I was just made aware of www.nomorobo.com. Pardon my cynicism, but I get suspicious of anything “free.” However, it’s my understanding it’s been featured on several media outlets. Anyone have any experience with this site? If it really is legit, why would someone develop such a product if it doesn’t generate any revenue?
I don’t know anything about this, so I googled “nomorobo scam” and didnt’ see anything untoward.
I got this guy: http://blog.varolii.com/brian-moore-2/ftc-how-will-you-prevent-nomorobo-abuse/
who thinks its a bad idea, but he is in deep with the telemarketer business. So simply because he doesn’t like it…I’m inclined to think its a great service.
As far as monetizing it, there are a few ways it can be done. There is lots of freeware that survives on donations; maybe they plan on selling ads on their website. Maybe they are looking for ‘early adopters’ to help market their product than start a pay per month service. Maybe they will be purchased for lots of money by a telephone company, or telemarketing company…
i’m just guessing
I believe that that idea was the winner of an FCC challenge to develop a way to stop robotelemarketing calls.
It looks like they might be in a buildup phase now. The first thing they ask you is to enter your carriers (COX for home and Verizon for mobile for me) and your email. It then said that the service will not work for either of them (if Verizon does not work for mobile you know they are just starting). It suggested calling both the companies and requesting they support “simultaneous ringing”.
So, my guess is that there is a potential for this service to work with services that are possible, but not currently supported by most carriers. They are now trying to get more carriers to offer it, and using pressure from customers by offering their service for free to get the carriers to offer the needed services. After they get to the point where they work on most carriers they monetize it.
Not available for Verizon. 
I don’t like having to tell my e-mail address to somebody, just to find out if I am eligible for their service. That rings a bell right there.
But what the hell, I went ahead and put in a throwaway e-mail address anyway, just to see what happens. Turns out that I have some rinkydink little backwoods phone provider, that does not support the nomorobo service — AT&T Landline. I guess you can’t expect that company to be anywhere near the cutting edge.
And after five minutes, that email address hasn’t started getting spammed yet, so maybe it’s safe…
Nomorobo did give me ATT’s phone number, so I can call them and tell me tok participate with nomorobo. Good luck getting anybody to talk to at that number. The first thing ATT tells you is to hqng up and go online, the only way ATT recognizes for effective communications.
I suspect they are trying to get the providers to offer the service they need to interact with. If and when the providers do, they will hit all the emails addresses they now have associated with people who use that provider and are interested to let them know the service is available.
OK – I’m in! I’ll report back how it works out.
The main requirement is that you have to have a Voip-type phone line that supports simultaneous ringing; you set your phone line to ring a number in their system at the same time your phone rings. If they detect a known robocaller from the Caller ID, their line picks up and hangs up, to kill the call after one ring.
I also found an article that says their business model is to keep it free for personal use, and get business call centers to pay for it.
Obvious way it will fail a lot: Witness the prevalence of telemarketers (robo or otherwise) who don’t provide their Caller ID or worse, spoof a bogus Caller ID.
But I can see an obvious direction their service can be extended: They can offer an arbitrarily-elaborate call-screening service.
I would like to have an answering machine that allows me to create incoming-call filters, based on the available Caller ID information, much like we can create incoming e-mail filters. It could trigger on originating phone number (as given) or just part of it (all calls from a certain area code, or all calls having a particular area code and next three digits), or all calls from “Out of Area” or from “Undisclosed Caller”), etc. I would like to be able to establish “classes” of these filters, with a different action for each (like pick up and hang up, or take a message, etc.)
I can see that this nomorobo service could offer some of the kinds of options I would like.
ETA: And I can easily envision major providers like AT&T offering support options for this kind of service at deliberately uncompetitive prices, along with a competing service of their own for a marginally more competitive price.
Hey - it worked! First robocall axed! Rang once, went away. Caller ID said “Express Process” whoever that is.
I have been a user for a couple months. I love it.
Now if only this service could answer the call and hang up, as advertised, but also cause a $100.00 charge on the caller’s phone bill for every such call!
