How fucking stupid is that? Sorry, but not having a good morning. This is like when I found out you canât set the number of rings either. Sometimes I just want to smash all my tech and go back to rocks, sticks, and leaves.
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Voicemail isnât something Android controls. Your carrier hosts the voicemail service and keeps a copy of recorded messages. Carriers usually offer automated access to control these settings (check the SIM toolkit) but theyâre in control of the services they provide to you.
Android can try, but itâs powerless if your carrier doesnât implement the right magical dial codes.
I donât know why Google doesnât offer settings for the number of rings before automatically declining a call. Other dialer apps Iâve seen have offered that. Your carrier probably offers that functionality as well.
Back in the day (ow my back) carriers let you control how calls are diverted by dialling one of those * 123*12345# type numbers.
Iâm not sure, but I think these USSD/GSM codes still work nowadays.
Theyâll probably still work. I believe they still form the basis of how the Android settings screen can control carrier settings, though the number of settings available seem to have gone down over the years.
They still work. I use them for routing my voicemail to the Jolly Rodger Telephone Company.
Itâs *61 in this instance.
The full command is
61#
you can get by typing the command *#61#
is a number between 5 and 30 in five second increments
Only your carrier has the ability to block a call. And when they do that, the caller would receive a brief message letting them know that the number is blocked.
Anything outside of that simply doesnât answer the call. If you have voicemail active, obviously the caller will be given the option to leave a message.
There is no service that will give you a true number block outside of your carrier.
I believe if you use a service like Google Voice you actually can block numbers. You can even set filters and play specific messages for different numbers (I sent âunknownâ numbers to a recording that told them they need to unblock caller ID)
In that scenario, Google Voice is your carrier, so itâs the same
Youâre talking about VOIP and other such features that simply require an internet connection. We are talking about traditional cell service which can only be controlled by the lineâs operator.
Reading the comments Iâm still amazed by how big of a problem robocalls are in the US.
Here in the EU Iâve had around 4 unsolicited calls in 20 years. Why is it a problem there and not here?
Because America is a third world country with shiny veneers
The roads, the bridges, the healthcare system, the airports, the rail system, the ports, the housing system, the education system, people of color, any minorities, the electoral system, the unions, the job market, the credit rating, and any government department that isnât military would disagree with that assessment. Only thing shiny in the US is the military and the police.
It just outright is a third would country and has the obsession with state sanctioned killing to prove it.
Itâs actually pretty big problem in Spain. I have to keep blocking spam numbers. I think itâs the same in Poland. EU is not regulating this, itâs up to individual governments and some are not handling it well.
We have a government agency the FCC thatâs fucking worthless because itâs full of people who get money from big telecom companies.
Donât you know that youâre not free? Youâd only be free if something like this went unpunished/s
Here in the UK, I get one a year. I used to get more, but then I answered a couple and was deliberately obstinate in a way that seems to have gotten me added to a blacklist.
âNo, you called me, so you have to prove that you are who you say you are. Weâll start with your company registration number, registered office, and FCA registration number.â No threats or profanity or abuse, just firm demands that they prove their identity. They always hang up, stop calling, and tell their fellow scammers not to bother with me.
I definitely donât trust the government to regulate properly, but I do trust the scammers to recognise that pestering me wastes their time and gets them nothing. While it may seem like the 2-3 minutes per year spent stubbornly refusing to give any personal information until Iâve done âdue diligence checksâ is a waste of my time, I consider it an investment, since I donât have to deal with any calls in the future.
I stopped getting robocalls after I did the oleâ trick where you stick your phone under a metal pot and then hit it with a wooden spoon
In US here. I do not remember last time I heard a robocall. A years ago? I did get one robocall message couple months back though.
@MxM111 @hedge @maynarkh I still get some robocalls, if they leave a message. Most people donât answer their phones if the calling number is not in their contacts list, so that has put a damper on the robocalls effectiveness. It also puts a damper on the effectiveness of political polling.
Whatâs the point of answering the phone nowadays?
On the landline I got them all the time when I still had one, to the point that I wouldnât answer if it wasnât local. On the cellphone I had like 5 in the last 5 years
My mum constantly gets landline calls, e.g. from some Microsoft employess out of a center in India⌠Anyway I also donât receive them but I imagine of your number lands in such a pool you might be out of luck.
Edit: I just reread and question my reading comprehension. Robocalls exist? Now I understand why these call screening features are so sought after.
Blocking a number on you phone just tells the phone to hide the incoming call not the carrier. The call rings through unanswered and then the carrier routes it to voicemail like any other call.
You would need to block the caller at the carrier. Most have some kind of block list you can enable. The alternative would be a non-standard dialer app that, rather than hiding the incoming call, would pick it up and drop it. I donât know if such software exists.
Edit: dialer not diaper.
The Pampers app does this well. First I tried Luvs and Huggies but they were trash.
I assume you meant dialer app đ . But anyway, for some Android phones you can use call screening.
But why does it work like that? You could just as easily make the phone silently pick up and silently hang up.
For prepaid phones or international roaming phones, youâd be charged for a 1 minute call and hit with a roaming charge.
Thatâs not a complete solution, though. If it relies on the phone to implement the block, then blocking wouldnât work when the phone is turned off or otherwise unavailable (not within service range, in airplane mode on an airplane, etc.).
Tons of technological debt would be my assumption.
What Iâd prefer is a standardized API where the block is done at the carrier.
Maybe thereâs some carriers that also charge for incoming calls, at least in Roaming.
Iâm pretty unclear why youâd have this arbitrary expectation
You leave a voicemail by calling someone.
