We’re often asked this simple question by prospective customers: “How do we know if your Score service is any good?”
It’s a fair question.
We’re happy to do a proof of concept to prove out the quality, and when we do, everyone sees the quality and coverage of our spam list.
But the simple answer is that the YouMail app, which has been used by millions of user, is using the exact same Score service. YouMail gets great reviews as a spam blocker, with this spam list being the heart of the free service. The only difference is we built a layer to distribute the spam list to the apps efficiently.
Yes, the spam list will miss numbers that do extreme snowshoeing, since it’s not possible to have a spam list that covers all of them. But it gets almost everything else. And it does so accurately.
To do this, we’ve focused on what should and shouldn’t be in a spam list used by a consumer service, and how to make a list that’s truly useful. There are three key things:
- We’re focused on having evidence for bad behavior of every number in the list. It’s primarily based on the content of communications from that number, supplemented by using aspects of behavior that definitively show a number is behaving illegally or unlawfully. We don’t want to block the Red Cross blood donation requests because they suddenly pop up and call at high volume. But we do want to block the brand impersonation guys using toll-free numbers to try to fool people.
- We’re very careful to keep spoofed numbers out of the list. You don’t want to block grandma just because a bad guy spoofed her number, which means Grandma’s number should never in a block list. Since bad actors love spoofed numbers, and often call just once for a number, it’s important to recognize when that’s happening and not put them in a spam list.
- We ensure that we only have numbers on the list that are likely to call. When a number goes quiet, it’s pulled from the list, so the list is very efficient and tied to active spam callers. It’s not about having 5 million numbers on the spam list, it’s about having the 500k numbers that are actively causing trouble at any given time.
If you’re building a consumer service, you want a spam list that’s evidence-based, accurate, and efficient. And one that’s blocked 100s of millions of calls. That’s Score!
