[HN Gopher] FCC to remove companies from robocall database for n...
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FCC to remove companies from robocall database for non-compliance
[pdf]
Author : nobody9999
Score : 350 points
Date : 2022-10-05 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (docs.fcc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (docs.fcc.gov)
| xwdv wrote:
| Unfortunately whats more annoying these days is getting spam
| texts claiming to be Amazon saying I've won something or have
| some package that can't be delivered or whatever, the message
| includes a shady link I have to click to resolve the issue. I
| feel like investigating these links and seeing if I can hack the
| scammers in retaliation.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| It's pretty bizarre how, at least in the US, we've allowed
| robocalls and spam to basically make phone calls useless.
| Everyone I know gets multiple spam calls a day, most people just
| don't answer their phones anymore unless it's someone they know.
| Everyone hates this yet no one in power seems to even care.
| samename wrote:
| "no one in power seems to care"
|
| Isn't this an example of the exact opposite? The people in
| power and in charge of our communications network are preparing
| to block providers who aren't following their robocall policy.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I feel that it is too little too late. Until we pin down one
| of the heads of the scammy companies that do this and
| publicly execute them, I don't think anyone will feel justice
| has been served. Like, 4k-streaming-hanging-in-times-square
| public, not lethal-injection-with-limited-viewing-space.
| zamalek wrote:
| > I feel that it is too little too late.
|
| Keep in mind who was the previous chairperson of the FCC,
| and who appointed him. Jessica has been moving at breakneck
| speed since she was appointed.
|
| Disallowing connections from the company is effectively
| executing them, would you engage with a telecom business
| (legitimate or not) that is unable to connect to the
| average American?
| lazide wrote:
| It depends on how long it takes (and how hard it is) to
| setup a new telecom company connection like this.
|
| If hard and takes awhile, yeah it will help. Otherwise,
| they'll just churn through shell companies.
| pianoben wrote:
| Yeah, after like a decade or more of inattention. Even if
| they somehow block _all_ robocalls, it 's going to be years
| before people begin to trust their phones again, if ever.
|
| They (telecoms and regulators, all) really screwed up hard on
| this one. I have to wonder who really benefitted from this
| broken status quo, besides the spammers themselves.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > ... it's going to be years before people begin to trust
| their phones again, if ever.
|
| This is a very strong point. It's helped me arrive at the
| conclusion that phone communication is largely an
| unnecessary luxury. Of course, I believe that having the
| option of calling someone important to me (or receiving
| their call) in an emergency situation is difficult to
| overrate but I've also pretty much entirely limited my
| verbal phone conversations to that sort of situation. Just
| about any other situation where I might be expected to have
| / use my phone is actually a problem with the other party's
| expectations.
| standardUser wrote:
| Maybe they care now, but for a good 2 or 3 decades they sure
| didn't seem to mind.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| I'm confused. Historical robocalls by legit marketing firms
| were largely eliminated by the rule banning making such
| calls to cell phones, combined with the do-not-call
| registry.
|
| That largely fixed the problem from legitimate robocallers
| (except the handful of exceptions made in the relevent
| laws).
|
| The more recent robocall problem (that this order is trying
| to address) is from literal scammers, who are knowingly
| operating illegally, hence why they spoof Caller ID, etc.
| These have mostly only been been a major problem in the
| past 5 or so years, perhaps a bit longer.
| Alupis wrote:
| In fairness, this robocall surge has only become a real
| problem in the past maybe 5ish years.
|
| Before that, you did receive robocalls, but they were
| infrequent. Now, I don't know anyone that doesn't receive
| at least one per day... I often receive multiple. My phone
| has become useless because of this...
| wpietri wrote:
| The FCC has been going after robocallers all this time.
| E.g., here's one from 15 years ago that I happened to
| remember, Cardholder Services:
| https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-07-977A1.pdf
|
| The problem they're solving now is securing the phone
| network, which is a harder problem. Important barriers
| included 1) decades of history where it wasn't necessary,
| 2) entrenched industry players not wanting to change
| anything, 3) an ill-considered opening up of telephone
| system interconnection, 4) a quasi-religious
| deregulatory/free-market credo popular among a segment of
| politicians, and 5) politicians who are more sensitive to
| the concerns of rich execs.
|
| I think the reason it is happening now is that a lot of the
| people arguing against this have finally realized that it's
| dooming the telephone call, so their businesses are feeling
| it.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Decades late. Probably only because the people in charge are
| getting fed up themselves.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think a lot of people would have stopped answering their
| phones regardless. Letting random people interrupt you with a
| conversation may have been the best UX available 100 years ago,
| but I don't think that's the case now. I note that 81% of
| millennials "sometimes have to summon up the courage to make a
| phone call", and 75% will avoid calls that are "time
| consuming". https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/why-millennials-
| ignore-calls...
