We are happy to introduce you to TrapCall, an iPhone app that unmasks the name and phone number of blocked calls. Once you install and configure the app, operation is rather simple. When you get a blocked call, press the power button twice. This will decline the incoming call and forward the caller (once configured) to TrapCall who will unmask the caller’s information, send you a text or push notification with the caller’s information, and send the caller back to your ringing phone. TrapCall is a free app, but it does require a monthly service charge of $5. It also includes a host of other features including voicemail transcription, and the option of playing a recorded message to those callers on your blacklist.
So how does it work? TrapCall product manager, Nate Kapitanski explains,
The “push the power button twice to reject the call” thing sort of makes it sound like we are doing something with the hardware that we’re not supposed to, but this is really just the easiest way to tell users that they have to ignore or reject the calls for their conditional call-forwarding to send the call to our 800 number for unmasking.The service is actually 100% percent legal as we’ve even dealt with the FCC on this. The reason the app is legal is because the way the service works is that missed and rejected calls get forwarded to an 800 number for unmasking. The FCC has made it clear that because the owner of an 800 number has to pay for every incoming call to their number, that they’re entitled to see who is calling them – even if the caller ID is blocked.So our users are essentially leasing a toll-free number from us which entitles them to the call information. We had to have our lawyers detail this info and send it to Apple….once they finally got back to us after 3+ months in review.
You can download TrapCall here.
[via: 9to5Mac]
