Put a stop to these damn robocalls! Dozens of US state attorneys general fire rocket up FCC's ass No less than 42 US state attorneys general have warned that the epidemic of robocalls sweeping the nation is causing serious harm to ordinary Americans. In a letter [PDF] to telecoms regulator, the FCC, the AGs note that "the explosive growth of caller ID spoofing and robocalls is being driven primarily by scams," and point …
How do I know the spoofing is happening? It is because I get real people that refuse to listen to the voicemail but call me back (so I know my number has been used in the scams) and also I get my own callerID showing up on my display. The FCC does have a part of their reporting form that wants a verification of the callerID actually being spoofed from my own number. However, they do not care about others that I believe are spoofed. Get a call enough times from a number and you stop picking it up and they stop calling.
The thing is they provide the data connection on mobile devices. Perhaps it should be easier to unbundle the phone service from the data service and allow people to get rid of the telemonkeys.
Until then I've taken to setting ring tones/notifications for people in my contact list turn the default notifications to off. The downside was spending the time going through each contact to identify the ~25% which hadn't already been customized.
Perhaps there's an app or setting for that and I missed it. Oh well, it's done now.
"people stop answering ANY calls"
A lot of people, and particularly young people, are there already.
I'm an old fogey, so I do answer phone calls if the calling number is one of someone in my address book. Fortunately, pretty much everybody I know understands that if you're calling someone without prearranging it, that means you're having an emergency -- so I rarely get actual phone calls.
I quit answering calls from unknown numbers on my landline (actually a VOIP line now) a decade ago. and leave the ringer off too - I'll see it it flash if there's a voicemail plus I get a notification on my Ooma app. I quit answering unknown numbers on my cell phone a couple years ago. People can leave messages, or send a text.
"everybody I know understands that if you're calling someone without prearranging it, that means you're having an emergency"
I sort of see what you are getting at, but how do you pre-arrange a phone call from/to friends and family? Call them on the phone? Contact them some other way (which probably defeats the point of calling by phone at all in many cases)
"I assumed he meant really fined, rather than doing what the FCC is currently doing: announcing fines but never worrying about actually collecting them."
Since a company is a "person" as defined in law, that is the "person" who is fined. There's not much left to go after when the company has folded up/died and the re-incarnated as new company/"person". That's why the new laws here in Blighty are targetting the company owners and will be fining them directly in future.
Million and billion dollar fines mean nothing. the FCC is toothless.
Toothless or just not interested in actually assessing and COLLECTING the fines? I almost believe that if the fine collections were handled by the phone companies that suddenly there would be an uptick in collections because corporate greed and all that.
For the FCC to say they're fining a company but not collecting is just pure eyewash for the masses.
While the phone companies make money from these calls
Rrrreally? I thought that phone companies make money from monthly plans. Very few people anymore pay per call, and certainly 5 to 10 cents per call would be too expensive for robocallers. A robocaller obviously uses an "unlimited" plan
"The letter this week from 42 of the 50 state attorney generals saying enough is enough should, hopefully, finally force the FCC and/or legislators to act."
It is so sad to watch such optimism get stomped on by reality.
I have reached a point where my default reaction to my phone ringing is anger. My family and friends will text or IM, or email me. This causes some difficulty when I am between contracts, and need to answer my phone in a pleasant manner.
make the minimum penalty DEATH for anyone who:
a) spoofs a caller ID
b) violates the 'do not call list'
c) cold-calls *MY* phone.
I get to be executioner.
(my phone ringer has been OFF for 2 years. I either pick up when I hear who it is on the other end, and they know to say stuff so I can hear that or leave a message. phone message is 30 seconds long and starts with 'friends and family thanks for calling, and then lectures about how I get too many violations of the do not call list, so my ringer is off)
make the minimum penalty DEATH for anyone who:
a) spoofs a caller ID
b) violates the 'do not call list'
c) cold-calls *MY* phone.
I get to be executioner.
