Why there's no crowdsourced phone number blocklist?

Question

Lately I've been receiving a lot of spam phone calls. Being an engineer I started thinking about how to solve the problem and avoid wasting time and/or being scammed.I thought there ought to exist a list of annoying phone numbers like those that have been created for malicious/advertising domains but I could not find any.Why is it so that nobody thought of it? Am I missing something important here?

EddieDante · Accepted Answer

I don't think a blocklist is the solution. I think the solution is to block all incoming comms by default, and require people to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The dark forest is for everybody.

mikro2nd · Answer

Too open to abuse and being gamed for nefarious purposes, both of which result in a blocklist that's effectively useless.

dossy · Answer

Any list that has enough accuracy to be useful is valuable, and isn't going to be available for free.Perhaps you've heard of https://www.nomorobo.com/ ?

troydavis · Answer

Many or most robocall caller IDs are spoofed, so a block entry has a short timespan - a few hours to a few days. That&rsquo;s why many people use apps. Check out AT&T&rsquo;s free CallProtect app or your mobile carrier&rsquo;s equivalent.

latexr · Answer

Quite the contrary, such lists are a dime a dozen. Search the web for the phone number&mdash;not for a list&mdash;and you should get several hits from different websites.

Why there's no crowdsourced phone number blocklist?

I don't think a blocklist is the solution. I think the solution is to block all incoming comms by default, and require people to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The dark forest is for everybody.

Too open to abuse and being gamed for nefarious purposes, both of which result in a blocklist that's effectively useless.

Any list that has enough accuracy to be useful is valuable, and isn't going to be available for free.
Perhaps you've heard of https://www.nomorobo.com/ ?

Many or most robocall caller IDs are spoofed, so a block entry has a short timespan - a few hours to a few days. That’s why many people use apps. Check out AT&T’s free CallProtect app or your mobile carrier’s equivalent.

Quite the contrary, such lists are a dime a dozen. Search the web for the phone number—not for a list—and you should get several hits from different websites.