away when they are not used.
We all have a spam call warning feature. (Score:2)
Veteran GV user here... (Score:2)
...I've used GV since it was "GC" (Grandcentral) and I like it primarily because it allows you to text seamlessly from your computer and phone like if I had an mac with imessage
That said, Google clearly isn't putting any resources into GV anymore as the quality of the product is gradually diminishing (iOS app is really poorly written and the web app can't even link up contact names to numbers anymore) such that I'm now considering going though the headache of setting up a Mac VM just so I can use imessage i
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Get a super old mac mini and use VNC or maybe just roll your own with twillio
Google AI listen to all your calls (Score:2)
I am not shocked