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Comment by SilverElfin | Hacker News Reader

I get relentless text and phone spam calls - both robotic and with humans - from just a few voice over Internet platforms. Bandwidth.com, Neutral Tandem, and ALL the brands associated with Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) like Inteliquent. Many of these companies got cease and desist orders in the past from the FTC. It didn’t help anything. We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.

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How would one discover which VOIP providers are the source of calls?

I wrote a little tool which can do lookups: https://github.com/evidlo/nanpa_lookup

There's no free source of this information anywhere. The only affordable option is telcodata.us

What do you do when these lookups return the company that owns the number but the company says that they are not in control of the number? E.g, I have one number that keeps harassing me that reports as Verizon but Verizon says they have not been with Verizon since 2024.

Also great tool, thank you

Try searching directly on telcodata.us: https://www.telcodata.us/search-area-code-exchange-detail

Did you get the data in the db from telcodata.us?

Yes, but its 3 years old and slightly stripped down.

https://freecarrierlookup.com/

There are other sites like this. And then you can use the carrier info, go to that platform‘s website, and submit an abuse complaint through their form. But all they will do is possibly block that one spammer from contacting your phone number while continuing to allow the spammer to operate. And of course they have other spammers as customers.

Better option is to skip their abuse form and send complaints to your state’s AG, to the FTC website, and FCC website. They’ll ask for a lot of info but I think it helps them identify the problematic companies.

You can also forward spam texts to 7726 (“SPAM”) in the US, and your carrier will use that info to take action.

Just hack into SS7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyu7NB7W6Y

> We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.

Is that what European countries do? Is that why there are no robocalls there?

I'm not positive, but i think they charge an astronomical amount for calls that don't originate from a local calling prefix. Of course you can get those, but some countries require ID.

Mainly I know that calling from a voip number was really expensive when I tried to set something up for a family member going on vacation to Europe. That probably cuts back on a lot of spam calls.

I don't know how it is with companies, but there are countries where you can have subscriptions which allows you to call any EU numbers without a surcharge. And what I saw weren't even that expensive, around 50 euros/month.

It may be less bad than some of the stories I heard from the US but it's still enough to never pick up the phone unless you're expecting a call.

These are all platforms with many different products built but others on top of them. Shutting down all abuse is a cat and mouse game and not something they can "just do" if given tighter rules

This seems solvable. Put the person most closely traceable to the source of the spam in jail, like a form of KYC laws. If you can't identify the actual human who is causing you to put spam into the network, or that person is outside of your country's jurisdiction, then you are the one who goes to jail. If you don't want to go to jail, then don't accept calls from someone you can't point the finger at.

This is how Germany deals with torrent piracy. The net effect is that it was illegal to run a public WiFi hotspot until a special exemption was made for it. In 2017.

So someone goes to the store and buys a phone and sends a spam sms with it. Put the store operator in prison???

Onvoy VOIP numbers are rife with scammers using them (Sinch).

Really sad how these rules do nothing to stop them

Google voice does operate on bandwidth.com btw.

uhhh I use Bandwidth at high volume for non-spammy reasons in my app. Please give me a heads up before they're shut down :P

Shut one down, another pops up in its place.

Not if we actually put the people financing these companies in prison.

Ok shut that one down too.

Shut that one down and jail the execs too. The number of people willing to take that chance is finite; it is more finite when the penalty is seen to be consistently applied.

This is why executives need to be held personally responsible when they direct a company to wilfully, blatantly, and repeatedly disregard laws to the detriment of society. These are people who should be in prison for a time, and barred from serving as an officer of a corporation for more time after that. Eventually people get the message; you don't get to break laws just because you hide behind the name of a company.

Those people are who the entire system is built to benefit. They won't be held accountable in most countries.

"Limited Liability" should not mean "No Liability"

Death to good, long live perfection!

Sinch just keeps acquiring one company after the other and turning them into the new spam channel. Weirdly the only responsible player seems to be Twilio. The others refuse to identify the spammers that are their customers, and keep saying it’s not their responsibility since they’re a “wholesaler” (their words).

Twilio has historically been a customer of these other companies, so not really at the same level. Though that's been changing recently

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