Robokiller: Spam Call Blocker

I use my cellphone to completely run my day to day business operations. I’m always on the go, and my work truck is my mobile command center. I have an office, but I’m only there a very small portion of the day. I make my living out in the field. That being said, I have been getting 3-5 of these spammy calls every day. Every. Single. Day. Time is money and these jerks are wasting both my valuable time, and money I could be earning. I’m not buying what they’re selling, and I have work to do. I answer every call because clients and potential clients call my phone when they need help. I need to be available to help them. It’s not only extremely helpful that this app filters out the garbage calls so I don’t have to deal with them (huge time saver), but the app also records the call and returns the favor to these idiots and wastes plenty of their time as well. It’s actually very entertaining to listen to the recordings later and realize that instead of wasting my time, they had their time wasted artfully. The ONLY way that they will stop is when they realize it is a complete waste of their time. You can ask them every day to remove your number from their list, and they never will. Instead you get auto dialed every day or several times a day and it gets very annoying. Simply put, this app is worth every penny and I highly recommend it to anyone who has been bothered with these types of calls.

A couple weeks ago I went online to look at different Health insurance plans. My information pre-filled into the information boxes with my phone number. I was under the impression I was on my way to viewing comparisons. Second after this information what was entered, I started receiving solicitation calls from The health Registration Center. These people will drive you nuts. They called me every day, 20 times per today, sometimes minutes apart and sometimes at the same time. The first day I answered 5 or 6 times and asked them not to call me anymore. Each person I talk to said they would update their records. The calls never stopped. They would start just before 8 o’clock in the morning and go on until 8 o’clock at night. I just kept my ringer off and thought I was going to have to change my phone number. Since downloading this App I have been able to turn my ringer back on. Such a relief! My phone doesn’t even ring anymore when they call. No more voicemails from the robot named Emily or Angie. I get a notification on my screen to open and hear them talking to my answer bot (which has been quite entertaining) and get the option to continue blocking that number. This is the best App ever!

The app works pretty well. I purchased RoboKiller after I was constantly getting two calls a day from a fake alarm company. The app instantly managed to block those calls despite the phone numbers always changing. Setting up the app was pretty easy. Although, when reporting spam calls from the recent call list on my iPhone XS I’m not able to scroll through the list of option descriptions to report to RoboKiller the type of spam call (other than the first 4 or 5 choices). What’s troubling me is the number of spam calls I’m receiving has drastically risen since I’ve installed the application. About a week after installing RoboKiller the number of spam calls I received on average went up to 4 a day and they’re more complex such as IRS spoofing calls, fake collection calls, health insurance calls, and more. I feel like signing up for this service has either added my number to a list that attracts more spam calls, or something the application does when handling these calls has spread my number to more fake calling systems. Either way, it’s now made it impossible for me to not pay for the RoboKiller service since if I stopped paying for it I’d be getting spam calls four or more times a day. The application is also not catching all of these calls with usually one of the four making it through daily. If I get any more fake calls I’ll be back to the two a day I was at before installing RoboKiller.

My phone got to the point where I got 15-20 calls per day of spam, scam and spoofing. I don’t need to go into detail of what they were because by now we all know them. THIS APP WORKS!!! In two weeks I’ve gotten only 3 calls that have come through. One of them was marked “unknown” and there’s nothing any app can do about that. It says it blocks a few a day but I’m sure it’s much more since many spams just hang up and don't interact with the bot. There are however two issues. The first is the default bot message. It says you are using robocall and invites the caller to leave a message if they choose. It also says the message may not be heard. First, the caller ca talk and be recorded while the bot is talking. That makes no sense. I wish it could be a customized voicemail so in those rare occasions were a legit call gets through someone can leave a real message and doesn’t need to know they’re talking to an app. This would be huge especially for someone applying to jobs if they were to miss a call from a hiring company. Also, I missed two calls from capital one and Amex. Since much of this is crowdsourced I’m wondering if people are reporting legitimate phone numbers as spam because those numbers are calling them for legitimately unpaid bills. It’s wrong for people to report numbers as spam because they want to avoid valid calls.

App worked well at first and was amusing. However, a fundamental flaw in the app is despite how fun it is to punish scam spam callers with the recorded messages, the fact RoboKiller technically ‘answers’ the calls to play the funny recordings in fact provides scammer robocaller software autodialer systems an indicator your number is 1) valid and 2) gets answered. This in turn makes your number get shared by these scammers and their call generation algorithms. I paid full year $29 but sadly had to cancel it. The only callers this works on are actual human dialers. I’ve reported a clear robo caller fake debt collector scammer number to RoboKiller for quite awhile and it never blocks. It gets answered by RoboKiller and I hear the robocaller message going on and on at the same time RoboKillers funny voicemail message plays. All that is doing is telling the scammer my phone number is worth calling. Just surprised RoboKiller doesn’t block it even though I’ve reported and flagged it and several other numbers for weeks. I’m going back to just using my iPhone blocking tool. I never answer calls I don’t know anyhow. RoboKiller was fun though! It just shoots itself in the foot answering the calls. Actually encourages call activity and you can read in Popular Mechanics, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal et al regarding the how robocaller software keeps calling and sharing phone numbers that get answered.