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Comment by jonpurdy | Hacker News Reader

I literally do the same thing, except "press 1 if you are a human". I haven't had any robocalls get through.

I don't have a direct cell number as I just use a cheap data-only iPad plan with my iPhone only, combined with a VoIP iOS client (Bria).

I use VoIP.ms for my service. It's basically hosted Asterisk with a nice web UI on top, as well as purchasing and managing DIDs.

Related, I used this system for a condo buzzer when I lived in a building a few years ago. Set my name on the condo dialer to ring a specific DID for the condo buzzer to call, pointed towards VoIP.ms IVR, then just played DTMF 9 repeatedly to unlock the door and let them in. I triggered an SMS to send to me when this occurred so I'd know when someone was downstairs on their way up.

Massive security hole, but not exploited once the entire time (except by me a few times when I forgot my keys).

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I run my own PBX too, and like you I had the IVR message for 'press 1 to connect your call'. Too many legitimate callers are morons though and couldn't figure out how to press 1. A lot of bitching especially from Gov service's oe similar, when I got around to calling them and wondering why they hadn't called me. "We did, but got a wierd message". Fucking infuriating. It worked great for stopping spam and robo callers though.

That's why paying attention to the message is important. If you give me your number, but when I call I get an automated response system, I'd hang up as well, thinking I probably got the wrong number.

In the case of the top-comment I wouldn't because it confirms that I'm calling the person I want to call. I guess if you'd make that change, you will probably catch a lot of your problems.

Yeah I get that. I didn't want to give people more information than they already know though. Having an automated message that TELLS YOU who you are calling, seems counter-productive from my standpoint. If you're calling me, you should already know who I am. I don't want to give you my name and then have some random ass spammers use that information to make it seem like a legitimate call.

Difference between them going "I am calling to speak to penguincoder" (having gotten the name from MY message), or going "I am calling about your cars extended warranty".

hah I did something similar at a small startup working out of a big live/work loft when they ran out of key fobs to give us. You'd buzz our unit which would call a Twilio number which sent a message to the super secure "front door" slack room saying "someone is at the door. let them in?" and you'd open slack on your phone and hit the button to let yourself in. Very secure stuff.

you set it up so that the IVR announcement WAV file you uploaded was a recording of the DTMF tones for "9" repeatedly? so basically anyone that pressed your buzzer number would get auto-entered into the building?

The condo buzzer idea is legendary! I feel like you could have also waited for a reply to the SMS, or an interaction with a push notification via an app like pushsafer.com, so you could unlock the door from your phone!

the buzzer system may not wait 'on the line' very long because it's expecting to receive either a DTMF tone for unlock door within 5 to 15 seconds of the call being answered, or a disconnect such as if a person in their condo is holding a POTS phone and just hangs it up when an unknown person buzzes them, denying entry.

That’s correct, waiting for a push + acknowledgement would be too long which is why it just automatically does it.

I did the push so I’d be able to track unexpected usage and there wasn’t a single one the entire time.

Eh, security hole is still there without your system, and someone being "nice" to a social engineer who forgot their fob in the apartment, etc.

Wow, that's awesome!

I was lazier and just abandoned the telephone system altogether.

if you only have a data-only plan and use a voip service, how do you get sms? do they provide sms too? this was one of the issues that kept me going down a similar route a number of years ago.

Voip.ms user here. They bridge sms to email for you. It's a bit clunky, and doesn't work with some TOTP systems, but it's okay. (TOTP issue is to do with the number being listed as voip in some database I bilieve, I suspect transferring in a number may fix this)

ok, yah, that does sound a bit clunky for general use, but probably fine for this use case.

i'm at the point where imessage is enough for 2/3 of my contacts, but wouldn't want to preemptively freeze out the other 1/3 (and i definitely don't want to use whatsapp or whatnot).

As another user of this system, SMS-to-email is one of my favourite features. Answering texts from my (Linux) desktop is hardly an iOS exclusive now, ha!

GP here. I use iMessage with an email address, and Signal and other data based messengers and I’ve been doing so since 2014 almost exclusively when I started thinking about using a data plan for my phone service.

As a result my SMS usage is very minimal and VoIP.ms works well for the occasional 2FA code (from dumb banks that both force 2FA and only do it via SMS) or delivery notification SMS. In some cases the 2FA code doesn’t get received and I need to use the number assigned to the SIM. This works but I need to track which services do this so I have a tag in 1Password, just in case I need to change the SIM or provider one day.

You can find an unofficial app in f-droid called VoIP.ms for SMS. It works well now and even sends notifications on my phone that has no Google Play.

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