Sending strangers and anonymous callers to voicemail in Google Voice

I normally only write about software development in this blog, but I can't resist adding a software configuration recipe that I have found useful for cutting back on unwanted callers getting through to me via Google voice and my android phone. This problem recently became much worse when I acquired a new phone number which had previously been used by a woman named Melody, a Bay Area woman who apparently ran up lots of debts.

I can understand that you would need to have a won't-take-no-for-an-answer kind of personality to work as a debt collector, but wow those people are not fun to talk to. But I didn't want to just block strangers and anonymous callers, since once in a while those calls are legitimate. Doctors offices, for example, typically call anonymously in order to protect the privacy of their patients. So what I really wanted to do was to send all those folks directly to voicemail.

Sounds simple enough, and I was readily assured that this was possible, but I never did catch up with an explicit recipe to do it.

So here is one:

• Browse to Google voice settings
• on the Phones tab, disable all of your devices (i.e., uncheck the checkbox associated with each)
• on the Voicemail & Text tab, click the edit button for the special Callers group "All Contacts"
• enable all devices that you want to ring when one of your contacts calls you

That's it!