Let’s Destroy Robocalls

Re:Let’s Destroy Robocalls by Leace on Monday March 04, 2019 @02:36PM (#19304513)

> Doctor's office calling to confirm your appointment; restaurant confirming a seat reservation; delivery guy is outside and can't find your doorbell; Lyft/Uber/whatever is nearby and is looking for you; pharmacy calling to inform about a prescription being ready; some store calling to inform that your order is ready to be picked up; insurance company calling about some claim; etc.

The problem is phone number that is short and easy to guess. Imagine replacing them with a longer token that would be generated each time you want to give someone else a way to contact you (e.g. displaying a QR barcode on your phone and letting the other party scan it). Then you'd share a unique identifier with all that parties. Delivery guy can get a token that expires after a while. If someone abuses their ability of contacting someone, the token would get revoked.

I leave the details and implementation as an exercise for the reader ;)

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Re:Let’s Destroy Robocalls by MBCook on Monday March 04, 2019 @03:46PM (#19305248)

That sounds like a huge hassle, which would probably make it a no-go.

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Re:Let’s Destroy Robocalls by Leace on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:36PM (#19305809)

QR codes are widely used in China for example for quick transactions: https://a16z.com/2017/08/11/qr-codes-in-china/

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Re:Let’s Destroy Robocalls by mindslight on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:34PM (#19305796)

It's actually a longstanding part of phone culture - "extension xxx". It doesn't need to be terribly long to keep out spam - having to enter a single digit would fix the immediate problem, and even when the spammers adapted 3 or 4 still seem sufficient.

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Re:Let’s Destroy Robocalls by amelius on Monday March 04, 2019 @03:49PM (#19305282)

Yes, it sounds like how PGP failed.

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