| LiquidSky wrote:
| I don't prefer phone calls either, but you do have legitimate
| need to receive calls from people you don't already know:
| prospective clients if you have a business,
| hospitals/doctor's offices, etc. It's just frustrating that
| we've allowed the system to go from "this unknown caller may
| be something important or something I want to answer" to
| "this is almost certainly spam".
| wpietri wrote:
| I agree it's frustrating for the people who still answer
| their phones. I'm just saying that spam calls may not be
| the primary reason the phone call is becoming useless. As
| comparison, fax machines did get a lot of spam, and there
| are still people who depend on faxing. But spam is not the
| primary reason fax machines died out.
| robomartin wrote:
| At some point I had this idea that this could be stopped by
| simply charging for phone calls. This concept isn't fully worked
| out in my mind; in rough strokes, it goes something like this:
|
| Everyone charges $1 to receive a call. You can setup a system
| whereby anyone in your address book isn't charged or receives a
| credit immediately.
|
| For those not in your address book, receiving a call-back
| balances out the transaction. In other words, if your plumber
| leaves you a message and you call them back, nobody incurs a
| cost. It is my guess that, on average, for legitimate players,
| this per-call charge would be minimal. For others it might end-up
| being a reasonable cost of doing business.
|
| Another method: On a smart phone it would be very easy to display
| a screen once you hang up with the question "Charge for this
| call?" and two buttons "Yes" and "No". Simple.
|
| The idea is that garbage calls from marketing operations or
| scammers who today can make millions of calls for virtually
| nothing, would now incur real and significant costs.
|
| Like I said, not fully hashed-out. I just think that without a
| non-trivial cost associated with making millions of calls, they
| will continue to happen.
| sn_master wrote:
| There's a guy who did exactly that by making his number a paid
| one.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23869462
| deelowe wrote:
| For those as confused as I was by the title. FCC will remove
| providers from the "Robocall Mitigation Database." This is a
| database of providers who are certified as complying with
| robocall mitigation requirements. Failing to demonstrate
| compliance results in removal from the DB, which in turn, results
| in your calls no longer being routed.
| pavon wrote:
| Yeah, this is basically a death sentence for those companies.
| AFAIK, this will be the first time the FCC has done this. In
| the past they have _allowed_ other providers to stop carrying
| calls from non-conforming providers, but they haven 't
| _required_ other providers to to stop carrying these calls
| before.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Not sure if it works the same way, but a lot of the robocalls
| that I get are from spoofed mobile numbers, if you call the
| number back its usually some random dude who is confused to
| why he's getting so many angry calls.
| RussianCow wrote:
| Wait, it's possible to spoof phone numbers?! Does anyone
| know how this works?
| carom wrote:
| Fairly long video [1] to show how to operate a VOIP app,
| but yea, pretty simple. Should be harder whenever
| STIR/SHAKEN [2] goes into effect.
|
| 1. https://odysee.com/@cybering:1/spoofing-call-id-using-
| voip:2
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN
| mminer237 wrote:
| STIR/SHAKEN is already in effect for 99% of people.
| That's what this order is about. These seven small VoIP
| companies are the only ones who haven't implemented it.
| (Presumably, their whole _raison d 'etre_ is for
| spammers.) Those seven companies are currently providing
| service for all remaining spoofers, so they have two
| weeks to fix it or they're done.
| bagels wrote:
| Presumably if they are illegitimate, they will lose most
| of their customers if they do comply, or they lose
| network access by not acting. Sounds like this will put
| the illegitimate ones out of business.
| rolph wrote:
| one way is with ANI abuse.
|
| the 2nd is abusing callID transmitters and protocol. i
| think the 2nd way may have been mitigated. it was kinda
| like butting into line before anyone notices.
|
| if you've ever had a call when your at the phone, and you
| see a brief flash of a number, that instantly changes to
| another number, this 2nd method is likely in play
| vkou wrote:
| When you make a phone call, your phone sends metadata
| containing your phone number to whomever you are calling.
| That's what the recipient sees as your caller ID.
|
| Of course, since you control your own device, you can
| make that metadata contain anything you want.
| dahfizz wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's absolutely trivial.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing
|
| > Providers which market "wholesale VoIP" are typically
| intended to allow any displayed number to be sent, as
| resellers will want their end user's numbers to appear.
|
| I've gotten calls from banks' 1-800 numbers that were
| 100% definite scams this way.
