New service promises to expose anonymous phone calls

Seriously, that ominous "BLOCKED CALL" notification on an incoming phone call can never mean anything good. In my experience, calls are usually blocked for two reasons: The person calling you is either a solicitor or an insane crank... but if you're like me you answer those calls anyway, because you never know -- it might be important.

A new service called TrapCall wants to allow customers to finally be rid of blocked calls for good, and the concept couldn't be simpler: Sign up for TrapCall and the service lets you expose all the blocked calls you receive. A related feature also lets you listen to your voice mail over the web or, for a fee, read a transcript of it online.

The TrapCall service works with AT&T and T-Mobile phones right now, and the company says it plans to offer it for other carriers in the next few weeks. The way it works is fairly simple and clever: Users set their phone up to forward any blocked or missed calls to TrapCall's 800 number, which can legally unblock any call it receives since the receiver has to pay for each incoming call. TrapCall then immediately re-forwards the call back to your cell phone, complete with the caller ID information it has determined.

For the user, the system is seamless and appears to operate completely within the letter of the law.

However, as Wired notes in the linked post above, not everyone is thrilled with the concept, particularly domestic violence victims' rights advocates, who worry that an abusive spouse could use TrapCall track down a caller who -- for good reason -- doesn't want to be found. But TrapCall has a solution for that, too: Spoofcard, an older (and popular) service the company offers that lets you spoof your caller ID information to make you appear as if you're calling from another number.

How long before we get a caller ID de-spoofing service, I wonder?