After getting about 10 calls in 1 day from a robo caller selling some shady insurance, I'd had enough. I answered the call and asked the person, "Why do I keep getting calls from this..." Click.  The bastard hung up.

This annoying scene plays over frequently on both home and mobile phones. In this case, the calls came from 201-204-xxxx numbers.  Almost every call came from a different number, but they all had the same area code and exchange.

Rise of the Machines

How do these digital scumbags sleep at night?  Unfortunately, probably pretty well. Even though this was not "Steve" from Pakistan telling me he was from Microsoft and here to help, but a North American (possibly Canadian) accent, the scam is practically the same - and just as frustrating.  Yes, my number is registered with the Federal Trade Commission's National Do Not Call Registry. That's about as effective as asking Central American dreamers to obey immigration laws. But unlike illegal immigrants whose (sympathizer) votes help keep politicians in office, robo callers annoy everyone without preference to ideology. And right now, there isn't much you can do about it. Or is there?

Hasta la vista, baby!

A quick review of mobile phone apps and services yielded some possible solutions with varying degrees of success.  The CTIA guide "How to Stop Robocalls" is helpful.  Consumer Reports recommends using a call blocking app like NoMoRobo ($2 / month) or a service provided by your carrier, like Verizon's Caller Name ID with call blocking ($3/month). None of the call blockers let you block calls using this combination, though open source NoPhoneSpam (free, Android only, hasn't been updated in over 2 years).  Though some of the mobile apps work for free, the saying applies: If you are paying for a product, you (and your data) are the product.  In this case, the apps get access to your call history (which isn't too bad) and your contacts, with the excuse that they need to verify if a caller is known to you. Right. And you can get a bargain on beach front property in Arizona.

Since I get spam calls at home, too, I checked with my carrier, MagicJack. I was pleasantly surprised to find a different approach that I'll call "phone captcha" and MJ calls "automated call screening."  Basically, all callers must enter the specified random digit before the call rings through. Yes, this might cause issues for legitimate robo calls coming from schools, doctor's offices, airlines, etc. But it's like that most get those calls on their mobile phones. A mobile app, provided by the carrier or by an independent company, should be able to implement this feature for free as in beer.  You could easily add a list of approved callers (or match them to your contacts - you are the product!) to automatically allow calls through.  But unless it was provided by the carrier, it might need to ring at least once to trigger the screen.

It will be interesting to see how these tools and services evolve, especially if Congress stops campaigning long enough to actually pass legislation to address this.  If they do, I'll be back.