| dave78 wrote:
| ..and there are plenty of non-nefarious reasons to want
| to spoof numbers. I used to have a VOIP setup at home
| that, when I dialed out, the call would appear to come
| from my cellphone[0]. Google Voice used to be able to do
| that too (no idea if it still does). Businesses often use
| this to have all their calls appear to come from the main
| office line or a 1-800 number. Or, when forwarding a
| call, you could make the 2nd leg outbound call appear to
| come from the original caller instead of the forwarder,
| things like that. Unfortunately as with so many things,
| bad actors are going to ruin it for everyone.
|
| [0] I also found out that if I dialed my cell phone
| voicemail number from this VOIP phone, it bypassed my
| security code and went straight to my mailbox - since the
| outgoing number matched my cellphone number, it assumed
| it was me calling. A quick experiment showed I could then
| access anyone's voicemail (on that carrier at least) by
| simply setting my outbound number to appear as their cell
| number...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > plenty of non-nefarious reasons?
|
| aren't they all variations of "both numbers are provably
| yours"?
| bagels wrote:
| Every provider should be responsible for verifying that
| their downstream customers are legitimate. If they
| deliver junk on behalf of their customers, they should
| get banned. That's how this problem gets solved. Your
| provider doesn't want to get black-holed, and now has an
| incentive to make sure your VOIP system is legitimate.
| not2b wrote:
| Such cases could be handled if there were a way to verify
| that a spoofed number is an authorized use. Your
| cellphone number belongs to you. Some bank's 800 number
| does not. What we need is a mechanism that prevents the
| scammers from lying while still permitting setups like
| yours.
| fryguy wrote:
| I mean, that's what STIR/SHAKEN do.
| bombcar wrote:
| It is insanely easy to spoof "caller ID", it is slightly
| harder to spoof whatever the "real source" thing is
| that's just below it.
|
| But both are not hard, and if you have the right VOIP
| provider you're off to the races.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Here is an excellent video of McAfee doing it to a fox
| news anchor: https://mobile.twitter.com/officialmcafee/st
| atus/13053832859...
| deelowe wrote:
| There's language in the directive about "shaken/stir"
| implemented "over TCP/IP."
|
| "STIR is an acronym for Secure Telephone Identity
| Revisited, while SHAKEN stands for Signature (based)
| Handling of Asserted Information using tokENs."
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yes there are ways to spoof caller id numbers but the
| network isn't confused about where the call is coming from
| tinus_hn wrote:
| All you need to do is follow the money. Someone is paying
| for that call, cheap as it may be. And there is no way
| the telcos would allow anyone to spoof that.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Well what the heck? This was an option? What took so long?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I was confused too. At first I wrongly assumed the database in
| question was National Do Not Call Registry
| (https://www.donotcall.gov/). But it's not that at all.
| rolph wrote:
| yes its talking about a whitelist/auth database
| bagels wrote:
| I hope they don't stop at small time companies. There should be
| a credible threat to any, including Verizon, T-Mobile, ATT of
| removal if they do not fix this problem. It's the only way to
| see progress.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Good.
|
| A lot of "legit" organizations will be affected by this.
|
| I get a lot of legitimate calls blocked by NoMoRobo and
| RoboKiller, because the dialers they use moonlight as spam-
| callers.
|
| I try to explain to them, why they couldn't contact me, but to
| no avail.
|
| There are one or two phone companies that seem to be 100%
| dedicated to scammers. Can't remember them, off the top of my
| head, and it would be irresponsible to guess in a public forum.
|
| Robocalls are a scourge. I really wish politicians wouldn't use
| them, because I'm sure that's why enforcement has been so
| anemic.
| sixothree wrote:
| I'm sure those companies will escape unharmed. This is
| America after all.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| For the benefit of receiving less robocalls, I support this.
|
| However, what interested me is the ability of the FCC to govern
| who can interconnect with whom. Could the FCC say that network
| providers aren't allowed to carry traffic originating from
| certain IP addresses or hosts? That would certainly have a
| profound cooling impact on the internet if they could.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Since this is the old-school phone system, even though IP is
| used as a transport, SS7 is the actual protocol being used to
| interconnect providers. That would be the affected protocol I
| think.
| spc476 wrote:
| Not so much anymore. I worked (last day was yesterday) at a
| company that had services on the call path. The legacy
| product, supporting CDMA, is on SS7. The newer stuff,
| supporting LTE, is Internet based (SIP over UDP to us).
| kube-system wrote:
| The law that facilitates this action is specific to telephone:
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/TRACEDAct
| notRobot wrote:
| Some countries in Asia seem to have a simple solution to prevent
| robocalls: the person who makes the call, pays for the call. They
| also seem to have functioning DND (do not disturb) registries.
