Why am I not in full control as a cellular user?

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by jsz0 on Monday August 09, 2010 @10:05AM (#1587986)

My fear would be something like a friend or family member being in some emergency situation where they have lost their phone and need to reach me on someone else's phone but I never see the call/text. There's a danger in micro-managing your life without fully thinking about all the ramifications. This is why in my opinion it's better to just deal with the 1-2 seconds of annoyance to dismiss a spam call/text. It's not the end of the world. A child/SO/friend/family/co-worker not being able to reach you in an emergency is much worse.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by warfangle on Monday August 09, 2010 @10:56AM (#1588141)

There's always the middle ground:

If the number is blocked - a truly unknown number - send them to voicemail. Most marketers won't leave a voicemail - they'll just hang up.

I voicemail-screen every call I get from numbers that aren't in my address book. 99/100 times, blocked number calls don't even leave a voicemail.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by webuiarchitect on Monday August 09, 2010 @12:41PM (#1588491)

Sounds good

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by Fargren on Monday August 09, 2010 @11:01AM (#1588165)

I tend to disagree with this kind of worse-case-scenario thinking. That there's a slim possibility that something terrible will happen is not reason enough to stop doing something that will undoubtedly be of benefit. Not receiving an important emergency call because you disable calls form unknown numbers seems about as (un)likely as missing an important call because you were busy taking care of an unwanted one.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by webuiarchitect on Monday August 09, 2010 @12:42PM (#1588493)

Precisely my thinking.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by webuiarchitect on Monday August 09, 2010 @02:28PM (#1588869)

That's not a valid fear, I guess. Even normally you might miss those so called emergency calls - (1) You are in a meeting and your phone is on silent (2) You had few long chats over phone with friends/clients and your battery is dead (3) You are in a very crowded place or traveling and just couldn't hear your phone ringing (very common) (4) You obviously don't carry your phone in the bathroom; do you? At least, I don't. (5) And other technical/non-technical scenarios I can't think of right now.

Also about these emergency situations, can you think of the number of times, you actually received these kind of calls? In last 8 years, I can't think of any. And let's say, even if there were couple of them, I think it is unreasonable to consider that 0.001% probability. In that case, you already have enough from the above 5 points to worry about.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by scotty79 on Monday August 09, 2010 @10:56AM (#1588143)

They have your number so you can tell them to include it in their sms when they are sending it to you. Or better yet their own number. Your spamfilter might let such messages through. Or at least name or something. Anyway you they have to provide some details about themselves in sms so you can know who contacts you.

Thinking further voicebot to filter out call spam also would be nice. ;-)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why am I not in full control as a cellular user? by jpablo on Monday August 09, 2010 @12:19PM (#1588422)

I can't imagine how we ever survived as a race before we had cell phones and we had to be unreachable by hours(!!) at a time.

[ Parent | on HN ]