Friday, August 19, 2016

What a solution for phone spam will look like

The FCC wants a vast and unmanageable array of voice communications carriers to fix the robocall plague.

I’m here to tell you what will happen. It will work much the way email spam was managed in the 1990s. It will also be the end of our legacy voice communication system and, somewhere along the way, the Feds will mandate that Google and Apple support VOIP interoperability.

Yeah, email spam is managed. It’s true that 95% of my email volume is spam, but I don’t see it. Differential filtering based on the managed reputation of an authenticated sending service works. Push the spam management problem down the sending service, then vary filtering algorithms based on the reputation of the authenticated (PKI) sending service. If you still see large spam volumes or losing valuable email it’s because you’re using Apple as an email service provider. Don’t do that.

Here’s what I think will happen to enable differential filtering based on the managed reputation of the authenticated calling service. I’m sure insiders know this, but they aren’t talking. 

  • VOIP interoperability will be mandated. No more Apple-only FaceTime audio.
  • Services (AT&T, Verizon) that don’t authenticate or manage their customers are assigned poor baseline scores. Service that authenticate/manage customers (Apple) get high baseline scores.
  • Low score calls get sent to spam VOIP, we never see them. Medium score never ring through, they go automatically to transcription and we get transcription summary.
  • High score calls are eligible for ring through based on user device settings.
The carriers will fight like hell to preserve their domain, Apple will fight interoperability, Google will be fine.
 
PS. For now we have a home phone number that is purely message, the phone doesn’t ring. Google Voice would be even better. If I could set my iPhone to “Do Not Disturb” status strictly for voice calls I’d be fine. I rarely answer unrecognized and unscheduled calls.

See also

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8/19/16, 1:00 PM

    The Panasonic KXTG6841B Dect_6.0 1-Handset 1-Line Landline Telephone model allows for Do Not Disturb. Before we got rid of our landline in favor of just using our cellular phones, that's how I had it configured.

    That model also allows you to block about 200 numbers which came in handy with telemarketing calls.

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  2. JGF8/19/16, 1:43 PM

    That's a nice feature. We just turned off ringer everywhere. We hear messages left on recording machine. We have a minimal home line (incoming only) because our security system needs it -- going without a landline would mean new security system, so sticking with ancient tech.

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