June 25, 2019 • 9 mins
Firewall is a new type of robocall blocking app: it only lets in callers in your contact list, everyone else is sent to voicemail.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm rich Damiro and this is a rich On Tech
quick hit. We all hate robocalls and now a new
app wants to do something about that. It's called Firewall,
and it's pretty powerful. This one basically blocks all callers
that are not in your address book. It will send
them straight to voicemail. Now to learn more about it
is Greg Cohene. He is the co founder and CEO
(00:25):
of ad hoc Labs in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Greg, thanks for joining me, Hey, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Okay, so tell me about ad hoc Labs, because you
guys are well known for another app that you've had
for a while called Berner.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
What's that one all about?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Sure? So we've had Burner in the market for over
five years now, and Berner is a second line app.
So you can get extra phone numbers from Burner and
you can use that to not have to give out
your private number in lots of different situations, everything ranging
from short term transactional things like if you're posting or
responding to an ad on Craigslist, or if you're starting
(00:59):
a side door need a number for customers at work
or for you know, a public audience or something like that,
and so Burner is a great way to give out
a number that's not your private personal cell phone and
keep some things off of that private personal number. But
what we realize along the way is that we still
(01:19):
were having issues with our first lines, both on the
team and just obviously around in the marketplace. Consumers everywhere
are sort of complaining about robo calls pretty constantly. It's
a very hot topic.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem. So the new app,
Firewall is is kind of a answers a question that
I get all the time. Because there's a million robo
call apps out there. I don't really like many of them.
This one is something that does. It does things a
little bit differently. It blocks everyone except the people in.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Your address book.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And I get that question a lot, people like, how
can I can't just get a napped that does that?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Now you can do that. So that's how it works.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Huh, that's exactly it. We actually saw a lot of
it's like that on Twitter ourselves, and that you know,
Burner itself actually has a robo call screening function in it,
powered by a third party API and app called normal Robo.
They're friends of ours and one of many one of many,
excuse me, robo call blocking apps out there, But what
(02:17):
we realized was that the blacklist approach just wasn't getting
the job done. Scammers are just too good and there's
too many reasons for them to try to sort of
evade different tactics.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, a lot of people will block a phone number
on their phone from a robocaller, and.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I'm like, that does nothing.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
They're just going to call it a different number two
seconds later, yeah, or spoof.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
A legitimate one, right, And that's one of the big
problems that you know, the carrier industry has not been
able to figure out. So Firewall takes things sort of
into our own hands and we basically block all the
calls unless we know they're from somebody you know or
from somebody who've designated. So we like to think of
it as a little bit of an extreme solution. It
is definitely a sort of a nuclear solution on robo calls,
(02:58):
and it blocks everything. It does it effectively the calls
you want get through. The calls that are unknown, they
just go to voicemail, and you can respond very effectively
to that voicemail. We have very high quality transcription and
we even have a little feature sort of a nod
to burner where if you have a voicemail from an
(03:18):
unknown caller and you're not sure about them, you can
dial them back with an anonymous temporary phone number.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, because the last thing you want to do, Like
I just did this morning, I got a robo call
and I said, let me just check to see who
this is. I call them and now they've got my
number for real.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, they know it's you're alive, Mark, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So now the way that this works is you have
to use call forwarding, and so tell me about that.
