Fighting Voice Spam with a Virtual Assistant Prototype
This addresses robocall spam for smartphone users, but it is incremental as it builds on existing screening concepts with a new application.
The paper tackles the problem of mass robocalls and caller ID spoofing by proposing a virtual assistant prototype that automatically screens incoming calls on smartphones, showing it preserves user experience and detects robocalls without harming legitimate callers.
Mass robocalls affect millions of people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, most current defenses against robocalls rely on phone blocklists and are ineffective against caller ID spoofing. To enable the detection of spoofed robocalls, we propose a {\em virtual assistant} application that could be integrated on smartphones to automatically vet incoming calls. Similar to a human assistant, the virtual assistant can pick up an incoming call and screen it without user interruption to determine if the call is unwanted. Via a user study, we show that our virtual assistant is able to preserve the user experience of a typical phone call. At the same time, we show that our system can detect mass robocalls without negatively impacting legitimate callers.