|
| Doesn't completely stop robocalls, but does reduce them by a lot.
| lazide wrote:
| That's the rule here too (except for limited exceptions like
| toll free), but clearly the cost isn't stopping them.
|
| Phone calls are dirt cheap to make after all. (Tiny fractions
| of a cent a minute even at retail rates)
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's only very few countries where the receiver pays [part of]
| the cost of the call: USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore.
|
| I get about one spam call _per year_ in Denmark, and my work
| number is listed on the company website. However, I doubt it 's
| only the cost of calls that deters spammers, there are probably
| other regulations in play.
| ntropic_thundr wrote:
| I have a couple thoughts/assumptions, and love feedback on from
| someone who's more knowledgable than me;
|
| 1. Twilio is used for most/many robocalls.
|
| 2. If #1 is True, why isn't Twilio on this list of companies?
| wnevets wrote:
| is it just me or has the FCC actually been doing useful things
| for regular people the last ~2 years?
| coryfklein wrote:
| Thank god, at least some sort of enforcement.
|
| At least 90% of phone calls I get are robocalls or spam. But, as
| the head of a large household, I can't disable unknown callers;
| who knows if that urgent care I took my kid to 6 months ago needs
| to call because I put my email address in wrong and they couldn't
| bill me, and I don't want the account to go to collections. Or
| maybe some random clerk from the city needs to contact me about
| property taxes?
|
| I just do not have a definitive contact list of every number that
| might call me with critical information, and I'm not confident
| they would leave a voicemail. Or even if they leave a voicemail,
| it's often impossible to return a call because the caller is
| originating from some complex web of VOIP systems and when I call
| back I get a machine asking for an extension, which the caller
| forgot to leave in the voicemail!
| tshaddox wrote:
| Perhaps there are some fundamental problems here if it's legal
| for you to be extorted by debt collectors because some office
| worker decided to not leave a voicemail. And O The Irony! that
| one reason you're forced to make yourself available at a
| publicly known phone because of the threat of someone extorting
| you _who is themselves not available at a publicly known phone
| number_.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| We'd be better off with only text communication allowed between
| unknown parties. It's much easier for us, as humans, to quickly
| parse text and it's far less disruptive to our lives. I'd like
| it if calls only occurred between parties who already agreed to
| that form of communication.
|
| Everyone else, leave a fucking note.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In my family, text communication is difficult for the elderly
| and/or English as a second language people.
| lmm wrote:
| As someone living in a country that uses my third language,
| texts - where I can use translation tools, or just take my
| time to read something slowly - are a million times easier
| than spoken conversation.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I mean, a legitimate business will leave a voicemail,
| especially if they want money from you. I normally have unknown
| callers disabled and don't have any problems. I had to turn it
| off this week because we have a few maintenance things going on
| and need to answer calls about when people are going to be
| coming and going for repairs. But otherwise, I turn it off and
| have never had any issues with not getting critical calls. You
| can always turn it on if you know you'll be getting an unknown
| call in the next 24 hours.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I try to use voicemail. The reason it doesn't work is that
| although my phone has 128Gb of storage, for some reason my
| provider's voicemail system can only store like 10 seconds of
| audio before it runs out of space and asks me to delete
| messages. My landline's answering machine is like this too.
|
| Apparently there's a special kind of memory just for
| recording telephone messages and it's as precious as a
| diamond.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| The calls that I did not answer all go to
| https://jollyrogertelephone.com/ They'll send email
| notification immediately after recording a voice message.
|
| (The main reason I've subscribed to Jolly Roger was to
| torture robocallers with roboanswers. They had a collection
| of rather hilarious conversations on their web page. In
| real life robocallers seem smarter now and drop much
| sooner, but voicemail feature works ok and I have not
| noticed any limits - messages are attached to emails and my
| gmail account is still at 5% or so.
|
| I was thinking of implementing the same idea with better
| technology, like on the fly voice recognition, which seems
| possible and should lead to tons of funny results, but I'm
| too lazy now).
| yourapostasy wrote:
| I'd like a calendar appointment feature where I specify when
| to disable/enable allowing unknown numbers to ring.
| orev wrote:
| This approach just doesn't work when you have a significant
| number of outside parties and things to deal with. Doctors'
| offices in particular often have calls coming from many
| different phone numbers and you just can't rely on white
| listing them all. Once you get to an age where health issues
| happen more frequently than an annual checkup, it just
| doesn't work.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. My spouse has a very
| severe and very expensive chronic illness, and has several
| doctors visits a month with different doctors. We have had
| no problem with our doctors reaching us via phone. (And it
| works way better than any of their "healthcare portals"
| where nurses actually read your messages and deem all of
| them non-urgent and don't respond.) We absolutely do have
| their numbers in our contacts so their calls come through.
