I’ve been using whocalled.us as my spam caller lookup source for years. It has the most complete listing of bad callers of any site.
Unfortunately, the site itself is one of the worst websites ever created in the history of the Internet. There is absolutely NO WAY to contact the owner to report a problem. No way to fix a mistake. No way to tell if a caller is bad, or just lots of hits from a good caller.
In the past month, the “author” has made some style change to the website that renders the whole site useless. There is no longer any way to “report” a bad number. You can only comment on bad numbers - which does nothing to affect their score. The api no longer works at all. You can report bad numbers with the API and the score never changes.
I’ve even tried looking up the registered owner of the domain and emailing them to try and get some kind of response. Nope. Totally ignored.
I see that Superfecta lists it so lots of fellow FreePBX users are probably familiar with them. Any comments? Any advice?
I’ve already pulled all my code that references them, and I’m using other websites as spam lookups, but the hit rate is way lower than with whocalled.us. It’s so annoying, they could have a great site but choose not to. I can’t figure people out.
I think we are talking about different things here.
There is an API that returns a spam score. When users report a number for spamming, this score increases. This is not the same thing as entering a description for a phone number.
The button for reporting a number is completely gone from the website. And the API function to report a number returns, but does not change the score of the phone number.
I tested all of these things extensively over the last couple of weeks. Am I wrong here?
I have emailed the developer and he has actually been super responsive. That said we may have someone do internal testing and report anything non-functional with superfecta. At this point I it looks like there is no need to pull the module
Emailed HOW!!???
There is no contact info, at all. Zero.
I have tried to contact them for years. Literally. I said previously I even went so far as to lookup the domain and try and contact them through the registration info.
Another mystery is, how did people originally find out there is an API? I read about it on another VOIP website, but how did THEY find out? There is no documentation or information at all.
I did that about 3 years ago. No response to my emails.
It’s not worth the frustration any more. I’m using phonespamfilter. It has a small database now, but we’ll get there.
That’s the same email @jfinstrom used above. It’s also the same email @lgaetz used as well. Both sent today. Both got responses in less than a few minutes.
Anyways. I think this thread is moot. We talked with the developer. He said he would fix it. The user did not line that line of response so user can just remove the module? That’s the nice thing about Superfecta is it not? You aren’t forced into using any module.
From reading posts on the web it looks like he doesn’t answer to people who complain about his site…
He needs you guys to have any kind of legitimacy so I can see why he would respond ASAP…
I believe the bigger problem is that the inclusion of this site in CID Superfecta gives the site a credibility it might not deserve.
There appears to have been multiple complaints about that site in the past and the site doesn’t have a clear, established way to ask for a revision like a well-managed blacklist should have (think RBLs for example…).
I am not sure a “module” which doesn’t have a clear established policy for revision, etc… should be listed in CID Superfecta so I have to agree with the OP…
As someone who has written a lot of free software and services that I didn’t even pull ad revenue from I did it all for fun. If someone approached me with an attitude or nastiness they got blocked pretty quickly. This guy seems to do this for fun, he likely does not respond to angry users or people that seem like they will be high maintenance. My email was a simple hey person over here says this is broke, is this something we should be concerned about. Took a few hours to get a 2 paragraph response back which has lead to a few follow-up emails. Again it is a free service done on a guys free time. Beating him up like he is kicking puppies for beer money is not a great idea
On a side note if you feel the data of any source unreliable and you are NOT paying for it, just disable it. There is something like 50 sources, many free
Oh, and my goal is actually what I asked, which was how the heck did you guys even contact them, and how did voipinfo publish the api details if none of it is public. I’m genuinely curious. Someone answered already that the site used to have an about page. So mystery solved.