Please be my guest, but if I cannot track down the individual then you might not be able too. The person doing this knows exactly what they are doing and have convince your local telco to be in with them on it. When I brought up the do not call list, they laughed at me and said they are out of the country and do not need to abide by the laws of the FCC. Probably what we need to do is to stop the outsourcing of call centers.
I fantasize about that obstructive bastard standing at Ground Zero of a small meteore impact. Nothing too big, just enough to vapourize a circle the size of a Cricket Pitch.
Whistle. Whomp. Kaboom. Cough. Wave away the smoke. Admire the crater.
Aaaaaaahhhhh... Politicians. Meteores for them all...
"Elizabeth Warren has been promising to stop robocalls since roughly 2015. It's not like they're weren't a problem BEFORE Pai!"
You must be from the U.K., because ANYONE with a phone in the states is tire of this. I get no less than 25 robocalls PER DAY. In 2015, I got maybe ONE robocall PER WEEK. So I don't know what shitty political point you were trying to make with the Elizabeth Warren remark, but Pai is a monumental ass that is causing every single American with a cell phone account grief. PERIOD
because ANYONE with a phone in the states is tire of this.
that is something that surprises me. I mean, every FBI agent gets them, every FCC person. Every politician. The mother of every one of them (OK, fine, some of the later are mushroom spawn, thus no mothers to bother). And yet, they, with power to get things noticed and done, let it pass?
and yes, this has been going on for a VERY long time, just getting worser
I wonder if there are some numbers that robocallers avoid for some reason. Despite the fact that they've increased nearly everywhere and that a lot of my acquaintances complain that they receive them daily, I really don't. I've only received three types of unwanted calls on my phone, and two have ceased entirely. The first was people looking for the former owner of my phone number, but they all took "That guy doesn't have this number anymore" and left. The second was one specific robocaller with the same message and running a very primitive Eliza bot. One time when this called me, I had a discussion with a friend on how terrible the bot programming was, and forgot to hang up on it. I don't know if anyone listened to that, but they formerly called me about twice a week and they stopped after that occasion. So I probably get one robocall a month, usually the type telling me that I've won a prize. Somehow, the robocallers either decided not to call or don't know my number. I wonder if people making decisions are in that situation too. Having previously had a landline that received many more callers, that situation can be quite persuasive in the do-anything-to-shut-them-up category.
all good ideas, but again, it is putting the onus on the users to do it all, and this IS in the hands of the operators to stop this, the tech does exist, but sadly, whilst the operators get paid for the completed calls, it isn't going to happen, maybe make a charge to anyone making the call, payable in advance, a bit like the good old ? days of the public phone box, and putting in coins before you dialled, might make the whole enterprise uneconomic ?
The first thing that should be done is to remove the ability to spoof your number. That would stop a lot of it. I get calls from around the country, ask with the same "calling about the accident you had you were innocent of", or "calling about your workplace accident" recordings. All have spoofed numbers.
Add some security and authentication to all calls please!
Secondly, enough with the fines. Most are ltd companies, so if their accounts are empty nowt can be done. Make directors of companies that break the law criminally liable and put them away
No idea, but it will be an inbound international call, and not an in country number, so would hope that raises more of a red flag to the victim.
Could possibly have procedures to block calls from operators in foreign countries that don't play a more active role in blocking this white, perhaps under gradual escalation to avoid over enthusiastic blocking
The phone system has an unspoofable Id mechanism in place, and has had so for almost as long as it has existed. It's what phone companies use to work out billing.
The reason that it's not used for Caller ID is that there situations where spoofing the CID is genuinely in everybody's best interest. For instance, when making a call from a phone bank, the phone # of the line that happened to be used to place the call is worthless -- you can't call it and expect the call to go through. Spoofing the CID to provide the correct number for people to call is a good thing.
What needs to be done is not to remove the ability to spoof, it's to take the power to do it out of the hands of phone customers, so companies would have to arrange to have the phone company itself set what the spoofed number is. Then the phone company could ensure the spoofed number isn't deceptive, and would have legal liability for any abuse of the capability.
