Hate RoboCalls? You're going to love the latest from a couple of Jersey guys.

 

Ethan Garr and Bryan Moyles, who work together at TelTech Systems in South Amboy, have developed RoboKiller — a mobile app that they say "kills robocalls before they ring." The app won the $25,000 Grand Prize in the Federal Trade Commission’s "Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back competition," the FTC announced Monday.

With RoboKiller, robocalls never reach your phone — but the calls you want always ring through,” Garr said in an announcement of his big win. “We hear too many stories of people getting hurt by scams that start from pre-recorded telemarketing messages, and it’s a problem we realized we could solve on any phone, even landlines.”

Here's how it works: the app uses an audio-fingerprinting scheme to determine if a call's audio is really human. Calls that come from machines or illegal sources are forwarded to the app’s’ spam box, and only legitimate calls ring through, according to the RoboKiller team.

The app lets users customize the operation with blacklist, whitelist and do-not-disturb settings.

“We hope the winners bring their dynamic solutions to the marketplace soon,” Jessica Rich, director of FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said in the commision's own announcement of the prize. “Their products may block billions of unwanted robocalls, and help people report illegal robocallers to law enforcement.”

Gar and Moyles have started a Kickstarter campaign to get their app off the ground. So far, it's got nearly 200 backers:

More From New Jersey 101.5 FM