Pepper is a spam filter for your phone calls. Pepper stops robocalls from ever buzzing your phone in the first place, so you don’t even get call notifications unless they’re confirmed to be from a human. No "Scam Likely" here, just "Person Definitely".

How is this different than turning on Google Voice call screening? With GV it gives people the opportunity to state their name, and if they don't do that, the call isn't forwarded to my phone. Are you able to see my full call logs? I have people not in my contacts that I do want to get calls from, like my bank for fraud protection. Can you make reasonable assumptions that if I've received a call from a number and the call was answered and lasted more than say 60 seconds, that it's not a spam call and you shouldn't block that in the future? Or if i make an outbound call to a number and then get a call back, that it isn't a spam call? Finally the mark of a good spam filter isn't just whats blocked (the positive rate), but also how many legitimate calls/emails were not blocked (false positive). Meaning, if you blocked every call to my phone, technically you've blocked all spam calls, but you're not really solving the problem of separating good from bad. Do you have metrics on what percent of calls that are initially blocked should not be blocked? Or legitimate calls that aren't willing to go through the hassle of verifying themselves? Or is it just a strong firewall 100% based on my contact list?

@christian_vanderbeck1 Hi Christian, great questions! Let's take them one at a time. Re: Google Voice Screening 1. The problem we've noticed with Google Voice screening is that robocalls sometimes still get through since it's based on audio. It might be a good enough solution for most, but we're trying to get all of them. 2. Also, this assumes that most of the people that have your number have your Google Voice number. We're solving for the problem of your cellular phone number getting robocalls, which almost everyone has a cellular phone number and almost everyone (at least in the US) gets robocalls. Re: Call Logs 1. We're kind of like the reCAPTCHA for call screening. If it's an automated call, it won't get through at the moment (although we hope to make this more sophisticated to handle the few robocalls you actually do want to get). If they're a human, regardless of whether they're in your contacts or not, they will get through, and we mark that number as "safe" for you, so they may call you again without touching our filter (we hope to make this more sophisticated as well, but this is where we are at). 2. We only see your incoming calls, and have no control of your outbound calls whatsoever. 3. In short, we don't see your full call logs, only certain incoming calls that come through us. Re: good spam filter You're absolutely right! We definitely don't want to have any calls that were supposed to get through not get through. Your contact list is the first thing we check to automatically bypass our filter, but the verification process is extremely simple. Some other apps use really complicated systems but ours is straightforward for now. We've yet to see calls get blocked that weren't supposed to get blocked with the exception of setup or carrier issues (Sprint is super problematic which is why we don't support them right now). There's a lot we want to do to make this more robust going forward - taking one thing at a time right now. Thanks for all the great questions, I hope this answered them!

@ani_ravi Thanks for the thoughtful response! I'll give it a shot. $6 seems like a lot, but i'm already paying verizon $3 for something that should be free.

@christian_vanderbeck1 We're with you there! The carriers should be the real one fixing this problem - they own it all. It's a sad state of affairs that products like ours have to exist. There are some moves being made to solve this by the carriers and government, at least in the US. We'll have to see how it goes. 🕵️

Too expensive. Jolly Roger is *much* cheaper and does a perfect job. And it's hilarious!

@thisisnoalias We'd really like to bring the costs down over time. Jolly Roger is hilarious though!

@thisisnoalias But Jolly Roger doesn't do anything to block calls... Using the service requires that you answer all of the spam calls you receive every day. If you own a business, this might be a fun service to use. But to the average consumer, Jolly Roger sounds like a horrible way to deal with constant spam callers.

@magnuson Not true. Not sure where you got your info, but it’s dead wrong. It blocks all calls. You get an email every time you get a new caller asking if it’s legit. If you say it is, then that caller has to press 1 to get through. If you say no, then every call from that number is sent to a random bot. I use it both on my cell and landline.

Hi! I am excited to try your app because my phone constantly is getting robocalled. What makes your app different from the other robocall apps like Robokiller and Truecaller?

Ugh...just tried to setup your app but I can't get through the instructional screen because the app is not formatted for my screen size, iPhone 6s. The blue button on the "How Pepper Works" screen is just too low. I can send you a screenshot.

Almost all robocall apps on the market currently try to keep a huge list of spam numbers, and take action if they see the number that's dialing you matches a known spam number. We inverted the model and only let known callers (people in your contacts) directly call you - everyone else has to verify that they are a human first, but we don't block them outright. We're looking to make this more sophisticated in the future, but this is where we are at now!

@andrewjb44 Excited to see that you wanted to give us a try! Sorry about that. We should be able to push a fix without you needing to update the app - I will respond here as soon as we've got it fixed. Thanks for catching us on this!

@andrewjb44 Apple didn't push out our update from yesterday until about an hour ago - please give the app an update and let me know if it's working for you now!

@ani_ravi still a bit wonky, but I can get through the process. Thanks! I am all set up and have turned off all other blockers while I give you a go for the free 7 days. The paid rate is a bit steep for me but if it works I may have to find a way to fit it into my budget.

Pepper

Block robocalls before they ring your phone ❌🤖

Block robocalls before they ring your phone ❌🤖

Pepper

Block robocalls before they ring your phone ❌🤖

Block robocalls before they ring your phone ❌🤖

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