Two people will share a $50,000 prize for the best ideas in a "Robocalling Challenge" that sought technological cures to the plague of incessant automated calls, the Federal Trade Commission said this week.
The FTC, which fields about 200,000 robocalling complaints monthly, chose the entries by Serdar Danis Aaron Foss from more than 800 submitted. Danis suggested software that would block robocalls. Foss proposed a solution that would use a second phone line to screen and hang up on robocalls. Two engineers from Google, Daniel Klein and Dean Jackson, won a non-monetary award for suggesting "automated algorithms" to identify spam calls. The FTC said it's now up to the private sector to bring the ideas to the marketplace. The FTC has posted the three winning ideas on its website and has a link to all 800 submissions. Commentors on the website lament the lack of detail in the proposals and say that the ideas are not new or are already in existence as real products. One commentor said that the full details of each plan are lodged with the FTC.
