Match punctuation in Caller ID Name for Call Blocking

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Robek
Posts:230
Joined:Thu Sep 26, 2019 6:56 pm
Match punctuation in Caller ID Name for Call Blocking

Post by Robek » Tue Jun 29, 2021 6:47 pm

Ooma describes how to preemptively block calls with generic "... State" names, but that relies on at least one space before the state's name. I recently started getting "City,State" calls without the expected space. The block list editor rejects punctuation in the "Text" field, making it impossible to block such calls based solely on the state's name.

Ooma also describes how to block calls that start with (or contain) "City...", but there are far too many cities (or other localities) to preemptively block, (not to mention unforeseeable abbreviations like "BEVERLY HLS" or "BOCARATON"). I have started blocking cities one by one as they come in, but they still keep coming in.

I have a few suggestions to improve support for blocking calls like these:
  • The block list editor should accept punctuation, (or at the very least, Ooma could substitute punctuation for spaces in the Caller ID names, before comparing them).
  • Ooma could also "normalize" spaces in the block list entries and in the Caller ID names, before comparing them, stripping any leading/trailing spaces, and replacing sequences of whitespace with a single space.
  • However, for "Starts with", "Ends with", or "Contains" entries, it should not strip a space just after the leading wildcard, or just before the trailing wildcard; then users could create these entries themselves.
  • Ooma could add limited support for "lightweight" (less computationally expensive) regular expressions, (with a checkbox to explicitly enable/disable them). For example, one entry with character classes (Ends with "[, ][A-Z][A-Z]") could block generic "...State" names, (plus districts, territories, provinces, etc.).

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