DECEMBER 2018 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 33
NOMOROBO
FRYING SPAM CALLS
Like the majority of the telephone
using public, Aaron Foss of
Port Jefferson has long been beyond
fed up with the nonstop robocalls
that bombard Americans’ phones
daily — but he’s fighting back.
The software developer beat nearly
800 competitors in 2013 to win a
$25,000 grant from the Federal Trade
Commission that funded the launch
of Nomorobo, an app he created
that intercepts and filters out illegal
prerecorded calls using technology
to “blacklist” robocaller phone
numbers and “whitelist” acceptable
numbers.
“Our privacy is more at risk than
ever before,” says Foss, the CEO of Telephone
Science Corporation who is also
a professor at Molloy College. “Our goal
is to protect our users from all types of
scams and invasions of privacy.”
The cloud-based solution uses
“simultaneous ringing,” which allows
incoming calls to be routed to a
second telephone line that identifies
and hangs up on illegal robocalls before
they have a chance to harass the
callee. Nomorobo determines which
numbers are legit by comparing incoming
calls to its ever-growing list
of blacklisted callers.
The company was closing in on nixing
a billion robocalls as of December,
about two years after the tool made
the leap from landlines to mobile
devices. Nomorobo touts more than
a million fried spam calls per day.
It reportedly has a 97 percent accuracy
rate, with just three percent
of spam calls getting through and
a fraction of a percent of legit calls
getting hung up on.
After a quick download and signing
up for a fee of $1.99 per month, it also
terminates spam texts. But hold the
phone. Most recently, nomorobo
also began offering
web protections in
direct response to
Cambridge Analytica,
a now-defunct political
consulting firm, which
exploited Facebook
user data to manipulate
voters in the 2016
elections.
That pits Foss against
another Long Islander:
Robert Mercer, the
infamously reclusive
billionaire and former
part-owner of Cambridge
Analytica who’s
credited with helping Donald Trump
get elected president.
And with privacy more and more
at risk as robocallers and internet
hucksters increasingly get craftier
by the day, it’s good to have Foss and
Nomorobo standing guard.
-TB
WHOLLY MOLI
"Our privacy is more at risk than ever before,"
says Aaron Foss, founder of Nomorobo.
MID-ISLAND Y JCC
Make a Splash in 2019!
Receive One Month FREE - AND - We’ll “Wave” Your Enrollment Fee!
COME IN AND SWIM ALL WINTER LONG — NEW FOR WEEKDAYS — OPEN 5:30 AM
At the Mid-Island Y JCC, we offer a 200 meter Indoor Pool, State-of-the-Art Fitness Center,
over 40 FREE Fitness Classes to our members — and so much more.
Take advantage of this year-end promotion and call TODAY!
Contact Membership Director, Joanne Ethe: (516) 822-3535, x306 or email jethe@miyjcc.org.
Offer good on new annual memberships only. Expires 12/31/18.
Mid-Island Y JCC | 45 Manetto Hill Road, Plainview, NY 11803 | www.miyjcc.org
link
/www.miyjcc.org