"The phone system has an unspoofable Id mechanism in place, and has had so for almost as long as it has existed. It's what phone companies use to work out billing."
I think that was BEFORE outside-the-box technologies like VoIP came along which allowed the spoofing of everything, including the billing information (because even the billing of VoIP can get complicated).
"I think that was BEFORE outside-the-box technologies like VoIP came along which allowed the spoofing of everything"
There is nothing inherent in VoIP that leads to this. That this situation exists is a side-effect of how VoIP is integrated with the phone system. That is something that can be changed.
Quote:
What needs to be done is not to remove the ability to spoof, it's to take the power to do it out of the hands of phone customers
/quote
I think you’re on the right track, but it can be even simpler than this. The phone companies should only allow a CID to be spoofed to a number controlled by the same billing account. That way you can use any of YOUR numbers, but not anyone else’s. This mostly works for international calls too, as any business that actually buys a (for example) US phone number therefore must have at least some business presence in the US, which can be a target if the gov has to come looking for you. Of course this requires the telecoms to put at least a little good faith effort into screening cross-border new number requests, which might be asking too much.
Unfortunately I just realized why this won’t work. The scammer’s telco and your telco are likely different companies, and only the scammer’s telco has enough info to do the blocking. So even if you use an honest telco, so long as there’s at least one dishonest one for the scammers to use, they can still get through.
No, what they should do is continue to allow a phone number to be sent as an identifier and a callback, but have that be a secondary one. Kind of like how an email can be sent from one account but have a reply to address for a different mailbox. Blocking would be done on the real number, which would always be sent. Caller ID would start with the real number, and if it wasn't found, continue on the stated number. That way:
If a company owns a block of numbers and sends the main one no matter who calls, the company name appears on caller ID, and the company can be blocked.
If I'm using a spoofing service to make a VOIP call from my number, it will show up as me, but clearly indicate that it's not my normal phone.
If someone else is making a call and spoofing my number, it will show up as me, but the number could still be blocked without blocking my real number, and it could also be tracked.
It is dangerous to allow impersonation of numbers without any detection.
Calls from abusing offshore outfits can be blocked entirely. Or, their ability to spoof CID can be blocked.
Even if international calls are difficult-to-impossible to deal with (which I don't think is true), that in no way means it's not worth tackling domestic ones. Just because you can't solve all aspects of a problem doesn't mean you shouldn't solve the parts that you can.
Calls from overseas should show the caller's number correctly. If they don't, then don't connect them.
Until the responsibility for this shit gets placed squarely on the carriers, nothing will happen. Fining the callers accomplishes nothing, they're too small and too slippery.
"1. Change your default ring to vibrate or nothing.
2. Give each of your contacts a custom ring so you know who it is."
Bit convoluted, just turn on Do Not Disturb and set it to 'contacts only' or 'favourites only'. Any aps you still want messages from you can set to allow as priority also.
I get tired of deleting robocall voicemails too.
I complained to T-Mobile about all the crap going to voicemail. There was no advantage of not answering calls if I then have to listen to all of the voicemails. They couldn't do anything about the robocall floods but they gave me free voice-to-text so I can bulk-delete voicemails faster.
Here in Australia I've have a Telstra Call Guardian 301 Mk2 cordless phone/answering machine for the past 12 months.
Its a rebranded BT call blocking phone that's been available in the UK for quite some time.
My attempted scam calls has dropped to almost zero since I've had this phone.
At the moment I have it on the 'strictest' setting - the only numbers that can get through are the ones I've entered into the phone (work, family, friends, etc.). Everything else is blocked, the phone doesn't even ring but the phone and the modem/router it is plugged into keeps a log of the attempts.
I like to Google some of the numbers occasionally when I'm bored and they're always reported scam/survey/etc. numbers.
I'm keeping it on the 'strictest' setting until the Australian Federal election is over after May 18th because some of the pollies are getting clever and instructing their live callers to press the # key after the announcement in the default Call Guardian setting then they leave messages on the answering machine.
They must know there's a lot of these Call Guardian phones in use these days where most owners just keep them on the default setting where unknown callers need to press # to be connected.
So BT provide the scammers with the ability to call you from a spoofed phone number, then sell you kit to block it!? I feel like the phone system has barely changed in decades and it's about time they addressed the root cause of things like this. Does the phone just send the number it would like to appear at the caller display?
42 AGs telling Pai to enforce the law? Good luck with that.And somehow either these jerks have figured out how thwart caller id or our phone company (POS Frontier) has decided to selectively reveal numbers. If the phone companies need to know who to bill for service, then should sure as heck know the real number as well.
Indeed: my phone answering policy is very similar. There are *very* few people whom I do not know who might have a reason to call me that is in my interests. Also, my octogenarian mother, living on her own in the middle of nowhere, has very strict instructions regarding what to do with calls (and emails) even mentioning money - basically, get a callback number, put the phone down, and call me or my sister whose voice she can definitely identify to let us sort it out.
Do you suppose that one day advertisers will start to work out that people don't actually like, as a rule, having adverts shoved at them day and night? And that doing so is a good way to stop their product ever being bought again?
Do you suppose that one day advertisers will start to work out that people don't actually like, as a rule, having adverts shoved at them day and night? And that doing so is a good way to stop their product ever being bought again?
I think that there is a gap between the one who manufacture the good and the one doing the phone call and the you and me final customer.
The one doing the phone calling knows that it does not work, but as long as they can convince the manufacturers that they should put money in such a scheme...
The one paying to have the phone call made are ignoring the fact that is has a contrary effect on the way their products are percieved and the company selling the phone call will certainly not reveal that fact.
"The one paying to have the phone call made are ignoring the fact that is has a contrary effect on the way their products are percieved and the company selling the phone call will certainly not reveal that fact."
You have just described the entire advertising industry and the marketing departments that pay them.
They can leave a message for that as well.
I have a very strict policy of not answering the phone if the calling number is not in my address book. So strict that my phone won't even ring -- it just gets shunted directly to voice mail.
This policy has never caused any trouble, and I can't imagine a circumstance where it would cause more than an inconvenience.
I put an SIT tone in my home answering machine. The special instruction tone tells the predictive dialers that my line is not in use. The 3 rising tones are the answer then you get my voice saying leave a message. Humans leave one, the others drop off. It took about 4 weeks and we noticed a dramatic drop in calls. I can now sit down to a cocktail uninterrupted.
I still haven't understood how this is technically possible. The telecoms own the wires. They know where the call is physically connected. How can stopping spoofing not be trivially easy? The only answer I can come up with is that they don't want to do it, because those calls make money.
It isn't that simple. In the days of landlines the number you had was based on where you live - if you moved to a different city you had to get a different phone number. So someone spoofing a number similar to yours (same prefix xxx-yyy in the US) would be easy to detect, since the switch would see an outside call entering with an inside number and know it was bogus and reject it.
Now your phone number bears no relationship to where you live, or where you are at any moment. Even if you still have that old landline, the switch can't reject an outside call with an inside prefix because it might be someone who ported their number to a cell phone or VOIP provider. There's no simple way for the switch to know what calls to reject. If it is an outside call with an outside number it REALLY can't know.
So the only alternative is to catch them where they enter the network, but that's not so easy either. If the calls entering AT&T's network destined to go through their network to your AT&T cell phone enter from another carrier, how can AT&T tell if the call is legit or not? Basically their only alternative would be that when they find spam calls happening 'live' they trace the carrier it is entering AT&T's network from and block ALL calls from that network and tell the network to improve their call screening and they'll be unblocked.
But I'm pretty sure that would be illegal in the US, since AT&T is a common carrier and can't block ANY legitimate calls. Even if they blocked a million spam calls if one legit call was blocked they could be fined by the FCC. But personally I'd be fine with lifting that restriction, and allow some legit calls to be blocked if they can show it was by accident while blocking spam/spoof calls. Just make them play a message to the caller so you know why your call was blocked and you can vote with your feet by choosing a carrier that doesn't allow spam/spoof calls to use their network!
It is easy, the operator of the calling number should verify. If it doesn't belong to that operator, the number is definitely spoofed and should be blocked. If the number does belong to that operator, check if it is on the right line. Similar for calls coming in from abroad but claiming a domestic number.
There is so much operators can do.
There is no reason with the caller ID should be specified by the caller instead of the operator they used to enter the phone system.
The spamer has to have a phone number registered with a phone operator. It is the responsibility of that operator to properly and truly identify the caller.
At least while it stays inside one country, there should be a routing list available and the first operator, the one used by the spamer to make a call should be held responsible (fine, punishment, public flogging) if they let through a faked ID.
There's no difference between local, VOIP or international calls. In all cases the telco that supports your landline or mobile number knows exactly who you are, regardless of any spoofing you may try or whether you withhold your number. They have to know precisely who is making the call so they can bill the caller for every call.
Its a little more complex for international calls: the chain of telcos who carry your call to its destination know the exact route it took because they all collect a portion of the call's cost.
As for every service - follow the money. The telcos don't know why a call is being made, wanted or unwanted, legal or not, but they always know who to charge for making it.
Yes, there is. A BIG difference. VoIP creates degrees of separation that can be used to disguise rogue operators and such. So no, the phone company may NOT be able to know just who you are or even who to bill properly (as in who they actually bill may not be who's supposed to be billed).
Most operators don't bill callers anymore, especially with VOIP it is just a flat rate. The only billing they do is operator to operator - and rogue operators have an incentive to let the spammers alone since they can get more revenue that way. It is a tiny amount of money per call per minute, but it adds up.
"The telcos don't know why a call is being made, wanted or unwanted, legal or not, but they always know who to charge for making it."
The phone company knows how the call came into their network and bills that operator and the only info they have on the call is what was passed to them by that operator. That may not be the originating network for the call and the information passed to them may be neither accurate nor true for any number of reasons, including incompatible systems somewhere down the line.
The problem isn't the in country calls. They could be blocked by the Telco's if they were motivated to do so. What I see is the calls coming in from off-shore call centers. Unless the country that call center is located in takes action not much will change. The off-shore centers provide jobs and also money to the country (and their government officials) and since the US is "rich", they (the originating country) feels that it's ok.
How can stopping spoofing not be trivially easy?
Getting a US-based SIP number with unlimited outbound calls is VERY, VERY easy.
I, for example, got one ($0 per month) recently. And I'm living in Australia!
Next, point the call server to the SIP IP address and Bob's-your-uncle.
Once this is set up, the scammers go into action to "discover" the phone numbers. They do this by setting up one of their outgoing numbers to call a "series" (and not random) from a number prefix or exchange. For example, your number is (212)123 4567. So they have a dialer that calls (212)123 0000 all the way up to 123 9999.
If the number rings, hang up. Put the number up in a list.
And here's where the money drop comes in: With a "working" list of numbers that ring, the scammers can either start calling those number OR they can SELL the working list to other gangs.
At the end of the day, it's a win-win scenario for them.
In order for me to "fight back", I use Lenny. Why is Lenny important (in this case)?
Because once the scammer finds out I've got Lenny, they take my number off their "working" list.
How do I know? I used to get about 4 calls per week with Lenny turned on.
Nowadays, the last scam call I got was February 2019. And before that, August 2018.
I don't care what the FCC/FTC decides or not. I can't wait for SHAKEN & STIR to get enacted in Australia. I have Lenny and it has given "instantaneous relief" from scam calls.
Yeah, they're using VOIP gateways. And it's multi-level: One company autodials you, through another company's VOIP gateway, when you answer, they transfer the call to a third call center company in India (or wherever).
The VOIP gateway is where you nail them...but they pay the phone companies, who are making nothing off landlines anymore, so are desperate for income...you see why they're not doing anything.
FCC could tag a huge tax on VOIP gateway calls, but that would punish the rest of us who are using them legitimately. They know who the offenders are, you can't miss a VOIP gateway pushing calls onto the network at the rate the robocallers do, they just don't want to kill the golden goose.
The "quiet ring" trick for unknown callers is the best one. My phone only rings for people in my contacts list. Everyone else is welcome to leave a message.
"My phone only rings for people in my contacts list. Everyone else is welcome to leave a message."
Tried that. Bastards got snarky and started leaving lengthy pre-recorded messages, filling up my inbox. And since they can spoof legitimate numbers, some of them STILL get through.
Been here too long. Elderly parents getting over 40 scam calls a day, now since I got a Truecall unit, down to maybe 4 a week and those are set not to ring but given a chance to leave a message.
So how do these ba******ds get away with it. There is an international treaty where phone calls are guaranteed to get through from caller to callee, which dates from several decades ago. Back in those days, quite simply, nobody would have been able to believe how technology has "improved". To make it possible, the telephone companies each receive a micro payment for every call that passes through its system and into the next company. Many micropayments make major bucks.
While the technology does exist to block the spammers and scammers, obviously by some of the telephone companies selling boxes which do the work, until the governments around the world sit down and renogiate the treaties, nothing will happen. The government's are quite happy to allow the companies to take the blame as they don't want to be involved, but as too many people block the calls, they question is how long will it be till people question the requirement to have and pay for a telephone line when other alternatives exist. The telephone companies are major tax cows for government Exchequers so expect to see some movement reasonably soon.
The frequency of calls I was getting about a year ago lead me to unplug the phone, resulting in complaints from relatives that they can no longer ring us. (I also have no intention of telling 90 year old grandparents to use a mobile instead). To resolve this I ended up setting up RasPBX on my Pi3 and configuring it so that whitelisted calls ring the home phone and everything else gets answered by Lenny, the calls are recorded for my entertainment and emailed to me on completion.
I went from being irrationally angry every time the phone rang (like Robert) to looking forward to the next scammer call so I could tweak the system and attempt to trap the scammers on the phone longer, this has kept me entertained and engaged for hours and I've learnt a lot about Asterisk and telephony in general as well.
Since first configuring the system I have managed to get the system to press 1 when an IVR call comes in in order to try to get connected to a human, and also randomly select Between Lenny, Astycrapper (Jordan) and the "are you there" child recordings.
Incidentally I have discovered in my fiddling that at least some scammers seem to be utilizing poorly configured (probably asterisk based) PBX's themselves, they seem to have the incoming calls being dumped into a conference type call they are already on and that the DTMF recognition is still turned on but without any actual error handling configured. I have had multiple calls where Lenny has incorrectly identified the speaker as a IVR robot and pressed 1 only to have the call suddenly disconnected by the remote end when the scammer PBX barfs on the DTMF tone.
I have wondered if you could look up the default Asterisk conference DTMF commands and find a way to cause greater disruption by shutting down the conference or conferencing in external parties (like the police) to the call vie the scammers PBX.
Switch to a system where it doesn't matter where the provider is.
Assign a short code. In the UK we have 1470 to mask one's own CLI and 1471 to give the number of the last incoming call. AFAIK the remaining 147n range is unused. Assign a number to one of them*. Dial that after a call and it's registered as probably problematic**. If the telecoms company recognises the source as problematic (and don't forget they do know where the call came from because they use it to bill the caller) then they credit the callee with a fee for receiving the call and add the fee and a handling charge to the bill. If the call originated with another telecoms company, even an overseas one, they bill that company. That company can pass the bill on with another handling charge added. Double (or more) the fee if the number called is on a do not call list.
In theory the victims get paid with credits against their phone bill and it's cost neutral at worst for the telecoms companies because their handling charge at least covers the costs unless the callers default. Defaults would be the equivalent of folding to avoid the fines. The telecoms companies have credit controllers so defaults will be limited. A telecoms company which doesn't keep proper track of the calls gets handed the bill and will change its ways PDQ or go out of business.
In practice, of course, this would kill the whole thing stone dead as the costs to the robocallers would go through the roof. The telecoms companies will realise this and know that if they're obliged to prepare for it they'll never get enough handling charges to cover their up-front costs. So proposing to enforce this will incentivise them to clamp down on the problem before the proposal gets taken any further. Once they're incentivised I'm quite sure they'd be very effective. On the principle that there should only be once chance to self-regulate any subsequent slackening off and the whole thing goes ahead.
* Vary for whatever numbering system works in your area.
** There's a risk of fraud if some toerag were to try responding to legitimate calls so the telecoms companies would need to gather a few reports from different people before actioning them.
Your post advocates a
(X) technical () legislative () market-based () vigilante
approach to fighting
() Spam
(X) Robocalls
() Cybercrime
Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(X) Legitimate uses would be affected
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
() Many users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
() Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority
() VPNs and proxy servers
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
() Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
() Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
() Joe jobs and/or identity theft
() Technically illiterate politicians
() Extreme stupidity on the part of users
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
() Blacklists suck
() Whitelists suck
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
() Why should we have to trust you?
() Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
() This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
() Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
It makes for an interesting read, to be sure, but let's get real : what is it you want ? Peace and quiet, only disturbed by a call from someone you know.
In France, we have the Red List. It is a list maintained by a government-controlled entity and imposes that any number on that list may not be called by commercial entities without prior approval from the person.
So cold-callers avoid numbers on that list like the plague because, if they do make the mistake and call me all I have to do is call my operator and lodge a complaint and they will be found and fined - I don't know how and I don't need to care.
About fifteen years ago I got mighty angry at one point about all the marketing calls at dinner or during the evening film, so fed up was I that I signed up to that service. Since I explained to my operator how much of a nuisance the marketers were, my operator signed me up for nothing.
Ever since that day, I have been asking myself why I hadn't signed up earlier. Even if you pay the one-time fee of €50, it is worth it for the peace and quiet you experience for the rest of your life. For the last fifteen years, I got one call. The lady started her speech and I just said, "Excuse me, you are aware that I'm on the Red List ?" (except it was in French, of course). After a half-second of silence she immediately started offering excuses and saying how sorry she was, then hung up in a hurry. I had never felt so good.
Does that not sound like a good solution ? I don't care if the ID was spoofed, it's not my problem. If they call, I just complain, then it will be their problem.
You're one of the few people it works for, then. I'm in France, signed upto la listed rouge and bloctel. I still get several scam calls each day, from solar panel companies, fake energy subsidies, insurance, etc. I've given up complaining to the authorities, it wastes too much of my time. Many of the calls are clearly from N. African call centres who don't care about French rules anyway. I just ignore any call whose number I don't recognise, and delete the voicemail later.
The same thing exists here. It gets ignored. From time to time, as reported here, ICO go after offenders and presumably their fines are increased if listed numbers are being called. Unfortunately the calling companies fold to avoid paying but they're now starting to get directors banned and at some point in the future I'm sure there'll be criminal convictions. I still favour a charge back onto the caller's bill with added charges if the celled number is on such a list. At the very least the problem would be contained by the telcos' credit departments.
In Italy there is a similar list, with the name "Register of Oppositions" - it's free to add you number - although opt-out still leaves outside many people who are too little informed to know it exists.
Still, this kind of systems work well for countries where language barriers don't make easy to call for abroad. English-speaking countries unluckily have that big source of cheap people (and some willingly to make some easy money) which are Pai's cousins (maybe one the reasons of his reluctance to act in US).
France can be targeted from French-speaking African sources. Other countries speaking less widespread languages are harder to target. For Italy Albania and Romania could be some sources, but probably they already make enough money with "legal" call-centers operations.
Still, starting to hinder local robocallers is still a good start - since my number was added to the list calls decreased to almost zero.
Anyway, avoiding to give one's phone numbers away to any entity asking if for "marketing purposes" is a first step. In Europe privacy laws do allow that, and the fewer lists you numbers ends in, the fewer calls you get.
How about naming Pai as being complicit to robocalling through dereliction of duty. That will enable at least 42 states to prosecute him. Even if he is only convicted to one month in each state, he'll be out of the running for nearly four years and that is without including trial time.
"have resulted in $488 million in consumer losses, a 49 per cent increase over 2017...
Since 2015, the FCC has fined such companies a total of $208.4m but has collected less than $7,000: a 0.003 per cent claim rate that is so low it has virtually no deterrent value."
Fines issued over the course of four years are less than half the profit to scammers in a single year. While the hilariously pathetic amount actually collected certainly doesn't make anyone look good, even if they collected 100% of the fines it would have zero effect since there would still be hundreds of millions in profit to be made.
What's odd about all this is how easy it is to stop. I guarantee a majority of robo calls come from SIP trunks (they're cheap), which means CLIP-No Screen is enabled by the provider. CLIP-No Screen allows the caller to provide any number they'd like as the source of the call. Look at the list of SIP providers and marvel at how many support it.
Want to stop the spoofing? Get rid of CLIP-No Screen. If every provider did this the amount of robo calling would drop off a cliff in a day as the real source numbers got added to block lists.
Bet you credits to milos many of the SIP trunks that run the robocallers are also rogue operators who mix the robocalls with legit call center calls to help ensure they stay up (knock them down, knock down the help desk calls and watch legit companies get lots of flak).
In that case the legit call centers should be a bit more careful in their choice of operator. And I am betting a lot of people would consider not being able to reach a help desk (until they have another operator) to be the lesser evil. And the companies getting flak for it do deserve it anyway for outsourcing the call center and not making sure those call centers use legitimate operators.
Those ARE legitimate operators. Or would you like to go back to support calls being 900 numbers or the European equivalent costing you $2 a minute while your device is a virtual brick in front of you? And no, there's no substitute for the product in question, meaning jumping ship is not an option.
it takes a RIDICULOUS low level of any "artificial intelligence" to figure out robocalling and stop it dead, or at least do grievous injury to it, make it expensive.
A normal user cannot physically make more than N calls per day, and most legitimate calls do get an answer.
Your software notices spikes of calls that either do not get answered (they're calling random numbers), or get cut after a few seconds (most people hang up).
Moreover, that phone number was activated just a few days ago.
I mean, those geniuses that say AI is good for something, is it that hard?
Also, a simpler means to report robocalls. It takes 15-20 minutes to do it in the FCC website. And you have to put a lot of personal information, with the only goal to make the process unpleasant, as supposedly your anonymity is assured and you are not going to be called to testify, etc,. Of course that should limit prank reports, but since even the legitimate reports are not paid attention...
OK, the robocaller can start using hundreds, thousands of lines to make himself invisible.
It's time to treat phone calls like e-mail spam and app attacks. You tell the network operator to clean up or their traffic is refused. Well-prepared statistics shown to Congress would instantly make it legal.
I use network blacklists on my personal mail server and it's refusing between 50 and 24000 connections per day from known spam hosts. Most are from DigitalOcean, with the usual background noise from Yahoo, Amazon, Wayfair, SendGrid, and dirty networks in Brazil.
I could get along OK without a telephone. Problem solved. But other members of the family, not so much. E-mail, great, computer video-calling maybe not as great as it used to be, but OK. But banks, even the cable company, seem to be implementing 2FA - two-factor authentication and the first thing they want is a phone number. So how does that mesh with methods sending all calls from unknown numbers to an answering machine, etc? A naive mind wants to know.
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