FTC Offering $50,000 to Anyone Who Can Stop Robocalls
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
If I understand it correctly, someone out there is initiating the connection, be it using Twilio or any of the tons of other IP-to-PSTN gateways. While Caller ID can be spoofed, the call itself should be possible to trace back to the initiating gateway using warrants and assistance from the intermediary parties. Right? If so, then what's the problem following through on this and having the gateway ban the customer and file charges against them?
Is it because the spammers are fly-by-nighters using stolen CCs to make dummy Twilio accounts automatically? Is that what FCC's trying to catch?
Or, you could just do what everyone else does and locate yourself overseas, in a country with weak laws.
Somewhat akin to having gone through the same class together under a terrible teacher.
I get that exact call constantly. It's quite fortunate actually, the blaring fog horn is very immediately tells me "you can hang up now" without having to think too much.
I would say that cruise ship sound is responsible for me losing 20 hours of extreme productivity per year. The person that runs that company deserves the death penalty.
I live in New Hampshire, a "swing state." This means that, unlike for most of the U.S., my vote matters in presidential elections.[1]
I imagine this is why I get ~6 calls a day by numbers in Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Iowa, etc. All political as far as I can tell. I've given up on answering my phone until after the election.
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[1] The electoral college bothers me. My presidential vote matters. If you're reading this from California or Texas, yours simply doesn't. You're a foregone conclusion.
I would imagine that if we abolished the electoral college we might see 80%+ turnout in smaller states, since the only way to be "represented" on the national scale would be to have as many of your people vote as possible.
It shouldn't.
> If you're reading this from California or Texas, yours simply doesn't.
This is patently false. You only think this way because you were told to.
This is a fine opportunity for those who don't live in a "battleground" state to really vote for the guy they want to. There are many presidential contenders, and regardless of your beliefs, you will find someone who fits them much more closely if you simply look.
You can vote for Romney or Obama, but I know you'll walk out of that polling place feeling dirty. I'll walk out of mine knowing that I voted for the guy I really wanted to vote for and didn't shoot myself in the foot doing so.
If enough people realize this and do this, you'll get a much more dynamic political system and you'll send a very clear message to both the Republican and Democrat party.
> I would imagine that if we abolished the electoral college we might see 80%+ turnout in smaller states
The only places that see that kind of turnout are 3rd world countries where everything has gone to shit. They need to go out and vote or things will just get worse for them. You will never see that kind of turnout in any Western country.
Yes, quite a few states are sure things for one major party candidate or the other, and those of us who live in "safe" states like that can vote for anyone we please without undue worry about actually influencing the election result. My state (Minnesota) has cast its Electoral College votes for the candidate of the same major party for as long as I have been able to vote (more consistently than any other state in the country). Minnesota has fairly reasonable ballot-access laws, so there are ten different presidential candidates on the Minnesota ballot. There is also a third party that is a "major party" for purposes of Minnesota law, and that party is running a United States Senate candidate this year. I have a lot of choices here. Over the years, I have split my ticket when voting such that I have till not voted for candidates from six different political parties. I will be splitting my ticket again this year.
But the way our system works, voting for a third-party contender is effectively a vote for your least-favorite major party contender.
You seem to be using extravagant rhetoric ("patently false", "send a very clear message") to justify your ideas, rather than thinking realistically about the presidential electoral system. The RNC and DNC are not losing sleep over third-party presidential voters -- as we all can see, they're focusing on spending hundreds of millions of dollars elsewhere.
Only for a very few fleeting times in the country's recent history have third parties had influence at the presidential level other than as spoilers or cult-of-personality gadflies (Nader, Perot). There are overwhelming structural impediments to third party presidents.
Because it has lasting consequences. Those numbers are counted. They are poured over by the major parties and those votes affect the platform of the major parties in the years to come.
Want to really make a difference? Vote your own beliefs.
> Only for a very few fleeting times in the country's recent history have third parties had influence at the presidential level other than as spoilers or cult-of-personality gadflies (Nader, Perot).
If you're going to restrict yourself to recent history, then even a few occurrences are significant. Regardless of what you think of Perot or Nader, they did affect the platforms of the major parties in the years after.
