Homemade Cell Phone Call Blocker?

G)-(ostly asks: "Recently, I've been plagued by a number of calls that were mis-dialed to my cell phone. They're particularly annoying because, being on a cell phone, the wrong number calls follow me everywhere as opposed to just being ignored in an empty house during the day. Verizon, of course, has scripted their drones to claim they can't do anything about it except change the number (or we can turn off the phone), which of course probably wouldn't change anything since we'd just get different mis-dials. However, since it's in my possession, would it be possible to build a software package that could be used to 'screen' unwanted numbers right on the phone? If so, how would one even begin to find APIs for phones, or load the software, once built, onto it?" How long do you figure it will take phone makers to recognize the need for this feature?

A cheap and dirty way to do this would be to add the numbers you wish to block to your phone's contact list and give them a silent ring. However, you then waste the phones memory with a phone-book entry (which can be hundreds of bytes), when all you really need is a list consisting of 10-12 digit numbers (depending on locality). The other drawback to this method is that you might need to use those contact slots, so it isn't a solution for everyone. Still, this sounds like a useful feature, but there is still the issue of how much control the cell phone's OS will give you over its basic operations (blocking messages sent from a specific number, for example). Has anyone tried doing this on their phone? What kind of luck did you have?

Microsoft Smartphones

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do this with Microsofts Smartphones because they have an open API and freely available tookits to develop with. Just go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile [microsoft.com] for more information. Who knows about other phones, like Symbian. They are pretty much closed so you can forget about them.

Huh?

[Derg]

My old as crap sony ericsson t237 from cingular has a call management feature that lets me select groups to accept calls from. I can select to accept calls from the list, from all, or from none. Why cant you just put all the people you are most commonly expecting calls from in the "whitelist" and select to accept calls only from the list? Any other calls are directed to voicemail, where you can choose to ignore or reply at your leisure. Another benefit of this is that your voicemail message will convey who you are to the caller, and simple misdials will realize and most likely hangup. I do not see what the big deal is? What am I missing?

O2

[biocute]

If wrong numbers are troubling you so much, consider investing in a O2-type smartphone which comes with features to screen/block numbers.

Re:Microsoft Smartphones

[Anonymous Coward]

Symbian is closed? Hmm. If you say so. You can download Python for Symbian phones, or even the full Symbian SDK [nokia.com].

Anyway there are several applications out there that will block particular, or all unknown, numbers from getting through to your Symbian phone. Perhaps it would have helped if the original poster mentioned exactly WHAT phone he has...

Re:How long do you figure it will take phone maker

[Peter Mork]

But you don't pay to receive calls

I certainly pay to receive calls. I get a certain number of 'minutes' every month. These minutes are spent by sending or receiving calls.

Number Re-assignment

[rueger]

Part of your problem is that phone companies, and cel providers in particular are re-assigning numbers faster than before.

In days of yore when you surrendered a phone number it would sit dormant for enough time that callers would stop using it.

These days your "new" number may have belonged to someone else only a few weeks ago. Consequently you get calls from people that they knew. Usually at 3 AM.

I had one phone that got calls every few hours from one particular phone number, but from different people. Near as I can tell it had been written on a washroom wall, right by the pay phone...

symbian

[peu]

there is software for symbian phones that allow you to decide, by a set of rules the behaviour of your phone asnwering status, it can even tell the caller the line is busy

There is no ideal solution

[stienman]

A misdial looks exactly like an intentional dial to the phone company. There is no way that you or the phone company can prevent someone from dialing your number.

Your phone already supports basic white list or blacklist functionality. If the same people keep misdialing your number, then you'll want to blacklist them using the method sugested in the editorial portion of this article.

If, however, you get misdials from different phone numbers then you'll need to add everyone to your phone book that you want to know about immediately, and set the general ring to silent. In this way you'll still get voicemail if the caller left a message (typically misdials won't leave voice mail if you set up your outgoing message well) so you won't be completely out of the loop with a real caller from an unfamiliar phone number.

