On the Trail of the RoboCall King
wired.com
wired.com
If everyone in the industry is getting rich from this and the FCC is serving industry and not the people, then the plan of action would quite probably look like this:
1. Pass laws that make robocalls illegal to pacify the populace.
2. Charge one or two operators a year in civil court max, but not enough to actually deter people from doing it. And make sure to brand them names like "the robocall king" so that people think you've actually made a huge dent in robo-calling. Again, to pacify the populace.
3. Don't actually enforce the laws you passed on any meaningful scale and don't require technological changes which would stop this. Despite the fact that it doesn't happen in any other country, even third world ones, pretend that this is just a technologically intractable problem.
Pathetic.
The phone companies ARE able to stop the caller ID spoofing with a simple notch filter placed at the right point on the line, or packet filter on the right place on the firewall.
They could easily force businesses to give a valid return number on their calls and prevent jamming based caller ID spoofing, but instead they don't want to because these calls mean more money for them.
T-mobile already does, along with some other magic logic they have stopped almost all of the spam calls from reaching me. ...Occasionally they block my mom for a day or two, but it's worth it.
This. If something is broken and nobody wants to fix it, follow the money.
If you drive to a certain location with some level of frequency you will notice the location of the spoofed numbers are in those communities. This goes beyond neighbor spoofing, and suggests some level of information sharing between the robocaller and the phone carrier.
As of January, I started driving to Pleasanton, California every day for work. I also started visiting San Rafael about once month to visit friends who recently moved there.
In the last few months - almost every robocall I get is coming from Pleasanton or San Rafael prefixes.
Not couldn't - didn't want to.
There have been several initiatives that the FCC as well as the FTC have done over the past 2 years.
They gave permission to providers to begin blocking unallocated numbers in 2017 which included IRS numbers and this reduced the number of IRS scam calls. Providers are not normally allowed to block calls so rules had to be formulated about when they could block calls like these.
The FCC authorized wireless providers to take measures to block spam text messages in 2018.
By the end of 2019, caller ID authentication is expected to be put in to use. The FCC cannot specify how providers are to implement a caller ID authentication system. An independent task force, the IETF, created an RFC for the STIR[1] and SHAKEN protocols to authenticate a caller's ID. These types of things have to take input from all involved parties and settle on a proposal after reviewing it and agreeing on it. The networks have agreed to implement it within their own networks first, at the behest of the FCC. This kind of system can't be implemented overnight and the FCC is not in a position to specify an implementation and force providers to use it.
In addition there have been a number of prosecutions of companies, like ABC Hispana Inc[2]. However, it is difficult to prosecute offshore providers in noncompliant countries although the FCC is proposing rules to allow it to charge such companies regardless.
[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/stir/about/
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/152-3108/a...
I don't know enough about the telephone system to know if number spoofing is something providers could prevent?
Say you implement something like this: https://www.wombatdialer.com/blog/blog/2017/03/17/outbounds-... this is a reverse IVR, that keeps calling until it gets an explicit acknowledgement. It is cheap to run (you set up a FreePBX somewhere), it does not tire, and can go on until it gets a confirmation.
In the days when the calls were for auto warranties, it was "What company do you represent, and in what state is it incorporated?" that caused them to disconnect.
When I get calls from the home buyer scams I'll get to the point where they ask for my address. I'll make up something like 6843927991 Esplanada Terraced View Way Point Circle and I've never been called on it, they act like something is wrong with the system when they can't find the address.
Sometimes when I call numbers back I'll go right into a spiel asking if they're registered voters who want to see Trump president for life and what monthly support amount can we count on. I find it so amusing when I get responses like "this number can not receive unsolicited calls". I found for some reason people will usually stay on the line if you plow through the conversation, it's like they want to first explain why I shouldn't be calling them before hanging up.
For some reason my favorite name I've come up with for these people is Bobert Robertson. I'll play with them when they ask me to spell it, sometimes it's Bobrot Robyurtzon, the y is silent of course.
