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Comment by gvb | Hacker News Reader

STIR/SHAKEN is supposed to stop the spoofing. For an explanation, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN

The problem is that carriers (especially smaller ones) have been dragging their feet on implementing it, and nobody can use it to actually block calls until essentially everybody supports it and is interoperating. Until then, phones will just show calls between STIR/SHAKEN carriers as having verified caller ID.

would it be possible to tell my carrier to simply block all call that are not (STIR/SHAKEN)?

If all my friend are on carrier that support it, I am not interested in receiving call from people that are not on a carrier that support it.

I highly doubt any carrier would offer this, especially with the current adoption being where it's at. You'd be better off using your phone's capabilities to restrict calls to only your contacts.

This is what I do, and feel is the only solution now. Phone always on DND/only allow contacts to ring. A whitelist approach if you will.

This is great and all until there’s an emergency and someone is trying to reach you.

Yeah, it's less than ideal, but this is the future that the lazy carriers have brought us to. Hopefully, someone trying to reach me in an emergency would have the brains to send a text.

You can do this in software on your phone (assuming Android).

How does one do that? Do I need another app? I don't see a setting for this in my Android settings.

In the Phone App, under Settings -> "Spam and Call Screen", there are bunch of Spam and Call Screening options.

There's also an app called YACB which offers advanced filtering.

I think the smaller carriers have till middle of next year to implement STIR/SHAKEN.

Isn't it already possible for a phone to display the STIR/SHAKEN Caller ID verification status of each incoming call now?

This would be useful in the interim as this system rolls out, and would also encourage adoption by mobile carriers

> The Federal Communications Commission requires use of the protocols by June 30, 2021

Spoofing still exists, though. Is the issue now that our phones are backwards-compatible with the insecure system?

That deadline has been repeatedly extended

STIR/SHAKEN hasn't worked correctly or stopped robocalls like promised. Congress basically told everyone that this was the answer and would stop robocallers for good, but in reality did barely anything at all. The real solution is to label robocallers as terrorist and sanction countries with large amounts of robocalls for sponsoring terorrism. Before long, everyone will be too scared to even consider working in a robocall center and they will start turning on each other and reporting their bosses. They should even offer monetary rewards and protections for providing intelligence on the people operating these.

And if they do not comply, to follow through with a Hellfire missile, right? /s

If someone and the coworkers on their floor are calling and scamming old people out of their retirement money, then there is no sarcasm needed here. That should be perfectly justifiable.

I'll paint the targeting laser myself.

I mean, think about how many people scammers are killing prematurely as is. Once these countries that we previously let shit on Americans for a long time have some serious sanctions, I'm sure they'll find ways to deal with the problems themselves.

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