I don't see how custom software will solve this any better than the phone book will. You have four different scenarios:
1) Someone who does want to talk to you dials correctly and reaches you
2) Someone who does NOT want to talk to you dials correctly and doesn't reach you
3) Someone who does want to talk to you misdials and doesn't reach you
4) Someone who does NOT want to talk to you misdials and reaches you

Only calls from #1 and #4 reach you. There are two further possibilities:
A) The person calls from a number in your phone book
B) The person calls from a number not in your phone book (or is blocked)

A person who does want to talk to you and is not in your phone book (payphone, friend's phone, etc) looks exactly like a person who does not want to talk to you and is not in your phone book. Therefore, as far as the phone company, your phone, and any possible software you could invent knows, 1B == 4B.

Therefore the problem cannot be solved any better than it is right now with the built in phone's whitelist and blacklist. Either you will only accept calls from those you've programmed, shoving everyone else to voice mail, or you will accept calls from anyone who does not match a set of frequent misdiallers.

In the old days before caller ID one could purchase an answering machine that would not allow the home phones to ring unless the caller pressed a sequence of touchtone keys. You may be able to make software do that, but generally those devices failed in the marketplace because it was too much hassle.

Of course, this doesn't answer your question. I suppose what I'm trying to accomplish here is to ask you a question:

What does your proposed software do that your phone and/or phone company cannot already do? Are you simply suggesting an easier to maintain or more explicit blacklist/whitelist, or do you have a novel method that actually does what I suggest is impossible given the information the phone is provided? If so, getting the software onto the phone is trivial once you've convinced a few key people that what you've invented actually works.

-Adam

Re:How long do you figure it will take phone maker

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a P910i with a program called Magic Profiles Pro.

It will change profiles based on what cell tower you're connected to. So when I drive to work, the 3 towers near my work are all programmed and in the phone switches to Work mode.

You can also change profiles based on time and keyworks in the calender app (such as meeting, dinner etc)

You can also screen numbers using it, blacklist, whitelist, or just reject calls that don't give you any caller ID info.

It's very handy, I think you can also get it for some Symbian based Nokia's.

Re:How long do you figure it will take phone maker

[ArkonChakravanti]

Actually, in some countries, like Belgium, you don't pay to receive calls, only the caller pays to talk on the phone and you also don't pay to receive text messages...
In other countries, like the US, you pay for calling and for receiving calls, and for sending and receiving text messages...

Just FYI

CallShield for Palm phones

[christefano]

Its too bad you didnt say what phone you have.

I havent used it myself but Ive heard good things about CallShield [mantragroup.com], a utility I came across when I had a Treo about two years ago. It sounds precisely what youre looking for.

Re:VOIP solution

[hlh_nospam]

VoicePulse [voicepulse.com]. I got the $14.99 account with unlimited local calls and 200 long distance minutes, of which I rarely use more than 20 or 30. Only problem I've had was when I was with Comcast, the bandwidth that Comcast provided after 5pm in the evening was not sufficient to use the VOIP line. However, since Verizon came to my neighborhood with FiOS, Comcast is now history as far as I'm concerned; good riddance.

VoicePulse does not pay referral fees, so my recommendation is a freebie. Probably better that way...

Re:Not every phone is like yours...

[L.Bob.Rife]

Some phones don't care how much free space you have, they still limit the number of phonebook entries. Mine for example has several megs of free space, but limits the phone book to 200 entries. Why the OP is concerned about bytes is beyond me, but I can understand wasting phone book entries when you have a limited hard-coded amount.

A java app would work better for me if I had that problem, because I have loads of free space for apps, but not for the addressbook.

Stopping it ringing is easy

[prefect42]

If you're trying to weed out frequent misdialers, then add them to your phonebook, create a group "misdialers" and set the ring volume to 0 for the caller group. If you can't set a ring volume but have got a shiny phone, upload an empty.mp3 as a ringtone. Works on my old Nokia 6210 just nicely.

Re:Phones suck.

[TeknoHog]

You know, my phone has an on/off button. It's up to me to decide when I want to be available. I can be unavailable at home, or available in the pub, if that's how I want it. That's the kind of freedom your good old phone cannot provide.