I've had people beg me to stop calling them, that I'm disrupting their work day. When you get into it it can be very amusing.
There are also likely phone system commands to quickly verify the incoming phone number a second time utilizing out of band signals. If how to derive how to do this, one might be able to detect spoofed caller ID and retrieve the actual source line information.
I wonder if either of these technologies could be used to detect robocalls.
Personally if I had the time and ability to write such a system, what I would do to incoming robocalls is go and route them (and pressing one if it is necessary) to an AI voice system just smart enough to pull the person's leg for a few hours making the person run in circles trying to explain the deal to what they think is a person who can't understand it. You know, robo the robo-call.
If you haven't heard a few, listen to some of the calls on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3OxCWLEmoIhNMm-hnvBm9Q
(not affiliated)
It appears Hiya and Nomorobo have sensible policies.
However...
The problem is the completely randomized neighbor calls.
They are “calling from” real numbers belonging to real people.
Hiya Premium has neighbor blocking, but only prefix by prefix, and you can’t bulk add the prefixes.
It appears adding a prefix adds every individual number within that prefix to the phone’s block list, and each call block plugin can only block so many numbers, so the more prefixes you have, the more plugins have to be enabled.
“WideProtect” aims to simplify this, your mileage may vary:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wideprotect-spam-call-blocke...
> telephone calls to consumers for sales purposes are illegal if the calling company is not in possession of an explicit and effective declaration of consent by the consumer
https://www.limegreenipnews.com/2017/08/germany-federal-netw...
There is an interesting reply all episode about it: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhk76/135-robocall-...
Also our regulatory bodies are most certainly stronger in this regard than the FCC.
Calls to Sweden mobile numbers are $0.07 to $0.20 per minute depending on the carrier, vs $0.01 to US numbers. Plus swedish speaking 'sales' talent is probably also more expensive than english speaking.
P.S. it's not on the Play Store anymore because I got booted off along with all of the other apps which access users CALL_LOG(s).
When my wife was pregnant the hospital called me to say she'd been admitted after falling in the street.
Surely hanging up on anyone not in your contacts is a bad idea?
I kind of worry about those situations but I'm just as likely to miss a call being on the phone to these arseholes anyway.
I really want the ability to block certain country codes on my phone, 99% of the scam calls are from outside of NZ.
I'm not sure a cop would leave a message in the situation you mentioned above but otherwise it works OK. Some of the robo callers end up leaving a message but it's almost always 2 seconds or less so I don't bother listening, anything that short just gets deleted.
Course I block the numbers but they seem to have an almost endless supply. Interestingly my Pixel doesn't report the call ever as suspected spam.
Blocking numbers of spam calls is like blocking numbers of spam email; most of them are spoofed so it's most likely not to help.
To give them a special name, in and of itself, raises phonecall spam to a new level of shenanigans, when this is something of a script kiddie skill. Same as email, this is a mild nuisance. It's not some crisis tearing at the fabric of society.
It's sort of like complaining about how windows are transparent, and that you shouldn't need curtains to prevent people from looking inside. It's like there's this expectation that it should just be illegal to look inside any window.
If it's a phone number, people are going to call it. If you don't want to be disturbed, don't let your phone ring? If you only want to be disturbed by familiar individuals, only ring for those numbers, or screen voice mail?
Seems... almost too easy to deflect this sort of thing.
Not to mention every other person is actively bothered in the real world by a real alarm instead of just scrolling past while checking their email. Email spam vs robocalling is not even comparable in terms of the effects. I miss real phone calls from people, such as job offers, due to spammers forcing me to send everything to voicemail. I'm not a hateful person by any means, but I honestly wish the absolute worst on anyone who is behind scamming robocalls purely due to the amount of minor annoyance built over time.
What is your "almost too easy" solution? Block all local calls? Have you applied for a job and expected a call back only to be directed to a cruise/timeshare?
Except it's more annoying than spam email because it actively interrupts people.
And since origins are spoofed, I usually can't determine if it's a robocall unless I answer. Especially if you are expecting unknown number calls (selling something, etc.)