KillRoboCallers

This project is simply a document describing how I managed to eliminate robocallers. I welcome pull requests for better or more complete descriptions.

How I killed Robocallers with AWS, Ooma, and Google Voice

Situation: I've had the same home phone number for over ten years, and have been getting blasted by robocallers. I use NoMoRobo, and still 3-5 get through daily.

I also have an iPhone with a phone number I've had for a few years that was being hit a few times a week.

I also have an old Google Voice number I use on rare occasions that gets hit with a dozen robocalls every week.

Things I tried

I tried these things before landing on the solution described before:

• NoMoRobo (paid): Still lets a lot of robocallers through
• "Silence Unknown Callers" in iOS 13+: No robocallers, but legitimate callers were also being blocked and sent to voicemail
• "Do Not Disturb" in Google Voice: I could still get texts, but all callers to Google Voice went to voicemail

The solution

Prerequisites:

• The ability to create a new and unknown phone number for your phone
• The ability to forward all calls to the legacy phone number to a new place
• Basic familiarity with AWS

Big picture

1. Callers call your legacy phone number
2. The call is forwarded directly to an AWS Connect phone number
3. AWS Connect requests the caller press a key to proceed
4. The caller presses a key and the call is forwarded to you new and unknown phone number
5. Your phone rings

Configuration

AWS

Log in to AWS and create an AWS Connect account. You can skip most of the wizard, as we'll be manually configuring things.

Go into Routing -> Contact Flows and create a new, blank, contact flow.

Create a simple flow with Get Customer Input and Transfer to Phone Number.

The customer input should announce Press 2 to continue with a single option to press 2, and the Transfer to Phone Number should disable Contact Flow After Disconnect.

Note you can customize this further to provide more advanced phone tree options, or a directory of your family's cell phone numbers, optionally setting the caller ID to the endpoint phone number to bypass "Silence Unknown Callers" in iOS 13+.

Next, go to Routing -> Phone Numbers and claim a new phone number. Under Contact Flow / IVR select the Contact Flow you created above.

Note this appears to be free under AWS's free usage tier today, but that may change in the future.

Ooma

Note: This section can apply to different phone providers, but will obviously need adjusting.

1. Log in to Ooma Telo
2. Go to Preferences -> Phone Numbers and select Add Phone Number
3. Complete the form to add your new additional phone number
4. Go to the Call Forwarding page
5. Under your main number: Un-check Ring Telo and Ring Mobile App if they are checked and check the Ring ... option, selecting the great, and inputting your AWS Connect endpoint phone number from the AWS section
6. Under your new, unknown number: Check Ring Telo and whatever other options you want

Next Steps

You're set - now anybody calling your legacy phone number will be routed to AWS to confirm they are capable of pressing a number before being allowed to ring your home phone number.

I then integrated my legacy Google Voice phone number by setting it up to forward to my legacy home phone number, so it gets the same workflow. I set Google Voice to allow it to answer immediately.

I then took it a step further and set up more menus to allow people to press 2 to ring our home phone or 3 to ring our cell phones, at which point they can press 1 for me, 2 for my wife, etc. For calling me, I set the caller ID to the AWS Connect endpoint phone number, added that to my contacts and re-enabled Silence Unknown Callers.

At some point in the future, I'd like to integrate a lambda function to whitelist known good callers (my wife or mother, for instance) so they ring directly through without the need to press numbers to continue.