How are you going to get folks to get over
the uneasiness of you know, forwarding all their calls to
you guys?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, thanks for asking that question. I mean, it's it's
a thing that is not for everybody, right, But basically,
the way it works is you forward your phone number
to us and we screen it in the cloud. And
because we're able to, you know, use sort of software
to do that, we can run all kinds of algorithms
on it. We can not just white list and blacklist,
but we can try to intelligently predict things and we
(04:09):
can get better over time with that. So in order
to be able to do that, we need to be
able to see all the callers, and that's how our
solution works. And you know, we think, based at least
on the feedback we've had during our beta, that for
people who really get a lot of robo calls, or
people who you know more and more just don't really
want to be on the phone at all. If it
(04:30):
don't need to be, it works really well.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I also noticed that the app, because I set it
up on my phone, it lets you easily add callers
to your white list. So if you get a call
that you want to be able to call again, because
the default is that every one in your contacts is
on your white list, you can obviously change that. But
then when someone calls for the first time that's not
and they get blocked, you can just add them to
your white list for the next time.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
That's exactly right. So if you know, if someone from
the office calls in a different phone or a conference
room or something, you can you can add that easily,
or it's the gym, whatever it might be that you
do want to get, just swipe to add it to
your right list.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Now, you mentioned that this is not for everyone, So
here's the thing before kids, I probably wouldn't care if
all my calls went straight to voicemail unless they were
in my address book. Post kids, I think immediately to Okay,
my kid gets hurt at school, there's an issue. Some
random teacher calls from her cell phone to my phone.
It doesn't go through, So kind of explain to me.
(05:23):
This is definitely a high powered robo call solution. There
are some trade offs.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I think trade offs is exactly the right word, right, So,
if you're using a blacklist app, the tradeoff you're making
is that a bunch of robo calls are going to
get through, and that can be noise, and that can
be a problem for lots of folks. Funnily enough, a
lot of people don't really answer their phone because they're
so hesitant to get a robo call that they might
miss that important call from the school. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, that's ironic, actually.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, And then you sort of still have to deal
with voicemail and so in our system, you know, the
trade off is it's possible to miss a call you
want if it's a previously unknown caller. But the general
idea is they can leave a voicemail and you can
quickly call them back or better yet text them back,
which is sort of what people want to do even
more of these days.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Now.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
It's interesting to me, by the way, just to mention,
you know a lot of people more and more are
using text first over phone, right, And that's a generational thing.
But I think it's also you know, a general trend.
Since you know, we've got av plus penetrate eighty plus
percent penetration with smartphones, everybody just texts first, right, So
more and more people aren't calling, They don't call each other,
they don't answer the phone, they don't necessarily check their
(06:34):
voicemail audio. And so if it's all texting, almost the
only calls are robo calls. Now more and more they're
likely to be bad calls.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It kind of feels that way, unless it's someone in
your address book, which is the kind of the beauty
of something like this solution. So iOS thirteen Apple announced
at their event that they are going to build in
some call screening smarts, and I think that one of
the features they mentioned was that unknown callers can be
sent to voicemail. So what does that mean for an
app like Firewall? I mean, obviously you guys did your homework.
(07:05):
Is there still a place for this with iOS thirteen.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, that's exactly right, and we see that as a
nice validation. I mean, this is a this is a
sort of an approach a lot of people want, right,
which is to be able to screen on wanted callers. Apple,
you know, has a history of doing things that you know,
where they'll take a step in a direction and they'll
leave the developer ecosystem to take you know, lots of
steps and go farther and so, you know, I think
(07:29):
their solution may work for some folks. Ours has a
lot more features, right, among other things. For example, you know,
we have two tiers of voicemail, right, so that your
known callers get one and your unknown callers will get
a different one. We actually do screen out the known
global callers out of the back end. You know, we
have the anonymous call feature, and you know, so in
(07:50):
various ways, it's we think our app is sort of
a more of a power solution, but it'll be interesting
to see how people adopt that and how sort of
ultimately we fit in with people's needs and you know,
so the feedback has been very positive so far, but
we're really looking forward to seeing what a wider audience
thinks beginning today and.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Again the app is Firewall. It's four dollars a month
after a fourteen day trial. Greg, is there any chance
this will ever come to Android?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Absolutely? Yeah. We have been working on Android prototypes internally,
and obviously you know we're waiting to see what kind
of feedback we'll get from the iOS version, but that's
a very likely outcome for us.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Greg, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Thanks very much, Rich.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Greg Cone is co founder and CEO of ad Hoc Labs.
The app again is called Firewall. You can find it
on iOS right now. And if you like the podcast
rich on Tech, please subscribe in your favorite podcast app.
