CBC - Anti-spam call tech still not implemented after 18 months

We have some of the highest phone bills in the world but also a ton of spam, come on CRTC

I only get the occasional Chinese call about a package that still makes it through.

Google phone/messages takes care of a lot of spam. Blocking is effective.

Those with landlines receive a metric buttload of spam calls.
- Yep. Voip is the way to go. I don't know how the spam filtering is with Bell or Rogers, but I run FreePBX and it's great for filtering spam calls.
It's brutal. I don't answer any calls unless they're from someone I know. I probably get 10 spam calls for 1 real call these days.
- I moved so my phone area code matches like 2 people who actually call me. 99% if I get a call from the same area code as my phone, it's marked as spam
Ugh tell me about it. My phone bill went up $5/month at the start of the year for no reason. I'm on the same BYOD plan. I talked to my carrier and they were like "rest assured the funds are going towards upgrading our systems and providing better service." Yeah okay. I don't get service in half of my city because there aren't enough towers to handle the population but sure. Charge me more to not be able to make phone calls. Makes sense.
- Telecom should get cheaper over time, not more expensive. Their capex is mostly spent, so unless they're upgrading to 6G there's not really much money to spend
- Funny story, I didn't have a credit card until this month. What pushed me over the line? Fido increased my bill and I need a credit card to sign up to Freedom Mobile. I'll pay like 10$ less and get twice the data. Fuck the telcoms

Google Pixels have call screening and anti spam features built in, such a life saver. Even if carriers don't implement any protections, my phone will continue to do it on its own.

I'm going to move to an iPhone for my next phone and I'm going to miss that feature the most. The call screening and spam call/text detection and handling is sooooo good.
- Why move? I came from an iPhone 13 and I'm so much happier now.
You understand that by submitting every incoming call to Google for verification, they are mapping your network of friends and family, right? This is the stuff Snowden revealed that the NSA (and the five eyes and beyond) were doing...
- You do know that many of these processes are done with on-device intelligence?
  
  Also, telecoms in Canada are worse with privacy since they sell your location data to third parties.
- If one is using Google services which is most likely the case if they're using one of the popular Android phones that has Call Screen, then Google already has the ability to do that via multiple other avenues like Contacts, Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Docs, call logs and others. Not to mention they have root on every Android phone with Google Apps on it, but let's assume they're only collecting what you agreed to. In other words if one is in bed with Google services, adding Call Screen to the mix isn't increasing the amount of exposure by a significant amount. If we're in bed with Google anyways and they're doing everything you mentioned, we may as well get more services rendered for that.
  
  Personally I'm very much in bed with Google ever since the Gmail beta in 2004-5. I'm not ecstatic about it. That's a risk I'm monitoring and have some mitigations in place for. I'm also not letting anyone else in my bed because every additional bedfellow is additional risk. E.g. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta or some small questionable entities like Brave.

Given our oligopolistic telco landscape, this is not surprising. Everything takes a while if it happens at all. 🤭

I sometimes think that the entire phone ecosystem is so irreparably broken that eventually we'll just drift away from it. Of course without a clear destination to drift over to that hasn't happened yet. May never happen.

That's a huge part of it.

The global phone system was originally built on the premise that phone companies can trust the call related information provided by other phone companies.
- And that premise left the chat with VOIP.

They are kinda starting to get there. Koodo, Bell, and Telus offer Call Control, which does that "please press [random number] to connect" thing, and is pretty good at screening spam for now.

Yeah enabling this for my phone's has been a complete game changer. If you haven't already, do yourself a favour and do it now.
Wow, thank you! I didn't know this existed. Just enabled the addon
The thing that helped me the most is my smartphone's spam filtering and that's separate from the network
for now
Thanks for the heads up!

I remember getting spam calls on my parent's home phone as a kid, but I don't recall ever receiving any on my cell phone. I'm actually surprised to hear that this is still a thing.

My # probably got leaked in a data breach I haven't heard about or something