• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Automatically naming callers?

S

Sunny Rio

Android Enthusiast
I have Android 9, and have never used more than 7 before. Is there some mechanism whereby it gets the name of a caller? (I'm in the UK) A company I phoned, it labelled them precisely (including the department) in the history, instead of just the number I'd typed in.

I'm interested in how this works - does it look up a database, or is there something in the calling data?

And is it only companies - will it produce the name of a person calling from their mobile?
 
I'm in the US, and I guess this would be affected by privacy laws in the local jurisdiction, but I see people names and businesses, but only sporatically. I'm guessing it is some crowdsourced database or otherwise aggregated.
 
I would imagine it uses a database that someone has compiled, though I'd have guessed Google were behind it.

It does not produce the names of private individuals, or at any rate I have never seen a name of an individual who wasn't already in my contacts book (and I'm also in the UK). Under the GDPR I'm pretty certain it would be illegal to use people's private information this way without their explicit consent (I've been to enough data protection training that I am genuinely quite certain of this), though maybe those who consent to have their phone numbers listed in the telephone directory could be included? As that's only a minority of people it's quite possible that I've never been called by anyone unknown to me who is also in the directory ;).
 
We've had it in China for a few years now. Companies, hotels, airlines, banks, academic institutions, local government departments, etc. They call it "Yellow Pages" here, and iPhones have it as well. I think Tencent is the provider.
 
Hadron said:
I would imagine it uses a database that someone has compiled, though I'd have guessed Google were behind it.

It does not produce the names of private individuals, or at any rate I have never seen a name of an individual who wasn't already in my contacts book (and I'm also in the UK). Under the GDPR I'm pretty certain it would be illegal to use people's private information this way without their explicit consent (I've been to enough data protection training that I am genuinely quite certain of this), though maybe those who consent to have their phone numbers listed in the telephone directory could be included? As that's only a minority of people it's quite possible that I've never been called by anyone unknown to me who is also in the directory ;).
Click to expand...

When I were a lad (I'm now 46) "ex-directory" was rare. Almost everyone was in the phone book. Has this proportion changed? Is it different for mobiles? (Opt in instead of opt out possibly?)

Isn't GDPR some EU nonsense we've now done away with?

Anyway I do like it telling me what company is phoning me, that way I can ignore anything that doesn't have a name, knowing there's a 99% chance it's a scammer.

I got very very angry with my mortgage company who had "been trying to contact me for 2 months". It seems they'd called me from a private number and left messages, but I ignore private numbers. I asked them why they were doing that and the guy I spoke to agreed with me and said he'd look into it. They now call me anyway from a proper number.
 
Sunny Rio said:
When I were a lad (I'm now 46) "ex-directory" was rare. Almost everyone was in the phone book. Has this proportion changed? Is it different for mobiles? (Opt in instead of opt out possibly?)
Click to expand...
It was decades ago that the majority were in the phone book. I think it was actually the 90s when ex-directory became the majority. The growth of cold-calling was probably responsible.

Mobiles are different anyway because they are all different companies, whereas unless you lived in Hull landline phones were all BT (or even GPO) when I was a lad, and it was originally them who produced the phone book. I vaguely remember being asked about optining in to phone listing when I got my first mobile, but as that was almost 30 years ago I don't remember clearly, and I've still got the same number now the question hasn't come up since.
Isn't GDPR some EU nonsense we've now done away with?
Click to expand...
GDPR is still the law here. At some point the Govt may change it, though if it's still the same shower in office when that happens you can be sure that they'll change it in a way that gives plebs like us less protection and makes it easier for the spivs to abuse our data. So be careful what you wish for.
Anyway I do like it telling me what company is phoning me, that way I can ignore anything that doesn't have a name, knowing there's a 99% chance it's a scammer.

I got very very angry with my mortgage company who had "been trying to contact me for 2 months". It seems they'd called me from a private number and left messages, but I ignore private numbers. I asked them why they were doing that and the guy I spoke to agreed with me and said he'd look into it. They now call me anyway from a proper number.
Click to expand...
I answer calls from withheld numbers because they include most schools and hospitals: my wife gets work calls from schools, and if a hospital phones me I probably want to answer it.

Most junk callers just use fake numbers these days anyway, so withheld numbers are actually more likely to be real than unrecognised landlines are.
 
Hadron said:
GDPR is still the law here. At some point the Govt may change it, though if it's still the same shower in office when that happens you can be sure that they'll change it in a way that gives plebs like us less protection and makes it easier for the spivs to abuse our data. So be careful what you wish for.
Click to expand...
All I've seen from this EU crap is annoying cookie notices worse than the cookies and the Boinc projects not letting the info out about what I've computed unless I go tick a silly little box. "Peter has done 15 million teraflops of computing on project F" is hardly personal information!

You know what the GDPR should do? Stop the government requiring us to fill in a census. Oops, 10% of Scots didn't bother.

Hadron said:
I answer calls from withheld numbers because they include most schools and hospitals: my wife gets work calls from schools, and if a hospital phones me I probably want to answer it.
Click to expand...
I'm too stubborn for that, I'd just insist they learn how to use a telephone correctly. There's no reason whatsoever for a hospital to withhold a number, they're going to tell you who they are when you answer! Would you accept someone knocking on your door in a balaclava so you didn't know who he was?

I used to work in a school, and we did not withhold the number. We wanted the parents to know we were calling. And also so they could phone back if they missed the call. Withholding the number would have been utterly stupid.

Hadron said:
Most junk callers just use fake numbers these days anyway, so withheld numbers are actually more likely to be real than unrecognised landlines are.
Click to expand...
Any unknown number I just don't answer it, I look it up first then block it or call back. Or most of the time I don't even bother, they can leave a message. But if that message is from a withheld number, I delete it without listening.
 
Last edited:
You may want to try out Youmail, a spam caller app that also does automatic voice mail.... It tells you who's calling 90% of the time and has many blocking options.
I use it daily
 
Is that for the USA only? I'm in the UK and when I entered my UK mobile number to sign up, it said "invalid number" and I could go no further. It wouldn't even let me enter a +44 to designate a UK number. I'm not really impressed so far....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom