Indian telcos to cut off scammy, spammy, telemarketers for two whole years India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) on Tuesday directed telcos to stop calls from unregistered telemarketers – and prevent them from using networks again for up to two years – as part of an effort to curb spam and scams. "This decisive action by the TRAI is expected to significantly reduce spam calls and provide relief …
Not clear, but I suspect it's only for telemarketeers making calls terminating in the Indian market. Whilst a similar approach would be very useful for tele-scammers phoning out from India to the UK (and probably other nations), I don't see any evidence of this. Which is unfortunate, India's international reputation is sullied by its location as a regular host country for tele-scammers.
If we had any regulators in the UK the problem could be reduced considerably.
There are systems in place to control energy brokers, but this is completly bypassed by sub-brokers from India.
TPS is beyond a joke. They have a boiler plate reply to ANY complaint that the company complained about says 'it is not us guv' and TPS says sorry to trouble you. EVEN if you have DKIM and SPF proof by email AND voice recordings, that the the scamming bastards have sent. EVEN if they have given you some one elses meter AND bank details!
And do not get me started on the private sector. Part of Trustpilot's guidlines is you must not slag any one off EVEN if they are breaking the law. If they complain about a review Trustpilot will withdraw it.
My blood pressure is to high to even contemplate the waste of space that is Ofcom.
Thinking of an honest answer, I would believe this way the system can't be gamed - the list can't be hacked or 'gently modified' by some willing bureaucrat, probably in some far-off administrative district only large enough to fit a single elephant, ready to accept a few rupees for the 'favor'.
> this way the system can't be gamed
That only works if the chain is decentralized AND edits require a consensus-mechanism, such as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
Blockchains are not intrinsically tamper-proof. If I am the centralized agency that holds the blockchain, nothing prevents me from simply editing an entry at will, and then re-hashing the entire chain to "validate" the new reality.
And at that point, the question stands why it couldn't be just an ordinary database.
It's not about decentralized, it's about chain of custody, the blockchain database holds a record of all transactions and this record has multiple copies held by multiple people.
You fool around with the data and they can unequivocally trace the source of the modifications.
> You fool around with the data and they can unequivocally trace the source of the modifications.
No, they cannot.
Because, without a consensus mechanism, any such trace is worth squat.
Let's say I have a blockchain, and share that with 100000 people. They all have the same chain. Okay. So now someone (who could be me), changes his copy of the chain, and tells everyone: "Hey, I found a discrepancy! The chain y'all have is invalid!"
Now, how is everyone going to check that I am wrong (or right)? Maybe I am trying to trick them now. Or maybe the copy they got in the first place was bad to begin with. They have ZERO way of deciding which of the two applies. And that doesn't just apply when I "revise" the chain, it also applies every time I add another block to it. How can they verify that the new block is valid?
That's why blockchains have this thing called "consensus mechanism"...a way that makes it really, really, really, REALLY hard to trick everyone into accepting changes to the chain, because in order to facilitate any changes, you have to solve a puzzle, that is really hard to do, but the result of which is really easy to verify for correctness.
Now, the thing about consensus mechanisms: In order for them to work, there HAS TO BE an incentive for all participants in the chain. With shitcoins, this is easy, beacause investing the work/stake required for the mechanism, gives participants a payday. But for a database, there is no incentive.
you don't need either Pow or PoS if your users are authenticated. Messages are only accepted on to the chain if they are signed by a trusted key. The distribution of those keys is centralised by the telecoms authority, and each provider has their own key. You could even make it so that your central authority is the only entity adding blocks, and you're just using the DLT for replication purposes. Update requests can be submitted through another method.
(I suppose technically it's still Pow but you make the work involved really really small)
That isn't true, the data itself can prove the discrepancy as it is easy to prove against IRL truth in this case. If TelemarketerXY467 was previously blacklisted, and is now checked off as "OK", it is easy to trace the burden of proof that was used to make that decision - the bureaucracy has the paperwork necessary.
Consensus is only currently used on blockchain because blockchain is currently used for tracking funding - cryptocurrency - and there is no chain of proof beyond the blockchain itself. The blockchain is used for proof of both a journal *and* a deed of ownership, and therefore needed a consensus in order to guarantee that any changes made to said blockchain are, indeed, legitimate.
But in this case blockchain is only being used as a journal of change, the burden of proof of the data it is linked to communicating isn't intrinsic to the blockchain's existence. The data can be re-confirmed and the blockchain rolled back to the correct confirmation point.
The press release uses "Sender" capitalised, presumably in the sense "Sender" is defined in the Act the PR references.
However, if the Sender is a private limited company (PVT), that wouldn't in itself stop the company's owner liquidating it and starting a new company with a clean record unfettered by the telco ban, continuing where they left off. In fact, a sensible owner would already have a few companies "on the shelf" ready to flip a banned company's business into at a moment's notice.
This ban can only have any effect if it also names any persons with significant control or ownership of a banned company, so that a "Phoenix company" strategy like this won't work as well.
Double points for banning any Directors of a telco-banned company from being Directors of any company on the government registry.
They way I understand it, many of these scammers already have this in place. If the Indian government takes action or the name gets flagged for some reason, they just roll out a new one. It should also be pointed out, many of these folks already have more than one company running different scams as is.
As I keep saying, make the calls chargeable against the telco who would be entitled to pass it on to the caller plus a handling charge. Policing it all, including the phoenix company stuff, then becomes a credit control issue for the telcos - and an incentive for them to clean up their customer base. The prospect of having to do that would almost certainly enable them to suddenly discover that can deal with the problem without requiring any such legislation.
The problem is less the telco, than the fly by night VOIP gateways, who route the calls from The Internet to the telephone system. They sign contracts with the telcos to gain access, blast out a bunch of robocalls, then disconnect, change their names and do the same thing over and over again. By the time the telco realises what's going on, they're gone.
The VOIP gateway providers are where we need to attack the problem of robocalls. Make their connection to the POTS network more difficult and see what effect it has. You could try making it more costly (large cash prepayment up front to connect) but I doubt these characters are planning to pay any invoices.
1. Never answer unknown number phone calls. Legitimate callers will find another way to contact you.
2. Never do telephone business with someone who unexpectedly rings you, and has a thick accent. This may be impolite and even racist, but its kept me in good stead.
3. Warn your elderly parents and friends.
All the Indian scammers need to do is start using VoIP trunks in a "friendly" country. I know that in the UK, we block non-UK VoIP systems from using UK numbers, but the scammers may find ways around this. VPNs, unsuspecting (deliberately or otherwise) UK SIP trunk providers, and VPNs used to hide the scammers' locations are just a few of the things they can do.
Until we have a proper method of reporting these crimes to the Indian police and - this is key - a commitment from them to actually stop this shit, nothing is going to change. What we need is pressure at the highest level: how about the UK saying we'll whack large tariffs onto goods imported from India unless they actually do something about it?
What happens with all this money that ends up in India? I suspect the government has little will to do anything.
And this doesn't even address the other "don't care" states such as Syria and Myanmar where this happens. There, they're run by criminal gangs pressganging otherwise innocent people into scamming for them.
I think it's clear by now that the Indian authorities don't give a flying f*ck about shutting down these call centers. Either that, or they don't have the funding or the resources, which comes down to the same reason, but at a higher level in the organisation.
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