I remember a device that could be purchased, maybe in Europe, that would be plugged into your incoming land line. If I remember right it was like an answering machine in that you could record a voice message on it. When an incoming phone call was detected this device would intercept it before any other device in your home even knew what was happening and play the message and ask for a 4 digit code to be entered before the caller’s call would be passed through. Upon entering the valid code the call would then be apparent to the owner of the device otherwise the call would be terminated like it never happened.
Don’t know the code? Then you don’t exist.
This device made it so the owner would have to provide a valid code to a known list of potential incoming callers. Like family and friends. Temporary codes could be offered to businesses and others.
I think it got lobbied off the market. I don’t know what the argument was.
Anyway I can’t find any mention of this device on the internet. Maybe one of you remember this thing and can lead me to information about it or even a modern equivalent.
There is a million of these devices now. I don’t know about the code part though. I think that’s obsolete now since modern phone systems support call display so the call blockers use that (and a white list of friends and family.)
On cell phones, people use spam blockers that download maintained lists of spammers from the internet.
The consumer visible portion of the ‘call display’ sent with every call, wireless or not, has been essentially rendered meaningless by spoofing. Callerid displays might well say, SURE, I’M VAXXED on every incoming call.
Your whitelist approved ID display data can be spoofed too.
It’s impossible to eliminate. Well, unless every incoming communication required manually entering an end user determined code to establish any connection.
A feature available on some landline blockers is a requirement to enter a random code that’s spoken to the caller . So the device answers, says “Please enter 4925 to proceed”. If whoever is calling then touchtones 4-9-2-5, the call rings through to your real phone. If there’s just some computer blathering into the phone, your end hangs up with you, the human, never knowing your phone even tried to ring.
All of which is ancient stuff for conventional landline phones.
Could such software be added to a mobile phone? Maybe. The phone part of a mobile is pretty heavily walled off from the computer part. The “hooks” in the phone part needed to attach such an answering service running inside the computer part may or may not be there.
Voice-controlled bots with speech recognition functionality over the phone are pretty common. In more rudimentary versions, they’ll give you a list of menu options to choose from that you navigate by verbally giving the bot your choice; while more sophisticated AI-powered bots will recognise a caller’s intent from a natural sentence. So I think a phone bot that can make sense of a spoken sentence like “Please enter 4925 to proceed”, and then dials that sequence, is well within the realm of what’s feasible (both technologically and economically) today. Sure, in the usual use case for this technology it’s the human user that initiates the interaction by calling the bot-operated line rather than the other way around, but I doubt this makes a crucial difference.
Should be more like, “Please enter your four digit code now.” Asking for someone or something to repeat a command is just another way around real security.
I precisely remember the device the OP is talking about. I believe it came out in the mid-late 80’s when telemarketers started to go from an occasional annoyance to outright phone terrorists. I remember this device being advertised in all sorts of discount and gadget catalogs.
I do not know what happened to it or why nothing online can be found. Probably it’s mostly obsolete and a large segment of the populace use cell phones rather than landlines.
If I only knew the name of it. It appears there is nothing comparable in the cell universe and there is truly no real protection against unwanted calls.
I’ve alway liked the idea of everyone having essentially a 1-900 number, charging anyone that calls. If you want to pass out codes that waive the fee for the call, you can.
Then, at least if the telemarketer calls you, they are paying for your time.
There are two different use cases with two different levels.
I want to filter out all pure robocalls and recordings and most robo-dialed calls with live humans connected after a person has answered.
I want my phone to only ring when called by a very short list of people I’ve designated.
The 4925 thing I mentioned addresses use case #1. And only case 1.
Your idea of a personal secret code pre-supplied only to friends and family delivers case 1 and case 2 as well. As long as the people can remember your code. Which might get hard once you have 3 friends using this device themselves, each with a different secret code you need to enter to get past their blocker.
For mobiles, use case 2 amounts to the very common idea of a whitelist. IOW, block everything except calls purportedly from certain known contacts. Yes, if some spammer gets very lucky and spoofs a number that happens to be on your very short whitelist, they’ll get through. But that’s a very low probability event. And one that’s pretty benign for you when it happens.
Low probability for each attempt, but if you can scale up the number of attempts it’s still worthwhile. If you have a robo dialler place a million calls, and each of them tries a random four-digit code, then one hundred out of those million calls will still get through by simply having made a lucky guess. And since modern IT has driven down the cost of placing a robo call to practically zero, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that spammers would do exactly this.
My home phone filters all calls. If BT (the provider) recognise the caller as suspect, the call fails (I have no idea what happens at the other end). If the caller’s ID is on the internal directory (white list) the phone rings and if no one answers it goes to voice mail.
Other callers have to identify themselves - the phone rings and I hear them say who they are and can then choose three options: 1, accept the call, 2, Tell the phone to always accept calls from that number, or 3, block all calls from that number.
Just yesterday I called my local bike shop and the automated receptionist said “please press 8 to prove you’re not a telemarketer” then the call connected through. Businesses get flooded with spam calls because they have to publish their numbers in numerous places. They can’t give out special codes to customers beforehand though, because many customers aren’t customers yet, and various phone listing services may not have a way to display special codes and whatnot. This system is minimally annoying to legitimate callers, and it still blocks most robocalls.