My elderly mother has her phone locked down so that you can’t contact her unless you’re in her contacts.
We need to rethink how we let random people contact other random people. The upside of letting random people call anybody isn’t that large, and the downside is like billions of damages in scams and people losing their retirements.
The upside of letting random people call anybody isn’t that large
That really does depend on the person. My grandma can barely use email and doesn’t know the difference between her Contacts app and Gmail, nor does she even understand how to add a contact. She’d just accidentally isolate herself from people without realizing, and would also never get any of the phone calls she gets from her bank, charities and organizations she works for, etc.
Those examples you mentioned aren’t random people. They’re people she knows and organizations that she associates with. I am suggesting that we rethink the system to specifically disallow randos.
Have you ever had food (or package and furniture even) delivery where they need to call, or gotten a call from a pharmacy, or had to call a plumber, or lost a pet? There’s tons of reasons why people need to call a random person.
It makes sense to have the option to lock down a phone to just contacts, like for kids and the elderly, but not for everyone.
For me it’s calls from medical professionals regarding my wife. There’s no way to know ahead of time the entire list of numbers all of these organizations - each facility, each provider, each insurer, each pharmacy.
No. What we need is freaking DNS for phone numbers. I don’t get why this isn’t a thing.
So you can actually register a bunch of numbers under the same name. If DoctorSocks.med calls, you know it is them regradless whether it’s the front desk or what not.
If DrJoana@DoctorSocks.med calls, you know it’s the number of that particular person.
In that way you can even establish curated lists. On a govermental, but also on a community level.
My elderly mother has her phone locked down so that you can’t contact her unless you’re in her contacts.
We need to rethink how we let random people contact other random people. The upside of letting random people call anybody isn’t that large, and the downside is like billions of damages in scams and people losing their retirements.
That, my friend, is called White Listing.
That really does depend on the person. My grandma can barely use email and doesn’t know the difference between her Contacts app and Gmail, nor does she even understand how to add a contact. She’d just accidentally isolate herself from people without realizing, and would also never get any of the phone calls she gets from her bank, charities and organizations she works for, etc.
Those examples you mentioned aren’t random people. They’re people she knows and organizations that she associates with. I am suggesting that we rethink the system to specifically disallow randos.
Have you ever had food (or package and furniture even) delivery where they need to call, or gotten a call from a pharmacy, or had to call a plumber, or lost a pet? There’s tons of reasons why people need to call a random person.
It makes sense to have the option to lock down a phone to just contacts, like for kids and the elderly, but not for everyone.
For me it’s calls from medical professionals regarding my wife. There’s no way to know ahead of time the entire list of numbers all of these organizations - each facility, each provider, each insurer, each pharmacy.
Definitely! And if you’re someone’s emergency contact, forget about it.
No. What we need is freaking DNS for phone numbers. I don’t get why this isn’t a thing.
So you can actually register a bunch of numbers under the same name. If
DoctorSocks.medcalls, you know it is them regradless whether it’s the front desk or what not.If
DrJoana@DoctorSocks.medcalls, you know it’s the number of that particular person.In that way you can even establish curated lists. On a govermental, but also on a community level.
Hello it’s me Bill Gates at rnicrosoft.com I will help you do the needful to fix your device.
Trump got rid of all of the protections that were already set up, very early on this term.