[GRLUG] $50K Prize if You Find Way to Block Robocalls

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Tim Schmidt <timschmidt at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As the intermediary, you check the incoming call for a "spamminess"
>> factor. If it feels spammy, you put it through an audio captcha or
>> other challenge/response verification step.
>
> Audio captchas will be cracked the same way regular ones have been.
> There's huge incentive, and automation already built into the process.
>
> The only way it would really work is to do per-line spamminess, and
> block the whole line if it crosses a threshold, until a human gets in
> contact with the company to rectify it.
>
> Unfortunately, that's a pretty heavy hammer to occasionally drop on
> regular folk.

That's why I mentioned challenge/response; that's a bit harder to
crack. (And there are other things you could do, such as allowing a
passphrase bypass.)

There's also call holding; "$snippet has called, and would like to
speak to you. Would you like to accept this call?"

That kind of service has been in use for decades. Automate it, and you
can configure schedules, degrees of access, etc. And accumulate denied
calls for spam/ham classification.

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:wq