LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — An assistant professor at the University of Kentucky is leading a project to help cell phone users protect themselves from robocalls and phone companies.
Computer science researcher Yang Xiao and his team are working to create a computer code that phone users can download and use to protect their privacy.
It would allow them to create a list of who they want to contact them and hide their subscriber number or caller ID from everyone else.
"How to protect our virtual space is much more important than ever before," said Xiao.
He says since the pandemic, society has made a hard shift digitally.
"We're doing so much more online than before," said Xiao.
Billions of Americans are getting robocalls each year and losing billions of dollars to scammers who are only getting more clever with the use of evolving AI.
"As a researcher we are always trying to think of radical ways to solve the problem," he explained.
After receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team is working to make their radical idea a reality.
"It's just like how Facebook, how on social media apps we have to become friends first before we can further communicate," he said.
Instead of using technology to block specific callers, which hasn't worked well so far, their thought is to use technology to only allow certain callers in.
"We can change whatever the caller ID so the callee will never know the real caller behind," said Xiao.
Even protecting phone users from their network providers like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint, who have been sued for sharing their customers' information.
"We're going to just protect ourselves," explained Xiao.
Currently, the project is in the development stage. He's hoping it will eventually be able to give users who want it peace of mind.
UK PhD students Ifteher Alom and Yue Li, and undergraduate researcher Athan Johnson are close collaborators on the team.
Xiao hopes it will be free and open to the public by next summer.
