Hacker News Reader

Comment by Latteland | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a nice improvement. It appears to be a web of trust scenario, where you trust anyone else who is verified. Eventually I'm sure some spammer will break through into the circle. I hope that if there is some spammer penetration (so much money here it's inevitable) every phone company should be able to track back where that last phone call came from and block them then.

View on HN

"so much money here"

I kinda wonder about that. Both the "semi legit" and "full on spam" calls I get just aren't credible. It's hard to imagine anyone falling for it. Or, I'll press "1" to hear their BS pitch, and go on hold forever.

It's so cheap to do, that I suspect there's an endless queue of people trying to make money, but failing. But "failing" costs them almost nothing.

So, maybe raising the cost of doing it will kill off the amateurs.

It may be intentionally unbelievable - see the Microsoft Research paper about "Nigerian prince" email scams:

By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...

Sure, but that approach requires a low cost per call/email. Things that raise the effective cost will make that approach less attractive.

If it follows spam, they'll just professionalize and focus on the most technically inept.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com