| On those rare occasions when they call from some general
| number behind a call switch, they leave an appropriate
| voicemail and we call back. They are sometimes vague with
| the details on voicemail because they can't be sure who
| will listen to it, but we are always able to get back to
| them. FWIW, we're in our 50s and have very frequent health
| issues, so this is not unknown to me by any means.
| jnovek wrote:
| I'm glad this works out for you, but your experience is
| not universal.
|
| I have a chronic condition I am stuck with a hospital
| system that seems to play PBX roulette. I have a dozen of
| their phone numbers white listed and still miss an
| important call coming from a new number from time to
| time.
|
| I hate it, it's completely out of touch, but it's not
| something I have any control over.
| supertrope wrote:
| My doctor's office has a privacy disclosure and preference
| section on their forms. Contacts who can be told info. Ok
| to leave voicemail Y/N. Full details in VM or brief.
| oefrha wrote:
| Approximately 100% of my voicemails are from spammers or
| scammers.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Not sure if your an iOS user but i'd love to be able to
| quickly toggle "Silence Unknown Callers," like i can with
| wifi, bluetooth, airplane mode, the flashlight and etc (swipe
| up from the bottom menu). Right now I have to drill down
| three to four steps (menus) to turn it on and off.
| orev wrote:
| You can make a shortcut that takes you right to the screen,
| but you still have to toggle the setting. It's a half
| measure but reduces the frustration a little.
| coryfklein wrote:
| I have indeed tried this turn it on, turn it off, strategy.
| Every time it has ended because I forgot to turn it off and I
| ended up missing a critical phone call; some service person
| called before coming for a home maintenance appointment to
| make sure we were present so they could enter the premises,
| and the call goes to voicemail which I only notice an hour
| later after they've decided to reschedule fixing my AC to 3
| days later and now we have to endure the sweltering 98degF
| weather for 3 more days all to avoid the nuisance of
| robocallers.
| jchw wrote:
| If you have something that urgent it's better to
| preemptively turn it off. Yeah yeah, easier said than done,
| but as a habitual Do Not Disturb user, this has worked well
| for me.
| coryfklein wrote:
| What's the connection to Do Not Disturb? I still haven't
| explored that functionality fully, and it seems Apple has
| built it out significantly. I suspect I could benefit by
| using it better to establish a "at work mode" and a "at
| home mode", in addition to my current simple usage of
| "you sure as hell better not wake me up at 3 AM with a
| notification".
| ryandrake wrote:
| I do "Do Not Disturb" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No
| calls, no texts, no notifications, no nothing. Yes, Apple
| has indeed built it out recently. At least on iOS, you
| can add exceptions if you want, like your favorites, or
| your contact list, or even specific people. You can also
| put it on a schedule if you think 24/7 is too extreme.
|
| Honestly, I don't worry about the "urgent call from the
| doctor" scenario, and I have a family. If it's important,
| whoever is calling will leave a voicemail. For 99% of the
| calls I get, it's not even remotely important. I don't
| structure my life around outlier scenarios. Not having a
| phone constantly dinging and buzzing for my attention is
| worth missing the extremely rare emergency.
| ysavir wrote:
| > If it's important, whoever is calling will leave a
| voicemail.
|
| How do you test for this?
| amerkhalid wrote:
| I don't know if this is some sort of convention or just a
| lot of coincidences but it seems when it is an urgent
| call, everyone calls twice. And they leave voicemail on
| the second call. This includes stuff like people running
| late, calls from daycare, etc.
|
| For non-urgent matters like payments, they call once and
| leave a voicemail.
| Arrath wrote:
| Why, if they don't leave a voicemail, it must not have
| been an important call!
| paul7986 wrote:
| You can also have all numbers (calls) not in your
| contacts just go straight to voicemail via the "Silence
| Unknown Number," feature within the phone settings.
| aaronbeekay wrote:
| That's exactly what they've been adding, actually. You
| can also set a schedule for which mode is active or
| trigger them with automations.
| ghaff wrote:
| SPAM calls are annoying but not to the point where I'm
| willing to basically significantly reduce the utility of
| owning a phone. I get that some people basically don't take
| phone calls. But others have elderly relatives, service
| people for their house, etc. and "just make them leave a
| voicemail" isn't always a satisfactory solution.
| lazide wrote:
| I personally get 50+ spam calls on some days.
|
| I'm not in the parent posting chain, but what other
| option do _I_ have?
| basillo wrote:
| I would change your phone number. I've had the same 650
| area code since 2003, and I'll go a couple weeks,
| sometimes more without a spam call. (or any phone call
| for that matter - except for maybe the pizza delivery
| person?)
