FCC robocall enforcement does little to stop illegal calls, Senate hears | Hacker News Reader

FCC robocall enforcement does little to stop illegal calls, Senate hears

arstechnica.com

45 pointsgslin11 comments

Not sure if it helps, but every chance I get I keep them on the line as if I was falling for it (similar to but less sophisticated than kitboga, a man who has made a career out of scamming scammers).

The robot callers are adapting, recently using soundboards (a legit sounding "hi this is bill." but really a sound file) and speech to text to interpret my replies and keep the happy path automated as much as possible. Do not try deviating from the program, i.e if you ask what day it is, they will detect the subversion and hang up. I use a credit card number generator to let them try over and over with bad numbers. I have heard a rumor that credit card networks charge a fee for each failed number (that passes the LUN checksum). Can anyone confirm if this is true?

it would be like saying, “I’ll show those email scammers, by reading and replying to every spam email, surely they will be overburdened”, when you’re fighting automatic programs with human time, you’ve already lost

I personally see it as my mission to keep them on the line as long as humanly possible, it might just save someones life - my personal best was 90 minutes. That was a few years ago now, and they certainly seem more sophisticated these days.

I normally get run-of-the-mill vehicle warranty and fake charity scammers. Only once was I bestowed with the poisonous species of loot-your-bank-account scammer, and I only got 5-10 minutes with him. He had very elaborate countermeasures. I lost him when he called me back and asked me to repeat my SSN, and I couldn't remember what I had told him. I recently lost a rather benign life insurance scammer because he asked my age , and then my dob and I couldn't think fast enough. Next time, Gadget, Next Time!

FCC should require phone providers to give us all info from callers. Then we could block anyone who changes their caller ID, anyone that calls from a VOIP number, anyone who calls from outside the US, any call that has a hop that loses information, or whatever we want.

I still seem to be able to reduce my robocalls when they've increased in frequency by picking up and immediately muting my end. I think it tricks some dialer systems into thinking the line is dead or a fax/modem, because after I do this once during a spat of robocalls, they seem to stop for a time

Are telephone network providers regulated by being common carriers which disallows them to unpeer from the shady networks? Robocallers are not using AT&T or Verizon, I imagine.

When the FCC removes a telco from the Robocall Mitigation Database US telcos are mandated to drop their traffic.

I believe (but could be wrong) that common carriers are still allowed to discontinue service from abusive users, and unsolicited robocallers have been classified as abusive.

But what about negligent peers? My understanding is that there is still a carrier passing on this robot traffic that peers with all other carriers, so discontinuing service from certain users isn't enough (because of the fly by night operations), the carriers need to ban their peers who aren't policing their users enough.

I’m to the point where I just leave “Silence Unknown Callers” enabled on my phone. Before that I was getting at least 10 spam calls a day. We’re long past the point where it’s possible to accept a call from an unknown number.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com