And since this quick hit is new, let me know
on social media if you like it. If you do,
maybe I'll do more. You can find me at rich
on Tech. I'm Rich Damiro.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I'll talk to you real soon
I'm rich Damiro and this is a rich On Tech
quick hit. We all hate robocalls and now a new
app wants to do something about that. It's called Firewall,
and it's pretty powerful. This one basically blocks all callers
that are not in your address book. It will send
them straight to voicemail. Now to learn more about it
is Greg Cohene. He is the co founder and CEO
(00:25):
of ad hoc Labs in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Greg, thanks for joining me, Hey, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Okay, so tell me about ad hoc Labs, because you
guys are well known for another app that you've had
for a while called Berner.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
What's that one all about?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Sure? So we've had Burner in the market for over
five years now, and Berner is a second line app.
So you can get extra phone numbers from Burner and
you can use that to not have to give out
your private number in lots of different situations, everything ranging
from short term transactional things like if you're posting or
responding to an ad on Craigslist, or if you're starting
(00:59):
a side door need a number for customers at work
or for you know, a public audience or something like that,
and so Burner is a great way to give out
a number that's not your private personal cell phone and
keep some things off of that private personal number. But
what we realize along the way is that we still
(01:19):
were having issues with our first lines, both on the
team and just obviously around in the marketplace. Consumers everywhere
are sort of complaining about robo calls pretty constantly. It's
a very hot topic.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem. So the new app,
Firewall is is kind of a answers a question that
I get all the time. Because there's a million robo
call apps out there. I don't really like many of them.
This one is something that does. It does things a
little bit differently. It blocks everyone except the people in.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Your address book.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And I get that question a lot, people like, how
can I can't just get a napped that does that?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Now you can do that. So that's how it works.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Huh, that's exactly it. We actually saw a lot of
it's like that on Twitter ourselves, and that you know,
Burner itself actually has a robo call screening function in it,
powered by a third party API and app called normal Robo.
They're friends of ours and one of many one of many,
excuse me, robo call blocking apps out there, But what
(02:17):
we realized was that the blacklist approach just wasn't getting
the job done. Scammers are just too good and there's
too many reasons for them to try to sort of
evade different tactics.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, a lot of people will block a phone number
on their phone from a robocaller, and.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I'm like, that does nothing.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
They're just going to call it a different number two
seconds later, yeah, or spoof.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
A legitimate one, right, And that's one of the big
problems that you know, the carrier industry has not been
able to figure out. So Firewall takes things sort of
into our own hands and we basically block all the
calls unless we know they're from somebody you know or
from somebody who've designated. So we like to think of
it as a little bit of an extreme solution. It
is definitely a sort of a nuclear solution on robo calls,
(02:58):
and it blocks everything. It does it effectively the calls
you want get through. The calls that are unknown, they
just go to voicemail, and you can respond very effectively
to that voicemail. We have very high quality transcription and
we even have a little feature sort of a nod
to burner where if you have a voicemail from an
(03:18):
unknown caller and you're not sure about them, you can
dial them back with an anonymous temporary phone number.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, because the last thing you want to do, Like
I just did this morning, I got a robo call
and I said, let me just check to see who
this is. I call them and now they've got my
number for real.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, they know it's you're alive, Mark, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So now the way that this works is you have
to use call forwarding, and so tell me about that.
How are you going to get folks to get over
the uneasiness of you know, forwarding all their calls to
you guys?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, thanks for asking that question. I mean, it's it's
a thing that is not for everybody, right, But basically,
the way it works is you forward your phone number
to us and we screen it in the cloud. And
because we're able to, you know, use sort of software
to do that, we can run all kinds of algorithms
on it. We can not just white list and blacklist,
but we can try to intelligently predict things and we
(04:09):
can get better over time with that. So in order
to be able to do that, we need to be
able to see all the callers, and that's how our
solution works. And you know, we think, based at least
on the feedback we've had during our beta, that for
people who really get a lot of robo calls, or
people who you know more and more just don't really
want to be on the phone at all. If it
(04:30):
don't need to be, it works really well.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I also noticed that the app, because I set it
up on my phone, it lets you easily add callers
to your white list. So if you get a call
that you want to be able to call again, because
the default is that every one in your contacts is
on your white list, you can obviously change that. But
then when someone calls for the first time that's not
and they get blocked, you can just add them to
your white list for the next time.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
That's exactly right. So if you know, if someone from
the office calls in a different phone or a conference
room or something, you can you can add that easily,
or it's the gym, whatever it might be that you
do want to get, just swipe to add it to
your right list.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Now, you mentioned that this is not for everyone, So
here's the thing before kids, I probably wouldn't care if
all my calls went straight to voicemail unless they were
in my address book. Post kids, I think immediately to Okay,
my kid gets hurt at school, there's an issue. Some
random teacher calls from her cell phone to my phone.