When this thread was started over a month ago, I signed up for the service. Here are my observations from the six weeks I’ve been signed-up…
[ul]
[li]There has been no spam received by the email id I used to signup.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]I could tell some calls were being blocked almost immediately. One ring only and then picked up by the “nomorobo” service. Most of the calls (a LOT) that we get here are political so they can’t be blocked. Nevertheless, this service is nice to have for illegal marketing calls.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]What really impressed me and the reason I bumped this thread is because of their responsiveness. This past Thursday a call came in with an unrecognized number and “ALPHAOMEGA NETW” on caller-id. The call was not blocked and a recorded message was left trying to sell carpet cleaning services. Since the number here is on the do not call registry this was an illegal call.[/li]
The next day, Friday, I logged in to nomorobo and reported the number as one that should be blocked.
Today, Saturday, another call came in from the same marketer and it was blocked by nomorobo. (I just googled the name which was on caller id and it looks like in addition to making illegal sales calls, they are also scammers.)
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]As far as the service blocking calls that should be let through, I haven’t had that problem, although this is not the Playboy mansion so there is not a lot of social phone activity here anyway (darn it.)[/li][/ul]
All in all, not perfect but it helps in the fight against telephonic spam. Now if only I could block those dreaded calls with caller-id number of “1[spaces]”. :mad: Usually a political campaign - big surprise.
Me in post immediately above:
“All in all, not perfect but it helps in the fight against telephonic spam. Now if only I could block those dreaded calls with caller-id number of “1”. Usually a political campaign - big surprise.”
For the past week or two calls from number “1” ring once, then blissful silence! 
:eek:
Anyone else using nomorobo notice this?
Sorry to dig up this old thread, but I was wondering about the current state of robocall solutions in the US. I used to live there until recently and was pretty happy with NoMoRobo while I used it, but there seems to be a new generation of solutions which I’m curious about. I saw a press release about one which is automatically(?) available for Sprint customers (Call Guardian?) and I think there are some new hybrid apps on the scene, like the one from AT&T. Any interesting experiences to report?
Telemarketers are bypassing NoMoRobo by simply changing the callerID to a local area code and exchange number.* So you think it’s someone from you area.
Since we really don’t get calls from people from our exchange, we let it go to the machine. But then you have to put up with the phone ringing a few times.
The Feds are pressuring phone companies to stop letting telemarketers do stuff like this. Maybe things will finally change soon.
- Not sure how they pick the number. If they pick a live number, that person’s going to get hate call dialbacks. But not all dead numbers are dead. I have my VoIP service set to report out-of-service number to a list of telemarketers. Hope they don’t decide to pick mine due to that.
Uhhh… just making it look like a local number isn’t sufficient to fool NoMoRobo. Now, I did have a spate of robocalls that evaded detection recently, but I reported them to NoMoRobo and they seem to have caught up.
My parents have signed up for nomorobo through Time Warner (their phone provider) and it’s great.
Most of the calls they get are from a local area code and they do not get through. One and done.
They may not pay attention to whether a number is live or not.
Yesterday, I got a call from a 50 mile away “neighbor,” who asked if I had called him, since my name and number appeared on his CID. When he described the call, I recognized it as a typical “lower your interest rates” scam, and assured him I did not make the call. He was pleasant about it, and seemed to understand. I was even glad he called me, as this confirmed how the scheme works.
A variation on the “insert local number” scheme is for the caller to take the number they are calling, modify it slightly like bumping the last digit up by 5, then looking up the true recipient of that number in a national database. Using the info found, they will insert the true owner of that number and use that combined data for their spoofed ID.
So you might get a call from someone with a local number and local name and be misled enough to pick up the call. In my small town, it’s quite likely that “wrong number” calls are (or appear to be) from someone you know.
I’ve even been subject to such a caller who, when I reached the live clerk, tried to convince me that he truly was calling from a local address. He had a map of the area near my house in front of him, and when I asked if he was located in that 10-story office building on the corner, said “yes.”
There are no buildings in this county higher than 3 stories, and there’s nothing on that corner but farmer’s fields with deer hunting blinds.