You leave a voicemail by calling someone that doesnât answer.
Blocking the call at your phone is just not answering.
Use something like Googleâs Call Screening that actually answers numbers not in your contacts so they donât get the opportunity to leave a voicemail.
Voicemail? What year is it?
2002 called but it got voicemail.
I get all my VMs transcribed and faxed to me.
Exactly. Maybe I can disable it altogether�
You can reset your voicemail, which on some carriers will result in callers getting the, âThis voicemail box has not been set up yet,â outgoing message (which will not let them leave a message). From the quick search I did, it looks like itâs a pretty carrier-specific process, though, so youâll need to search â<carrier name> reset voicemailâ to get anywhere.
For me, Its the call forwarding option. My Cell provider has a special number in there for unanswered calls. If you forward that to a number that isnât real all unanswered (and blocked calls) will get a 'this number does not exist" message.
Be careful with this because real callers and people you know will get the message if you donât answer.
Both of those are service related and nothing to do with Android.
No, most blocking these days is done on the device level.
It used to be that your provider was the one who would manage individual number blocks, but now that smartphones can do that trivially easily, calling up your provider to ask to block a number will end up with the rep telling you how to block the number from your device. Granted, you still can do carrier-level blocking, but most carriers are moving away from it because the user isnât in control of those settings. Carriers are mostly hands-off with blocks, unless youâre blocking specific types of numbers (like 5-digit shortcode numbers or toll lines).
So yes, this is 100% a failure of the OS in this case.
Thatâs called declining the call.
Itâs 2023.
Just let it die.
Okay I see this sentiment everywhere and Iâm genuinely curious how people are living their lives that they have no use for voice mail.
Everytime Iâm working with a job recruiter, a doctorâs office, or a financial institution, when it comes to notifying me of a need to talk over the phone or in person, or just give me a brief update, phone/voicemail is usually the go-to. Email is usually reserved for more âimportantâ communications, and banks, especially, arenât normally going to text you anything beyond their standard notifications/ questionaires. And in the case of recruiters, specifically, if you donât have a voicemail, thereâs no message to them confirming your number is yours, and they may just assume your information is incorrect, or determine youâre too much of a hassle to get in contact with.
Itâs not like I donât have issues with it. 90% of my messages are unsolicited garbage I end up deleting anyway, but I would find it incredibly stressful if Iâm waiting to hear back from somebody important and think the reason the comms arenât going smoothly is because I donât have voicemail.
These issues are probably cultural and region-specific. The countries Iâve lived in are the opposite, voicemail just isnât a thing and if you leave an important message in voicemail youâre likely to get blamed instead.
Guessing purely from saying you lived in multiple countries with the same culture about it, are you in Europe by chance? It may just be another example of the USA still living in the stone ages for the weirdest edge cases.
Yes, Europe and Asia both.
Yep, I wish I could disable voicemail, but there are important ones that come through from time to time that I donât want to worry about missing. Not every profession has comfortably transitioned to texting/email and I canât force them to.
And blocking someone on Lemmy doesnât block them on Reddit. What did you expect?
Given voicemails start with a call, OP probably expected that voicemails would be blocked since you have to perform a blocked call in order to leave one.
How could it? Calls are blocked on the OS level, but voicemails are on the carrier level, the OS has no way of affecting that. Just disable voicemail altogether.
This is why someone should make a non-standard dialer that lets you:
Ya, Iâd honestly rather an automated system that accepts and hangs up on the caller just so I donât need that stupid âYOU HAVE A VOICEMAILâ notification that I can only remove for 2 hours at a time.
Does your carrierâs online account management allow you to block numbers yourself? That will prevent them from leaving voicemails. If they donât let you do it yourself online, youâll probably have to call, and regardless, there might be a charge per number - the last time I looked into it, it was $10 to block a number for my Verizon account.
đThanks for the tip, will definitely look into.
I just had my carrier remove my voicemail.
Iâm on iOS, and I have âsilence unknown callersâ turned on. Iâm sure a similar Android option exists.
Basically - any number that calls me that is unknown (that isnât in my contacts or I havenât called/picked up before) goes right to my nonexistent voicemail, which means theyâre immediately hung up on.
Auto-dialers are funny. Most are configured to redial on connection fail. Yesterday I received 38 calls in a 2 minute period. Never got a single notification about it
What do you do for contractors, Doctors, etc?
Iâm almost purely digital for pretty much all of notifications that come my way - even my doctor.
I donât live in the area code where my phone number is from, and havenât in so long that thereâs only a few people that would call me from that area code.
And - well spotted - The 38 call salvo from the day prior was actually a contractor trying to get ahold of me. Because it was a number from my current area code, I went ahead and called them back. The person who called me only tried to dial once, and the redials were all the computer automatically retrying.
Admittedly, it is less than optimal, but in the 5ish years Iâve gone without a voicemail, itâs the second time I havenât picked up for a desired call.
Usually when I know Iâm going to be receiving calls from new folks, Iâll first try to call their number or text them - even if the number isnât in my contacts, if Iâve interacted with it in some fashion, it will ring through. Or Iâll disable the âstraight to voicemailâ for a time.
Itâs not too onerous, and I really hate spam calls, so the effort of remembering to enable/disable it a few times a year is worth it to me.
And, for what itâs worth, I do think it has an effect. Earlier this year I let calls through and forgot to block them again, and it was 3 weeks before I got a spam call. Before taking such extreme measures, I was getting about 5 a week.
I usually text with them. The missed call entry is usually enough information anyway.
Nothing apparently
theyâre just trying to get u extended car warranty bro