Applying Deep Learning to Combat Mass Robocalls

Mass robocalls affect millions of people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, most current defenses against robocalls rely on phone blocklists and are ineffective against caller ID spoofing. To enable detection and blocking of spoofed robocalls, we propose a deep learning based virtual assistant application for smartphones to automatically vet incoming calls. Similar to a human assistant, the virtual assistant can pick up an incoming call and screen it with deep learning modules without user interruption to determine if the call is unwanted. We show that our system can block unwanted mass robocalls and preserve the user experience of a phone call.