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Comment by sonofhans | Hacker News Reader

Some weeks ago I broke my iPhone and had it replaced. During the process I had to get re-authorized with Verizon. They tried to call my partner to get her permission, since she's the account owner. Of course she never picked up the phone, because it was from an unknown caller.

The irony is incredible: the literal phone company cannot use their own product to contact their own customers, because they have let that product become a cesspool of spam.

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What's also funny about this is that I've tried using Google's screening service and I've literally never had an important caller answer the screening, they just go to voice mail instead. It's a weird situation because everyone knows that no one picks up calls from unknown numbers but everyone also expects you to pick up for them. It's kinda like when someone texts you "Hi" after exchanging numbers. No, text me "Hi it's so and so from xyz" because I can't differentiate you from spam without that. It's amazing to me that with such a universal problem that people don't adapt to the situation.

All the negative comments are focusing on the old-school providers, but it is worth noting that I get multiple daily spam calls on Google Fi service also.

It's the modern version of the Problem of Evil.

Are the carriers willing to stop robocalls and spam texts, but not able? The very idea is absurd, as it's their network. As others have pointed out it can't be that hard to identify and interdict abusive behavior on such a massive scale.

Are they able, but not willing? Then they're complicit, and should face wire fraud charges.

Are they both able and willing? Then why don't they?

Could she not leave a message? I have the same setup as someone here mentioning Tasker. I route all calls to voice mail, where I can decide if I need to call back. If they are not willing to leave a voice mail with a return number and reason, the call was not that important.

I have never in my life received or listened to a voice message. To me that's something from 90s movies. Weird how different things can be.

VM is becoming more of a necessity these days due to robocalls. I have any numbers that aren’t on my contacts go straight to VM, and that’s how I get in touch with non-contacts that I really want calling me.

In my experience, the signal:noise of unknown calls is about 1:20. VMs, on the other hand, are much higher — about 1:2.

I don't listen to mine—I read them. Built-in feature on my phone, these days. iPhone, but I'd be surprised if Android doesn't have it, too. Quick glance is enough to tell if any of the recent ones were anything other than junk.

For a lot of people, not being reachable by voice is not really an option in the case of emergencies, medical offices, business, etc. I do more texting than leaving voice messages but, for example, my dad essentially will not text or email.

I guess it's more that no one here ever leaves a message. A medical office for instance would never call to give out that info over phone, instead I would get an email or sms telling me to log in securely to their portal to see test results etc there.

It's not so much test results. But, for example, just this morning my dentist's office told me that a slot for an appointment I had been waiting for opened up this afternoon. More has switched to texts and portals but there's still a fair bit of calling in my experience in the US.

ignore all unknown numbers

iOS transcribe feature makes it easy to read the voicemail and then in the 1/20 case where it’s legit, i act accordingly

I do the same thing. But I also have a habit of letting the voicemails sit around for days if they're not from someone I know. I'm not going to stop what I'm doing and listen to the voicemail, because, 19 times out of 20, it's just another robocall.

The need was synchronous -- I either got authorized right away, or we moved on to plan B. And yeah, as others have said, even listening to VMs this days is outlier behavior :/

Wow, no one from any age group ever listens to voice messages anymore either, at least down here in my country

I also don't listen to voice messages, in my 30s, in the US. My phone doesn't even tell me when I get them and I have no plans to change that (except when dealing with financial or legal bullshit).

My wife had to drive all the way back home from the phone store recently because I wouldn't pick up my phone for this exact reason.

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