(If I ever did get an unimportant call in the middle of the night, the person on the other end would get an earful.)

The GP or so was talking about airplane mode though. I assume nothing gets through in that case. Personally I'd use DND rather than airplane mode.

Further, you can schedule it or even trigger by certain calendar events. Very convenient if you have small children and don't want the random calls from grandparents or old friends checking in at inconvenient times (apparently if they don't have children but working a lot they don't consider 9pm to be "a bad time" - how should they?).

We used Airplane mode at nights before (even before we had kids), but were stressed about missed emergencies from relatives and stopped doing that.

Disclaimer: I get approx. 2 calls per week, and this is mostly businesses calling back, etc. I still don't want to miss emergencies though.

I since just have my phone block all calls except those pre-made appointments on my Google calendar, and the number by which people can reach me changes depending on the scheduled hour, all programmed via Twilio.

I have a couple of whitelisted incoming numbers for family/SO and that's it. Everyone else has to make an appointment, or send me an email or instant message which I will usually see within a few hours. I generally tell people that email is the fastest and most reliable way to reach me.

They were definitely using a soundboard, they'd repeat phrases that were approximate answers to my questions.

I eventually got a Google voice number in a different area code than where I have ever lived, so it's just really easy to see them coming now.

Automatic call screening is another solution. Or the authentication protocols that are rolling out way too slowly. Or just using OTT services. We never fully fix any old communication systems we just make new ones anyway.

Then there are occasional random scams calling in - most common recently is "your number has been randomly selected as a winner and you're eligible for ${insert useless reward that's just a bait for scam here}". But none of them, ever, tried to call late at night. If they did, I'd file a complaint.

--

[0] - The most annoying spam call from a bank was an upsell that happened last year. I was doing the usual checkup on my account balances via their web page, and out of curiosity decided to check out what they have on the "offers" tab. I clicked to the tab, skimmed the list of loan and investment offers, and got back to managing my money. The next day, a marketer calls, trying to upsell me some credit. When pressed, he straight up admitted that I got flagged in the system because I clicked on the "offers" tab and didn't buy anything. As you can imagine, the next time the bank called to take a "quality of service" survey, I said a lot of words about what I don't like about their service.

[1] - I have a smartwatch that vibrates when I get a call, giving me an unobtrusive way to look at the number and reject it without taking the phone out.

Yeah no, these companies should NEVER be calling people, period. It's way to easy to phish people for information by calling them and claiming to be their bank. Too many people will fall for it:

"Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Before we go further I would just like to confirm your identity. Could you please provide your name? Your address? Your mother's maiden name? The last four digits of your SSN?"

Banks should adopt a policy of only interacting with customers physically, via their web interface with a login, official mobile app, or by the user calling the bank's official, publicized number. Never by calling the user.

That way they can post big signs saying "We will never call you, if someone calls you claiming to be us, it's fake" and people will get it.

I said: "I'd be happy to, but first can you prove your identity to me? After all, you're the one that called me"

What followed was a hilarious discussion where they were unable to prove anything to me (for example, telling me something about my account that only I would know) because they're not allowed to tell anything to me until I proved who I am.

Finally I told them that I'd be happy to call them back and I asked them where I can find the number to call. I was obviously not going call a number the person would give me. They didn't know how to find the number to the customer service, so I found it myself and called back.

When they answered, I explained the situation but obviously there was no way to actually get in touch with the person with whom I had spoken earlier, and the person that I did speak to didn't know what the topic was. I asked them to call me back.

Well, they did eventually called me back, but what was the fist thing they asked after they did? "We need you prove your identity, can you tell me XXXX?"

They've stopped doing this now, and the mest recent thing they called me to inform me about something they just went to the point right away. I wonder if I've been flagged as someone who doesn't need verification or if they changed their policy.

I imagine an attack where someone attempts to log in to your Internet bank account, and at the same time calls you and tells you that they are the bank and that they have sent you a notification on the phone to confirm this.

You accept the notification on the phone and all of a sudden they're not just logged in to your Internet bank, but also on the phone with you, with you trusting that they are indeed the bank.

The only way I see that this could be avoided is if they provide you with a verification code that will appear on your phone.

Basically in the app you see if the verification is for logging in, providing strong auth for some service, approving transfer of X euros from Y account to account Z, etc

In general we have had really well working online banking since the late 90s here in Finland (first versions are actually from the early 80s where you dialed directly to the bank instead of your ISP with your modem). Haven't really heard of any major security flaws ever so they do have a really good track record. This is also why the governments attempt at creating their own strong auth service failed. The banks already effectively provide that and everyone is used to using them.