|
| I don't believe I've received a single spam call in the
| last 45 days - so your phone number is on some horrible
| list, I feel for you.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The law changed around a year ago with shaken/stir
| authentication being required. You can enable call
| filtering with your carrier to block most robocalls based
| on this data.
|
| There are iphone and android app based solutions that
| will block more, based on previous reports, on
| information about the number, the timing. Like HIYA.
|
| You can configure all unknown callers to go to voicemail.
| Setup an exception if the same number calls you twice.
|
| If you are getting 50+ spam calls a day changing your
| number is another option. And if you change your number
| you can more easily block caller ID spoofers that use a
| very similar number that isn't really local.
| supertrope wrote:
| Spammers have currently defeated SHAKEN/STIR. A signed
| call is more likely to be a robocall than not a robocall.
| This is thanks to shady phone companies that will sign
| calls for anyone or intentionally cater to scammers.
| https://transnexus.com/blog/2022/shaken-statistics-
| september... This is like when DKIM was first being
| deployed spammers adopted it first.
| crtasm wrote:
| But once enough people lodge complaints about these calls
| the shady company will shape up or get their keys
| revoked, right?
| gnopgnip wrote:
| It significantly increases their costs though. As in the
| parent ruling here, a shady phone vendor that doesn't
| take steps to prevent spammers they will no longer be
| able to route calls to the US.
| munk-a wrote:
| While I agree that this might be a practical and
| effective step... changing my number costs me a lot of
| money in terms of lost revenue and expenses, I have
| business cards to reprint and contacts (business and
| personal) that I'll need to update. Considering phone
| companies could simply block these calls if they so
| desired I don't see why I, the customer, need to absorb
| such a large cost just to keep my life sane and, after
| absorbing such a cost the robo calls might just find me
| again.
|
| I receive more spam calls than spam emails and, being
| familiar with the underlying technical details of each
| system, that is absolutely ridiculous. Email was built in
| a time of pure optimism, there is no central switching
| authority for emails and there is no cost to sending an
| email other than jiggling some electrons - telephone
| calls are highly metered and monitored, they generally
| pass through several organizations that have been endowed
| with a high measure of trust to police and shepard them
| to their final destination. There is no reason other than
| the monetization of the system that these spam calls are
| allowed to exist.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, the change your number response is total BS. Not
| just for all of the reasons you mention which are totally
| valid, but for the simple fact it is just a cat&mouse
| game.
|
| Phone numbers are not some cryptographically generated
| string that would take a while to randomly create. You
| can literally just start at a number and increment until
| you've reached them all, so that the spammer doesn't even
| need to know your number. Your number just got reached
| because it was the next one in the list.
| basillo wrote:
| There is definitely more to that - I'm on a pretty common
| 650 area code, and my spam calls have gone down from 1-2
| / day a year ago to less than 1 every couple weeks.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| The numbers they call are not necessarily random. I was
| torturing one "reduce your credit card fees" guy by
| giving him 3 wrong credit card numbers in a row. He got
| mad and started threatening me with terminating all my
| credit cards - which was hilarious because just the
| moment before he was asking their numbers. But then to
| substantiate the threat he disclosed what knows about me.
| My address, my phone, my car make... the only thing they
| got wrong was my name - they used my son's name instead
| of mine.
|
| And other callers called me my son's name a couple other
| times. So there seems to be some database that some of
| them share.
| ddelphin wrote:
| RoboKiller app! Works great for me.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Try to see if they can text you instead
| notyourwork wrote:
| So let's not use a phone for calling anymore?
| tshaddox wrote:
| That was probably supposed to be sarcasm, but yes,
| absolutely, let's not use a phone for voice calls
| anymore. That nonsense should have sailed 10 years ago.
| paul7986 wrote:
| sure just not the old telephone system (especially for
| inbound calls) rather text me or audio or video chat with
| me through an app where I've added you as my contact.
|
| Ive never received a spam call through a chat app like
| Messenger before. I have to add them as a contact first.
| In 21st century the old telephone system doesnt work
| anymore.
| Arrath wrote:
| Can we? Sometimes a conversation can be handled in a
| couple succinct texts without the need to be dragged out
| vocally.
|
| Other times it can't and by all means call, but do I ever
| get tired of the awkward chit chat that some people
| insist on.
| lazide wrote:
| That's basically where we are at, with the exception of
| big businesses and institutions often refuse to deal with
| you except for in-person or over the phone.
| dapearce wrote:
| I wish you could apply it to specific area codes. The area
| code of my phone number is not an area I have lived in for
| several years now. 98% of my spam calls are from this area
| code but none of the important unknown callers are calling
| from this area code.