If you're not going to restrict yourself to recent history, you should realize that the Republican party was a third party when it got started. It had one overriding issue it was pushing at the time, the abolition of slavery. As a result of its success, the Whig party completely collapsed.
(I'm going to throw out the pretense of being unbiased, because it's easier to write honestly. But feel free to replace my favorite candidate according to your conscience.)
There are many people who believe that the GOP has turned its back on its core principles; indeed, the Tea Party was a pretty strong demonstration of that. Yet the party persists on playing the same old political games despite these loud voices. So the people need to speak in even louder terms to make them hear.
I harbor few illusions that my vote will put Gary Johnson in the White House. But I do hope that when all the votes are counted, the GOP will say, "if all those votes for Gary Johnson had instead gone to our candidate, we would have won". If that were to happen, then I think there would be a strong incentive next time around for them to choose a candidate and platform that would be more palatable to those votes they lost to Johnson.
I also live in New Jersey, I am a registered Republican, and I will be voting for Gary Johnson as well.
I am really curious about the percentage of people who will do the same.
I'd say, have a realistic understanding of the nullity of this particular gesture. If you want to make a gesture of significance, you have to get involved in actual on-the-ground politics. (Maybe you are, but from your writing, you don't sound like it.)
If I register my number on the National Do Not Call Registry, will it stop all telemarketing calls?
No. Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most telemarketing calls, but not all.
Because of limitations in the jurisdiction of the FTC and FCC, calls from or on behalf of political organizations,
charities, and telephone surveyors would still be permitted, as would calls from companies with which you have an
existing business relationship, or those to whom you’ve provided express agreement in writing to receive their
calls. However, if you ask a company with which you have an existing business relationship to place your number on
its own do-not-call list, it must honor your request. You should keep a record of the date you make the request.
Are calls from political organizations or calls soliciting for charities covered?
Political solicitations are not covered by the TSR at all, since they are not included in its definition of
“telemarketing.” Charities are not covered by the requirements of the national registry. However, if a third-party
telemarketer is calling on behalf of a charity, a consumer may ask not to receive any more calls from, or on behalf
of, that specific charity. If a third-party telemarketer calls again on behalf of that charity, the telemarketer
may be subject to a fine of up to $16,000.When you post using the indentation formatting to get fixed chars, you get a scrolling mess like this that's pretty much unreadable.
Putting in that indentation doesn't improve your post, it makes it enough trouble to read that I don't bother.
Of course, this program is only a small part of the solution. But it works very well for matching the patterns in a sound record.
Unfortunately, I am European, and cannot participate. Feel free to use it, though. License is MIT.
Having said that, and living here now, I wonder how many of these ridiculous scam, spam and random calls I wouldn't get if the callers had at least a few cents per call tacked on to the price?
I mean, I have no doubt that they probably pay some provider for some access to the network, but if calls had essentially 'a few cents' at the bare minimum... I know normal people would have to pay the same thing, but still.
And who knows... having not been in Australia for so long, things may be just as awful there now too, but I do know that I never hear my mother complaining about all the calls.
However, many of the robocalls and scam calls coming into my line these days appear to come from overseas. I don't know how they can afford to do that but I've seen reports that some are using spare capacity in legitimate overseas call centres as a side-business. Otherwise you have to assume they make enough from their scam to be worth it, or purchase the capacity on credit and do a runner before paying the bill, or using stolen credit cards. Actually there are many ways now that I think about it!
Point being that charging for outgoing calls won't stop the robocalls but will cost legitimate users.
That's the end of the technical requirements. After that, policies and prosecution.
If the robocall were to blast DTMF tones down the phone it could automatically bypass and I'd need a more advanced setting (of which there are many). But I haven't needed to do that in over a year of operation. Only downside so far is my bank has recently taken to calling me up to verify transactions, using a robocaller, so I may need to give them my mobile.
I considered setting up asterisk to do something similar since the device was a little pricey, but decided the time saving was worth it. It also records my calls to a SD card if needed. Now my land line is the disposable one I give out and my mobile number is the one I'm careful with.
Not affiliated with them, just a satisfied user.
If enough people would do this, I would hope that the ecomonics of it would shift.