Pepper

@christian_vanderbeck1 Hi Christian, great questions! Let's take them one at a time. Re: Google Voice Screening 1. The problem we've noticed with Google Voice screening is that robocalls sometimes still get through since it's based on audio. It might be a good enough solution for most, but we're trying to get all of them. 2. Also, this assumes that most of the people that have your number have your Google Voice number. We're solving for the problem of your cellular phone number getting robocalls, which almost everyone has a cellular phone number and almost everyone (at least in the US) gets robocalls. Re: Call Logs 1. We're kind of like the reCAPTCHA for call screening. If it's an automated call, it won't get through at the moment (although we hope to make this more sophisticated to handle the few robocalls you actually do want to get). If they're a human, regardless of whether they're in your contacts or not, they will get through, and we mark that number as "safe" for you, so they may call you again without touching our filter (we hope to make this more sophisticated as well, but this is where we are at). 2. We only see your incoming calls, and have no control of your outbound calls whatsoever. 3. In short, we don't see your full call logs, only certain incoming calls that come through us. Re: good spam filter You're absolutely right! We definitely don't want to have any calls that were supposed to get through not get through. Your contact list is the first thing we check to automatically bypass our filter, but the verification process is extremely simple. Some other apps use really complicated systems but ours is straightforward for now. We've yet to see calls get blocked that weren't supposed to get blocked with the exception of setup or carrier issues (Sprint is super problematic which is why we don't support them right now). There's a lot we want to do to make this more robust going forward - taking one thing at a time right now. Thanks for all the great questions, I hope this answered them!

@ani_ravi Thanks for the thoughtful response! I'll give it a shot. $6 seems like a lot, but i'm already paying verizon $3 for something that should be free.

@christian_vanderbeck1 We're with you there! The carriers should be the real one fixing this problem - they own it all. It's a sad state of affairs that products like ours have to exist. There are some moves being made to solve this by the carriers and government, at least in the US. We'll have to see how it goes. 🕵️

@thisisnoalias We'd really like to bring the costs down over time. Jolly Roger is hilarious though!

@thisisnoalias But Jolly Roger doesn't do anything to block calls... Using the service requires that you answer all of the spam calls you receive every day. If you own a business, this might be a fun service to use. But to the average consumer, Jolly Roger sounds like a horrible way to deal with constant spam callers.

@magnuson Not true. Not sure where you got your info, but it’s dead wrong. It blocks all calls. You get an email every time you get a new caller asking if it’s legit. If you say it is, then that caller has to press 1 to get through. If you say no, then every call from that number is sent to a random bot. I use it both on my cell and landline.

@evo_terra2 Thanks for this Evo!

@lisahesterman68 Same

@mat_sherman With the particular way that we block robocalls, Apple probably wouldn't want to recreate or even try to compete with us in the first place. There are two main reasons for this: 1. There are costs associated with blocking robocalls, and it simply doesn't benefit Apple enough to pay for this. 2. It would just be too much work without enough benefit for Apple. Outright blocking robocalls before they even get to buzz a user's phone and perfecting that process is tricky because of funky international rules, edge cases, and multiple other variables like phone carrier varieties. That's why, for now, we're starting relatively narrow and only serving customers in the U.S. who use AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The most efficient way to tackle this problem would be to do it at the phone carrier level, but phone carriers haven't done a very good job at blocking robocalls so far.

@adam_metcalf1 Thanks for this super helpful feedback Adam! Although for now, Pepper only filter out automated spam calls, we're working to improve Pepper to catch the cases you described as well. We'll keep you posted!