I've seen this proposed. I don't know if anyone is actually doing it.

Which is it?

Banks should adopt a policy of only interacting with customers physically, via their web interface with a login, official mobile app, or by the user calling the bank's official, publicized number. Never by calling the user.

You either don't travel, don't travel for very long, or don't travel anywhere interesting.

I've had several experiences over the years where using a credit card in a country I didn't expect to be in got a call from the bank to verify it was me.

You may tell your bank you're traveling in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland for a week, but on night three of your trip, when you get invited to a party in the Czech Republic by your friend's pretty sister, you get on the train and keep talking. You don't say, "Hold your hormones for a sec, I need to tell my bank I'm going out of bounds."

1 * 0 = 0

> You either don't travel, don't travel for very long, or don't travel anywhere interesting.

I would prefer you didn't make assumptions.

I travel to lots of interesting places, and I have had my credit card disabled several times. Once because my idiot geography-illiterate bank didn't know that Bulgaria was a part of Europe. Good thing I had a stack of cash with me. For less prepared travellers, the bank is doing nothing but stranding their own customers cashless in unfamiliar places.

In any case, my point still stands that they really shouldn't be calling to verify it is me when I don't even have my home country's SIM card in my phone.

They should be e-mailing me instead, which is the only reliable way to reach me while travelling and SIM swapping. Most people are more reachable easily by e-mail than by phone when travelling for the exact same reason.

Me too. My bank sent me a message telling me to call them using the number on the back of my card. That is an easy solution to the problem.

It keeps waking up Flanders and his wife. After, like, the third time he picks it up, his wife says, “why don’t you just unplug the phone!?”

And Flanders yells, “it could be my mother!!”

To which Homer shouts from next door, “would you shut up!? People are trying to sleep!”

Aeroplane mode has two advantages for me: I don't receive calls or notifications for the night, and I aren't tempted to immediately go to my cellphone to check whether I got a notification when I wake up.

Or have e-mail on your phone, making a sound whenever you receive an e-mail.

Or get an SMS from your cell provider when you run out of data, even if you somehow run out of data at 4am.

(Of course, I know I wouldn't be anyone's first phone call in an emergency)

Why on Earth would any sane person set their phone up to do this?

Also I tend to charge my phone during the daytime so at night I just put it in airplane mode to conserve batteries and make sure it can pull itself through the night to be able to sound the alarm in the morning. The charging port on my phone is busted and the cable needs to be jiggled every now and then, so it's not feasible to charge it reliably at night. Thanks, USB-C, for your horrible, non-rugged design that can't get through 3 years of use.

And if you place it on airplane mode and then turn on WiFi (assuming you have WiFi calling), then you both save battery and make radiation insignificant.

Unfortunately sound follows the inverse square law as well, and alarms don't wake me up when they are 6 feet away.

Even if you used the maximum band power of 1 watt, that isn't really enough to do anything. At rest your body will produce about 80 Watts of heat energy, which is a much higher frequency than what your phone gives off and hence has much more energy per quanta. Also keep in mind that 1 Watt is going in all directions, at best you cover half the hemisphere and even assuming phone manufacturers aren't optimizing for phones to radiate away because that gives better reception at lower power, you'd be getting half a watt of energy from a device going maximum transmit power. A standard phone will likely give you less than 5mW of energy dosage.

The most that your phone can do is warm up your ear a bit if you put it under your pillow. By an amount that is likely to be not measurable with modern equipment.

And before noting about ionizing radiation; phones aren't high enough frequency or power to really do that at any appreciable level. Only high frequencies are capable of ionizing since it requires an atom receiving a certain amount of energy per quantum, and the energy per quantum is only related to the frequency, not the transmit power.

You also cannot unplug all of your neighbours routers, TVs and other devices.

It is very easy to get paranoid about specific wireless technologies, it is almost impossible nowadays to avoid "electrosmog" or particularly wireless emitters entirely though.

My contacts go through, there's the call twice workaround, and honestly I'm from a period when you just couldn't always reach someone immediately and I'm fine with that.

Sure, me too, but that's exactly where I'm coming from when I ask. It's the same set of sensibilities that says that if there's going to be a call in the middle of the night, it's probably for a good reason. I would think we'd have to fast forward from there to reach the place that views regularly taking the phone off the hook as the natural solution, due to e.g. jadedness/cynicism/etc.