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MINNEAPOLIS, M.N. (WCCO) – Are you fed up with automated calls on your mobile phone? Minnesotans receive an average of eight each day. Now, apps promise to spot fraudsters before recovering them. But do they work?
WCCO found a Twin Cities man who was doing his best to defend himself against frustrating phone calls. Jeremy Deysach directs his live stream on Twitch from a small office suite in Burnsville, where he must be one of the few to recall robotic callers for fun.
"I take a completely different approach in my way of managing them," Deysach said.
He receives about 15 calls like this one a day. Sometimes stalling the rogue for hours.
"If I'm on the phone with them, they will not swindle an elderly person who is hoping for hope," he said.
It's no secret that calls made by a machine are out of control. The number of automated calls in Minnesota doubled last year. More than half a million were converted to the 612 area code in one month.
On my Facebook page, viewers shared their frustrations: Nicholas receives dozens of automated calls a day, Kelly said that he had already blocked over 3,000 numbers.
Open the app store of your phone and you will find a long list of programs promising to end the craziness. We have downloaded some free options that generally work the same way.
Get an automated call, report it to the app, so that the same number calls another user, it is then considered spam.
Deysach tried Robokiller.
"It will essentially answer the phone," he said. "While the robot call is talking to Robokiller, this one responds to him, mumbling basically saying," Wait, wait, "he explained.
"Essentially, you have two computers trying to escalate," said Deysach.
But for Deysach, it did not last. The automated calls were back the same day.
Major cell carriers now offer their own lines of protection.
"All the feedback we receive is very positive," said Oscar Murillo, one of Verizon's executives.
Verizon has installed his free call filter on my phone. But even in our demo, the application was not 100% foolproof.
"It's obvious that the call comes from Brazil, which should indicate that it's a spam call," Murillo said.
At the Institute of Technology Leadership at the University of Minnesota, Mike Johnson does not think the technology is yet available for applications to be truly effective.
"In the meantime, it just keeps going," said Johnson.
"For this application to work, you need to know that it's a bad number," he said. "Someone should have pointed it out, it had to be used."
Digital spoofing takes a few seconds. Which means it's only a matter of time for the machine.
"If I'm a hustler and my number stops working, I just go from 1,2,3,4 to 1,2,3,5 and I keep calling," Johnson said.
Johnson believes that old advice – if you do not know the number, do not answer – still rings true.
Robocall blockers are at the front and the results vary. Robokiller says that he makes no guarantee.
The durable solution may lie in so-called stirring technology. It is supposed to stop the spoofed numbers by authenticating that there is a real phone line at the other end. Leading cellular operators are expected to start using this technology in the coming months.
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