Thank you OOMA for improving blacklisting--keep it coming

[oshunluvr]

I just had a thought: How about if Ooma compiles from our blocking lists and allows you to opt-in to blocking a list of numbers that show up say, on more than 10 lists?

We could wipe out robo-calling in a year!

[holmes4]

I thought that's how the community list worked, more or less.

[MLXXXp]

...a limit of 256 numbers? Really? I'll pay the cost of a 2TB hard drive so I can list about a billion numbers, OK? Seriously, it's time to free up some server space for larger lists.

I suspect it's a problem with server blacklist processing power, not space, based on the last paragraph of this post:
http://www.ooma.com/forums/viewtopic.ph ... 10#p108347

I could be wrong though, since the community blacklist is probably pretty big. Then again, maybe not a great number of people enable the community blacklist, so processing it doesn't use a lot of processing power, overall.

[lbmofo]

...a limit of 256 numbers? Really? I'll pay the cost of a 2TB hard drive so I can list about a billion numbers, OK? Seriously, it's time to free up some server space for larger lists.

256 is really more than what's needed with wildcard blacklist. Here are some examples of other offerings:

Comcast Phone 12

AT&T Uverse Phone 20

Verizon FiOS Phone 6 or 12

This guy is talking about how Phonepower is offering 50 vs NetTalk's 10

[lbmofo]

After looking at calls that I want to receive, I was able to blacklist most area codes and send them to voicemail. I used 0*, 1*, 3*, 4*, 6*, 8*, 9* to send calls from those area codes to voicemail. It seems that most spam calls do not leave a voicemail, so it works pretty good. Area codes beginning with 2, 5 and 7 are allowed through.

EDIT: I refined this a bit further to block area codes that I do not receive calls from that begin with 2, 5 or 7. I receive calls from the 25* area code, but not from 20*, 21*, 22* ... So I blocked all of the area codes beginning with twenty something except for 25. I used the same logic for the area codes beginning with 5 and 7.

Isn't wildcard blacklist great? Here is what I did: /viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14774&start=20#p108473

[mike_b]

Isn't wildcard blacklist great?

Yes, wildcard blacklisting really is great! I have 32 wildcard blacklist entries which block almost all area codes except area codes from which I want to receive a call.

[oshunluvr]

...a limit of 256 numbers? Really? I'll pay the cost of a 2TB hard drive so I can list about a billion numbers, OK? Seriously, it's time to free up some server space for larger lists.

256 is really more than what's needed with wildcard blacklist. Here are some examples of other offerings:

Comcast Phone 12

AT&T Uverse Phone 20

Verizon FiOS Phone 6 or 12

This guy is talking about how Phonepower is offering 50 vs NetTalk's 10

Uh no, you're wrong - 256 is not enough numbers, but thanks for deciding for me what I need. Please don't do me any more favors by telling me what's good for me.

Even with wild cards, my personal blacklist has been full for a year. If you use too many wildcards, you run the risk of blocking someone you might actually want to hear from. I am back to getting several bulls**t calls a week, thus the blacklist feature is rapidly becoming irrelevant. It's too bad because, second only to pure cost, this was the best feature of having Ooma. Too bad our government values and protects the rights of businesses to randomly dial numbers more than the rights of consumers who are paying for phone service to actually control who gets to call them - but that's a different topic for a different forum!

Frankly, I haven't seen any feedback from Ooma on what the community blacklists are accomplishing. I doubt that personal blacklists cost that much in server power, but personally - I'd pay more for a vastly expanded blacklist feature. I love to see an exponential increase in size along with the ability to block by text ID as well as number.

[lbmofo]

Uh no, you're wrong - 256 is not enough numbers, but thanks for deciding for me what I need. Please don't do me any more favors by telling me what's good for me.
Even with wild cards, my personal blacklist has been full for a year. If you use too many wildcards, you run the risk of blocking someone you might actually want to hear from. I am back to getting several bulls**t calls a week, thus the blacklist feature is rapidly becoming irrelevant.

You are entitled to your opinion. However, it remains a fact that Ooma's 256 is the most generous of all service providers out there (it isn't even close). On top of that, Ooma also provides powerful wildcard blacklisting. Your life would be much easier if you choose to leverage Ooma's powerful wildcard blacklisting feature to reduce your blacklist entries. You only have yourself to blame for not taking advantage of a powerful tool such as the wildcard blacklist.

For example, if you can determine, by looking at your existing blacklist, from what area codes you get nothing but spam calls, why not block those area codes entirely (and delete the explicit entries for those area codes)? If you are afraid you may get some legit calls from these area codes, make your treatment "send to VM." It is better to deal with annoying, empty VMs than have your phone ring all day for no reason. If a call is really legit, they'll leave a message.

Again, here is what I did to reduce my blacklist entries: /viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14774&start=20#p108473 viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14774&start=30#p109122 You can get your blacklist entries into Excel to better manage them: viewtopic.php?t=14908#p108534

...a limit of 256 numbers? Really? I'll pay the cost of a 2TB hard drive so I can list about a billion numbers, OK? Seriously, it's time to free up some server space for larger lists.

I doubt that personal blacklists cost that much in server power, but personally - I'd pay more for a vastly expanded blacklist feature. I love to see an exponential increase in size along with the ability to block by text ID as well as number.

Storage is not the issue. Call processing speed is. Just having ~400,000 Premier customers with 256 blacklist entries would mean Ooma needs to deal with over 100 Million records.

A regular expression engine is more computationally expensive and may "clog the pipe". When the server is trying to match the number against one or more blacklist entries, this matching process needs to be as fast as possible, especially when there's many other calls waiting to be processed.

There are other blacklist related requests outstanding: /viewtopic.php?t=15556

I think "Blacklist entry level treatment option" would address your request:

Along with most of the other suggestions in this thread, I'd like to see Multiple Personal Blacklists.

I'd like to be able to send some people to voicemail, while others are totally blocked. For example, my chatty cousin can get four rings and voicemail, but the telemarketers get the disconnected message. I can think of other uses too. There's four options in the Blacklist, why not four Blacklists?

A good alternate might be selective "We're not home" service to particular numbers.

[holmes4]

"Most generous"? Hardly. The last provider I had, VOIPo, had no limit on blacklist entries and had full wildcarding instead of the largely useless, partial implementation at Ooma.

[lbmofo]

"Most generous"? Hardly. The last provider I had, VOIPo, had no limit on blacklist entries and had full wildcarding instead of the largely useless, partial implementation at Ooma.

You had to have left them for some reason before coming over to Ooma right?

256 is really more than what's needed with wildcard blacklist. Here are some examples of other offerings:

Comcast Phone 12

AT&T Uverse Phone 20

Verizon FiOS Phone 6 or 12

This guy is talking about how Phonepower is offering 50 vs NetTalk's 10

A responsible company like Ooma has to find a balance between powerful features and service quality (I feel very generous because my quote above makes it look like I am saying NetTalk is responsible ). This means blacklist & wildcard blacklisting feature implementation (or any other feature) has to meet a certain performance criteria. Maybe when there is no subscriber base to speak of, limitless or performance hindering feature can be do-able but things are bound to hit the fan sooner or later.

I know you are "almost completely happy with Ooma" other than the "inadequate blacklist wildcarding implementation."
Not sure if Ooma can do full 10-digit pattern wildcard (performance) or callerid name wildcard (performance, even VOIPo didn't dare to do this), but with the other blacklist related enhancement requests implemented, pretty much all should be happy: /viewtopic.php?t=15556

I still contend that before wildcard blacklisting, 256 wasn't enough but now, it is more than enough (but you have to be willing to use the wildcard blacklist feature).