| xigency wrote:
| I tried to do this manually for a filter on the last four
| digits. Phones don't really handle a 10,000 number
| blocklist well.
| supertrope wrote:
| Switch to a SIP VoIP provider with a powerful control
| panel. Create a rule that same area code callers have to
| press a digit to ring through. Since spam comes from
| random area codes I have this applied to all non-contact
| list callers.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Thats what I do, if I don't know the number I have voicemail
| and if they don't leave a message I just block the number. I
| have thousands of blocked numbers, to be fair the phone
| experience in 2022 is just horrible due to the FCC and telcos
| not doing their job in regulating these criminals.
| erickhill wrote:
| "A legitimate business will leave a voicemail, especially if
| they want money from you."
|
| Unfortunately so do the scammers - both bots and actual
| people. At least my phone will sometimes text-transcribe the
| VM so I can quickly scan it and delete it w/o being forced to
| listen to it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For home users, there is a simple solution to spam...
|
| Anyone not in your contacts gets sent to voicemail. The
| voicemail 'greeting' message says "Hi, if you need to contact
| me, send me an email to [your email address] and I'll call
| back. If it's urgent, put 'urgent' in the subject and I'll call
| back immediately.". Set a rule so that urgent emails make your
| phone vibrate/make noise.
|
| Robocallers won't do that. Most real humans will. Marketers
| usually won't. Collections agencies usually will.
|
| It's the perfect filter.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I ignore all calls I don't know. I've never had a billing issue
| that didn't go into physical mail first. I don't have any plans
| to take time to receive calls from the government, they will
| absolutely mail you. They want 100% of the money if they can
| get it, they don't want to send you to collections; where
| they're only going to get a cut of the original sum.
|
| It might just be me.. but phones are the ultimate in "false
| urgency" that our society foists on people.
|
| Meanwhile.. it's 2022 and there's no way for me to give an
| "emergency code" or authorization to people I know which gives
| them the ability to ring me directly with some kind of
| emergency flag or icon showing on the call screen itself.
| That's baffling.
| LanceH wrote:
| My physical mail situation is far worse than my phone
| situation. I missed one bill apparently and got sent to
| collections. It was from some place that demands that payment
| be made in full during the visit, so I probably thought it
| was just junk at the time.
| supertrope wrote:
| My desk phone is logged into a SIP VoIP provider that does
| allow very powerful rules. I can create a phone menu and
| provide each contact with an extension that must be dialed to
| ring through. But nothing like that is available for my
| cellphone. So I ignore all unknown callers.
| googlryas wrote:
| The trick, which I only implemented by mistake, is to have a
| phone number from an area where you have no business. I live in
| Boulder but have a number from North Dakota because I got to
| pick my phone number and liked the look of one.
|
| Now, if I get a call from a 303(Denver/Boulder), I'm almost
| sure it is real. If I get a call from 701, it is almost
| certainly a fake.
| r00fus wrote:
| I gave up - family of 5, but I do the following: my iPhone
| auto-silences unknown callers (system setting) and I only share
| my Google Voice account publicly (ie, only friends/family have
| my direct line). I also have scam-block from my carrier.
|
| It seems to work quite well. I miss an occasional call but have
| progressively whitelisted (add as contacts) all numbers from
| school/doc/programs as well.
|
| It does take some diligence but it feels better than getting
| sideswiped by some rando.
| teeray wrote:
| I feel like the doctors office scenario should be handled like
| we do with TLS. They apply for a certificate, and that's signed
| and offered in their outgoing calls. Their verified name shows
| up in Caller ID, and the nature of their business is burned
| into the certificate (medical, government, auto repair, etc.).
| bombcar wrote:
| "secure" phone could be done relatively easily, the phone
| companies don't want to because it would cost them money and
| reduce revenue.
| supertrope wrote:
| The whole reason HIPAA grandfathers fax machines is that it
| was (and still is) too expensive for the medical industry to
| purchase, deploy, and train employees on modern telecom.
| supertrope wrote:
| This exists but is not widely supported.
| https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/08/google-phone-
| will-s...
| lazide wrote:
| A great many Dr's offices can't even provide a billing
| estimate or handle the mess of insurance. Do you think
| they'll handle something like that on top of it?
