Rather, intelligent blocking would be the way to go. Services such as RoboKiller offer a slew of methods of filtering calls to make sure that only the relevant ones get through.
For phones like the Pure that aim to minimize distractions, I think that spam filtering is a must. Calls and messages break my focus and more than half of all calls I receive are spam. Using RoboKiller, I now receive perhaps 1-2 messages (since the calls were silenced) every week from spammers: a significant reduction. My health (nothing like a series of spam calls to get my blood pressure and heart rate elevated) and focus have been much improved for it.
Were I to switch to the Pure or similar products, I would likely be hounded by spammers once again. I am sure I am not the only one. Therefore, I would like to suggest a built-in spam filtering service such as RoboKiller or alternatives into MuditaOS with a few controls (to keep it simple and in-line with Mudita’s ethos): pause (preset & custom intervals), resume, and enable. This ensures that the user has control (don’t want to block the users from blocking the service in case the service is too picky and starts blocking needed calls such as mine did this week) but does not overwhelm the users with options that require tweaking and investment of time & energy.
Any form of functional spam filters would be great. I can’t count how many times my Amazon prime account got cancelled this week. If I ever had one I’m sure I would be bothered.
I like the idea of contacts only as one level, but it does rule out emergency contacts such as with genuine retailers/services/hotels/government agencies etc who might be returning calls based off email or in-person contact. I don’t want to have to add them to my address book.
Do telecom providers have national level blacklists? When I get spam calls on my android it asks me if I want to block it, but I assume that is a crowd-sourced feature based on spam reports from other local android users.
I love that algorithm as well!
From the email service discussion thread, I gather that you watched/read about Apple’s WWDC '21 yesterday. Based on Apple’s new Focus feature presented yesterday, I think it would be great to have a version of the Focus feature with Pure concerning call filtering to make sure that situations like mine or @iota’s would happen (i.e., overly-enthusiastic filter blocking calls from people we need to hear from but aren’t in the contacts list). On my end, my call blocker recently blocked some technicians from multiple companies who needed to contact me for directions to come complete orders. Not a good look.
So, perhaps different Focuses (or “modes” or something to differentiate it from Apple’s IP) could help:
Off — no filtering
Work — superficial filtering, perhaps drawing on [YetAnotherCallBlocker]https://fossdroid.com/a/yet-another-call-blocker.html) for inspiration (open source Android call blocker [GitHub page is in the linked page] that crowdsources a phone number blacklist) and anonymous callers, but not numbers that are unknown to my contacts and not in the aforementioned blacklist (as they may be new clients, colleagues, etc.)
Home — everything @l1ghthouse mentioned put together for minimal disturbance
Use online websites to check phones you are receiving on. Personally, I am checking mobile numbers via phone lookup and only then decide – to answer or not.
Besides, sometimes real people are calling you without any kind of ethics. So be aware.