Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t in my contact list?

Re:Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t ... by magduf on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:43AM (#19035944)

How is a spammer going to figure out phone numbers of people on my list from social media? I don't know about you, but I don't have my Facebook friends publicly viewable.

And that's an awful lot of work just to cold-call someone to try to sell them insurance or whatever.

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Re:Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t ... by ryanlol on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:36AM (#19036537)

With a handy-dandy facebook bug that allows them to scrape such data at scale?

This has happened multiple times before, at least two separate incidents have made the news.

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Re:Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t ... by magduf on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @12:32PM (#19037176)

This doesn't seem like a reliable way of running a business: just hoping that you can exploit a bug in Facebook (which will surely be fixed before long) so you can grab people's friends, try to figure out their phone numbers, then spoof them, then cold-call them trying to sell them crap insurance.

I'm sorry, this just sounds far-fetched to me. History seems to have shown that when hurdles are just a little too high, the spammers just don't bother.

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Re:Ask HN: Why can’t I block all incoming calls that aren’t ... by ryanlol on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:56PM (#19038054)

Why just facebook? Spammers have been exploiting bugs like this in everything for years. The data gets scraped and then sold and resold.

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