The end of phone calls: why young people have silenced their ringtones

Re:The end of phone calls: why young people have silenced th... by MiddleEndian on Monday August 30, 2021 @04:12PM (#28360345)

When I'm job hunting or expecting to deal with banks, the govt, or other unavoidable gargantuan institutions, I answer my phone. Otherwise it's on silent all the time and I am not notified about voicemails. My family and friends know how to contact me.

Maybe people will start answering phonecalls again if SHAKEN/STIR makes caller ID accurate and users can systematically block telemarketers ublock style, but I am not optimistic on that front.

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Re:The end of phone calls: why young people have silenced th... by xupybd on Monday August 30, 2021 @04:27PM (#28360508)

I suspect they will have to start verifying caller origins or people will stop using phone services. If there are online communication channels that do a better job of verification they will win market share. Phone companies will become a data pipe supplier. There isn't a lot of money in that, outside of monopolistic practices.

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Re:The end of phone calls: why young people have silenced th... by CoastalCoder on Monday August 30, 2021 @04:35PM (#28360583)

I really wish there were a PKI system for this stuff.

I.e., my phone has a set of public keys, and it will only ring if someone with a valid private key calls me.

If I want someone to be able to call me, I generate a new key pair and provide them with the private key. If anything sketchy starts happening, I forget that public key.

Or, perhaps more practically, use something like asterisk to prompt them for an extension when calling me. My extensions are 10 digit numbers, and I whenever I give my phone number to someone, the number includes a unique, hard-to-guess extension.

[ Parent | on HN ]