Voice - Spam Blocker Operation

I am trying to figure out why the Spam Blocker on Voice lets so many calls through to ring. So, ...

How does Xfinity Voice decide which spam risk category a call is placed: none, low, medium or high? Help pages were not helpful.
Can we agree that since bad actors now spoof Caller Id locally and with rotation that the Blacklist feature has been rendered inoperative for spam/scam calls?
Has a Whitelist feature been considered? For example, if a call is on my whitelist then pass it through (ring) otherwise continue with the blocker logic with the addition of adding a rule to cover none spam risk with the same options as low, medium and high risk.
How do we get Xfinity to consider this change request?

In summary, I find the Xfinity supplied blocking features, for the most part, useless since I cannot understand them in significant detail and Xfinity has been lacking in a response to the evolution of spoofing with local rotating numbers.

Thanks

Chuck

Responses

XfinityNatalie

Official Employee

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166 Messages

15 days ago

Hi there, cjczajka! Thank you for reaching out to our XFINITY Community Forum. I know how frustrating it can be when you are working to prevent spam calls by setting your spam blocker on. However, it does not prevent the unique scam calls that have a workaround. We usually recommend reporting these calls to the FCC.gov website as well. You can also learn more about our Spam Blocker feature here at the XFINITY Spam Blocker overview.
For additional concerns, please send our team a direct message with your full name, the name listed on the account (if different), and the service address associated with your account. I'd be more than happy to look into this for you.
To send a Direct Message, please click on the “Direct Message” icon in the top-right corner of the screen, next to the bell icon click the "New message" (pencil and paper) icon then type or select "Xfinity Support". Type your message in the text area near the bottom of the window and press Enter to send your message and initiate a live session.

cjczajka

New Poster

•

4 Messages

Looking at the overview you referenced, I see that Xfinity itself does not know how spam risk is determined. It would be helpful if it found out and published it or provided a link to your 3rd party vendor that explains how they perform the ranking. Since spammers are using rotating, local, spoofed caller-id numbers, reporting them to the FCC is about as useful as adding them to Xfinity Voice Blacklist feature. Please remember that I am your customer and paying you for a service. Further, this problem has been an issue for decades now. Waiting for the government to solve the problem is ill-advised since it takes forever and usually makes the problem worse.

So, if Xfinity takes the stance of ignoring the pleas of its customers, for whatever reason, is to make the problem unsolvable; at least in my lifetime. I ask Xfinity to consider some of the following suggestions that will give your customers somewhat better control over this problem:

Provide more granularity of the spam rating of inbound calls. There is a fatal flaw in that a call that does not fall into a spam category is presumed to be non-spam and thereby exempt from the four spam filtering options. Break these calls into two new categories: non-spam non-verified and non-spam verified, and allow me to set the four spam filtering options. This way I could run these calls through Audio CAPTCHA or voicemail non-verified calls.
Document how the spam categorization process works so I can use it fully and perhaps suggest improvements.
Provide (or replace the Blacklist feature) with a Whitelist feature. Blacklist has become mostly useless except for annoying neighbors and relatives.

Thank you for your consideration.

Chuck

8 days ago

XfinityJon

Official Employee

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329 Messages

Good afternoon cjczajka. Thank you for taking the time to reach out through our Xfinity Community Forum. I did locate some additional information regarding spam blockers and spam blocker settings.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/change-spam-blocker-settings

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/spam-blocker-overview

Please let me know if either of these help any.

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6 days ago

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Voice - Spam Blocker Operation

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