It doesn't go through, So kind of explain to me.
(05:23):
This is definitely a high powered robo call solution. There
are some trade offs.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I think trade offs is exactly the right word, right, So,
if you're using a blacklist app, the tradeoff you're making
is that a bunch of robo calls are going to
get through, and that can be noise, and that can
be a problem for lots of folks. Funnily enough, a
lot of people don't really answer their phone because they're
so hesitant to get a robo call that they might
miss that important call from the school. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, that's ironic, actually.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, And then you sort of still have to deal
with voicemail and so in our system, you know, the
trade off is it's possible to miss a call you
want if it's a previously unknown caller. But the general
idea is they can leave a voicemail and you can
quickly call them back or better yet text them back,
which is sort of what people want to do even
more of these days.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Now.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
It's interesting to me, by the way, just to mention,
you know a lot of people more and more are
using text first over phone, right, And that's a generational thing.
But I think it's also you know, a general trend.
Since you know, we've got av plus penetrate eighty plus
percent penetration with smartphones, everybody just texts first, right, So
more and more people aren't calling, They don't call each other,
they don't answer the phone, they don't necessarily check their
(06:34):
voicemail audio. And so if it's all texting, almost the
only calls are robo calls. Now more and more they're
likely to be bad calls.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It kind of feels that way, unless it's someone in
your address book, which is the kind of the beauty
of something like this solution. So iOS thirteen Apple announced
at their event that they are going to build in
some call screening smarts, and I think that one of
the features they mentioned was that unknown callers can be
sent to voicemail. So what does that mean for an
app like Firewall? I mean, obviously you guys did your homework.
(07:05):
Is there still a place for this with iOS thirteen.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, that's exactly right, and we see that as a
nice validation. I mean, this is a this is a
sort of an approach a lot of people want, right,
which is to be able to screen on wanted callers. Apple,
you know, has a history of doing things that you know,
where they'll take a step in a direction and they'll
leave the developer ecosystem to take you know, lots of
steps and go farther and so, you know, I think
(07:29):
their solution may work for some folks. Ours has a
lot more features, right, among other things. For example, you know,
we have two tiers of voicemail, right, so that your
known callers get one and your unknown callers will get
a different one. We actually do screen out the known
global callers out of the back end. You know, we
have the anonymous call feature, and you know, so in
(07:50):
various ways, it's we think our app is sort of
a more of a power solution, but it'll be interesting
to see how people adopt that and how sort of
ultimately we fit in with people's needs and you know,
so the feedback has been very positive so far, but
we're really looking forward to seeing what a wider audience
thinks beginning today and.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Again the app is Firewall. It's four dollars a month
after a fourteen day trial. Greg, is there any chance
this will ever come to Android?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Absolutely? Yeah. We have been working on Android prototypes internally,
and obviously you know we're waiting to see what kind
of feedback we'll get from the iOS version, but that's
a very likely outcome for us.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Greg, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Thanks very much, Rich.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Greg Cone is co founder and CEO of ad Hoc Labs.
The app again is called Firewall. You can find it
on iOS right now. And if you like the podcast
rich on Tech, please subscribe in your favorite podcast app.
And since this quick hit is new, let me know
on social media if you like it. If you do,
maybe I'll do more. You can find me at rich
on Tech. I'm Rich Damiro.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I'll talk to you real soon
Host
Rich DeMuro
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