Call reporting function in iOS 12 may help Apple avoid iPhone ban in India

Given how much of the spam-calls I receive are clearly from India, I can only imagine how much the locals get, no wonder they mandate anti-spam apps. 

I do like to have fun with some of them tho, playing along with "brian from microsoft" for example who can apparently see I have a problem with my non-existent computer and will fix it free of charge if I visit a certain website allowing him access.

adm1 said:

Given how much of the spam-calls I receive are clearly from India, I can only imagine how much the locals get, no wonder they mandate anti-spam apps. 

I do like to have fun with some of them tho, playing along with "brian from microsoft" for example who can apparently see I have a problem with my non-existent computer and will fix it free of charge if I visit a certain website allowing him access.

I wonder if the rule Apple applies to not sharing call data are already violated from the carrier who is more than happy to sell your data. If that is so, then there is no reason not to allow better apps to combat spam calls. 

I know in the past the phone companies used to sell caller id and then sell blocking numbers and then sell unblocking the blocked numbers, so it's not like any of the carriers really care about the number of spam calls you get. I mean unless you want to subscribe to a program they sell the block those numbers automatically.  

Is it valid only for new phones? Otherwise all prior iPhone 5S devides are in danger anyway.

hammeroftruth said:

adm1 said:

Given how much of the spam-calls I receive are clearly from India, I can only imagine how much the locals get, no wonder they mandate anti-spam apps. 

I do like to have fun with some of them tho, playing along with "brian from microsoft" for example who can apparently see I have a problem with my non-existent computer and will fix it free of charge if I visit a certain website allowing him access.

I wonder if the rule Apple applies to not sharing call data are already violated from the carrier who is more than happy to sell your data. If that is so, then there is no reason not to allow better apps to combat spam calls. 

I know in the past the phone companies used to sell caller id and then sell blocking numbers and then sell unblocking the blocked numbers, so it's not like any of the carriers really care about the number of spam calls you get. I mean unless you want to subscribe to a program they sell the block those numbers automatically.  

Carriers do own the telephone number, it is their responsibility to allow or disallow the caller ID.  So a phone manufacturer has no authority whatsoever to impose such restrictions to the carrier.

Being the owner the carrier has the right to publish telephone books and to ask money for it.  Even with the new GDPR rules in Europe, the carrier has no obligation to ask permission to the end user to use the number for commercial purposes.

Steve Jobs once said that the killer app of the modern smartphone is the Phone app.  That being said, there are two fundamental issues that still prevent it from making that happen:

1. iOS's method of blocking calls in the Phone app and via CallKit needs to be completely revamped. For starters, the native app has a rudimentary Blocked Callers list that is completely unorganized, not easily to manipulate, and worse, cannot be imported or exported. Sure, you can add every random number you get into a single "spam" contact, but even that in itself can get so unwieldy. So, when iOS 10 introduced CallKit, there was some hope, only to discover it's the equivalent of a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound with a chest rib protruding out of the skin. CallKit can block up to two million numbers per Phone app extension, so if you want to block an entire area code, you'd have to have apps like WideProtect has to add up to 15 extensions in order to block 30,000,000 phone numbers. A single incoming call or text would then have to parse through the entire list of databases before it comes through.
   
   What would really be a better solution? Implement a whitelist feature: only allow certain calls to come through based on your contacts or a specific list of possible callers. Is this a violation of FCC regulations? I don't think so, since Android users can do it with apps available on the Google Play Store. Who says that if you are given a ten-digit telephone number, it has to be reachable by anyone? Smartphones have made everyone more connected, but maybe we're too connected, which is why these privacy measures have been set up. But, if you think about how social media accounts are available, you can create a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account and set it to private, to which an outsider would have to request to follow you. Why can't that be the same with a cellular number? They could even include a list of unblockable numbers like "911" or "999."
   
   Flash back to February 2015 when rap singer Iggy Azalea placed an order at Papa John's. The delivery driver gave Iggy's personal cell phone number to his friend was a fan, who then started spamming her with messages. Iggy blasted Papa John's on Twitter over the lack of privacy and Papa John had to take action, with even T-Mobile getting in on the conversation when mentioned during the debacle unraveling on social media. All this would not have happened if either the phone, or its software, or the wireless carrier had implemented some sort of whitelist feature, as the spammer was not in a big database of known telemarketers, spammers, or fraudsters.
   
   Unwanted calls can be a thing of the past, if you could just let it. In fact, the entire telemarketing industry could finally be put in check with an implementation like this, since spammers and fraudsters don’t care about the FCC’s Do Not Call list, which is barely enforceable to begin with, and barely makes telemarketing companies accountable as well.
   
   
2. A single, unwanted, incoming call completely still destroys the user experience. Over eleven years since the introduction of the iPhone, and this scenario is still, unbelievably, the same: You're in the middle of an app, or worse, recording an important event with your camera, and you get an incoming call. The Phone app not only takes focus, but it completely locks down your phone, and you can't get out until you choose either "Answer" or "Decline," among other minor options like send a message to the caller or remind you to call back. If you hit "Decline," it automatically sends the user to voicemail, and the caller immediately knows they've been ignored or unwanted. All this results in two very unhappy people: the caller and the person called.
   
   Two things need to change here: a. stop locking down the entire device for that incoming call. Allow the user to at least toggle back to the original app and finish up whatever they were in the middle of doing, to give the user additional time to decide if they still want that call, and b. Allow the "Decline" button to dismiss the screen and let the user get back to the original app they were in, but more importantly, let the incoming call still ring through to its normal timeout and eventually go into voicemail. This will possibly let the caller believe their call was just missed and not purposely ignored or unwanted.
   
   

Others have argued that iOS' Do Not Disturb feature could be used to prevent unwanted incoming calls, but they easily forget that it also blocks all notifications from apps as well. Do Not Disturb could also therefore use its own set of tweaks and revamps, where the whitelist could be implemented, and/or could be more robust to include a timer (i.e. block for an hour), geofencing (i.e. when entering a movie theater or exiting their place of work), and/or weekends (who actually lives their lives identically across all seven days of the week?).

All these changes are not difficult to implement, and I've been asking Apple for years to make this happen. Maybe CallKit and Do Not Disturb were their first implementations to my request, but they're still both very basic and very naive. With everything else in iOS getting more robust and more smart, they need to really take a fresh look at this area and address it for real this time around.