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There are few things more annoying than robocalls. When you answer a phone, the last thing you want to hear is an automated recording telling you to vote this way, or donate to some cause; it’s all a real nuisance. Many are even using VoIP technology to get around “Do Not Call” lists and laws. However, the Federal Trade Commission hates them as much as anyone else and recently created a contest to find the best solutions to stop them.

With over 800 entries, the contest proved itself quite popular. The winners have finally been selected, and the prizes go to Serdar Danis and Aaron Foss, as well as Google (News - Alert). The two competitors will split the $50,000 grand prize, and Google gets a certificate of honor.

The winning competitors focused not only on intercepting and filtering out calls with a blacklist of robocaller phone numbers, but also created a whitelist of numbers that are acceptable callers. Google’s solution uses crowd-sourced information to identify and suppress robocallers, which aims to stop many scams.

Although they have won, we have yet to see the solutions in action, so it is hard to say how well they work, and for how long they will. Sadly, scammers are very innovative, and will find ways around the solutions eventually, but hopefully not before we find new ways to stop them.

There are other options for stopping robocalls available, such as Phone (News - Alert).com’s menu system. With that, calls are sent to a menu instead of a direct extension, stopping robocalls before they reach an actual person. Customers of that service can enjoy receiving calls from actual people, rather than bots and scams.

Hopefully we’ll be seeing these solutions from the FTC’s (News - Alert) contest winners and Google implemented soon; personally, I’m getting quite tired of receiving calls from automated messages, especially when I’m in the middle of work, or rest, or dinner, or a watching TV – need I go on? If these solutions can help stop or stall robocallers, then the contest winners have earned every penny of their prize.