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I happen to have an obscure health condition, and good
| insurance. I have a cardiologist, a rheumatologist, a
| pulmonologist, and a urologist whose offices all tend to
| periodically call me from unknown numbers. They have a
| clear economic incentive to periodically poke and prod at
| me, and bill my insurance.
|
| Taken to an extreme, an incompetent medical practice isn't
| entitled to stay in business. Not that I am in favor of
| making businesses more complicated to operate, but I sure
| would appreciate fewer spam phone calls.
| lazide wrote:
| That would require a critical mass of customers to accept
| some standard 'good' call and deny all 'not good' calls.
| Which with all the chaos right now, good luck without
| some kind of central action at least as strong as that
| required to kill the spammers normally.
| teeray wrote:
| No, I don't. But when you order phone services for your
| business, they're more than capable of acting on your
| behalf.
| gwright wrote:
| There is a lot of effort going into this sort of thing:
| https://www.bandwidth.com/regulations/stir-shaken/
| teeray wrote:
| I'm aware, but I don't think it quite goes far enough. It's
| not enough to merely know it's not a spoofed number. I'd
| like classification, so I can let any medical practice
| punch through do not disturb overnight (emergencies
| involving loved ones), allow others to call during normal
| business hours (voicemail otherwise), etc., etc.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| The biggest loop hole is for political-adjacent communications
| which get a complete pass on all restrictions and can send as
| much spam as they please. Expect a huge increase around midterms,
| as even non-political communications draft in the wake of the
| loophole traffic.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That used to be at least manageable, as most of them were via
| 5-6 digit short codes, and those additionally respected the
| STOP keyword.
|
| Lately, I've been getting SMS spam from individual peoples'
| numbers, because politicians have realized they can say "hey go
| send this text to these numbers" to individual volunteers (SMS
| version of the old phone banking technique) to get around even
| that. STOP keyword doesn't do anything on a regular person's
| cell phone number.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > "hey go send this text to these numbers" to individual
| volunteers
|
| I have direct knowledge that a lot of this is automated via
| services like Twilio which allow you to programmatically pick
| local numbers (relative to the receiver) as well as message
| templates that make the message more human.
|
| Im sure its still being done manually, but a lot of this is
| fully automated at scale (going back to ~2015).
|
| Short-code numbers are also quite expensive relatively, or
| were back when I was working in adjacent technology.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sometimes, but text banking is definitely a big thing.
|
| https://www.demandthevote.com/text-banking
|
| https://act.betoorourke.com/signup/bft-volunteer/
|
| I can usually tell based on how long the response to the
| STOP keyword comes back. Some are a day later from a human;
| "Sorry, will update the list" sort of stuff. Others are
| instantaneous and clearly canned.
| zamalek wrote:
| Have you tried responding with something offensive? A porn
| gif, for example.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| >As most of them were via 5-6 digit short codes, and those
| additionally respected the STOP keyword.
|
| I just counted and I have sent STOP to 26 5-6 digit numbers
| this year and they still come, all for one specific political
| party I've never donated to. It seems like they technically
| respect the STOP but your number is already passed on/gets
| passed on to other PACs/politicians regardless.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes. If you do anything even slightly related to a
| political campaign - donate, sign a petition, fill out a
| form - that list gets sold over and over and over.
| https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/email-list-for-
| sale...
|
| It's often the most valuable asset a campaign has.
| boringg wrote:
| Also if you send STOP it confirms that someone is reading the
| text message and its a live number.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| In my experience most message sending services (re: Twilio)
| offer webhooks to consume replies which can then trigger a
| response template appearing like an actual person.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Tangential side note: I get that it's the original source, but
| linking directly to a pdf is not ideal, especially on mobile.
| ezfe wrote:
| Viewing PDF isn't too much of a problem on mobile - just a
| little more zooming and panning than on desktop.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| You have to download it and open it in another app. I find
| that pretty painful.
| IX-103 wrote:
| What browser doesn't have a built-in PDF reader?
| mcast wrote:
| Also especially important that a compromised PDF is usually an
| easy vector point for exploiting systems.
|
| PDF Transcription: "-WASHINGTON, October 3, 2022--The FCC's
| Robocall Response Team today announced first-of-their-kind
| Enforcement Bureau orders to begin removing seven voice service
| providers from the agency's Robocall Mitigation Database.
| Providers must take key robocall mitigation steps - including
| implementing STIR/SHAKEN throughout their IP networks - and if
| they fail to demonstrate that they have met these requirements,
| they can be removed from the database and other networks will
| no longer take their traffic.
|
| FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel: "This is a new era. If a
| provider doesn't meet its obligations under the law, it now
| faces expulsion from America's phone networks. Fines alone
| aren't enough. Providers that don't follow our rules and make
| it easy to scam consumers will now face swift consequences."
| What's New: Today's Enforcement Bureau orders demanded that
| Akabis, Cloud4, Global UC, Horizon Technology Group, Morse
| Communications, Sharon Telephone Company, and SW Arkansas
| Telecommunications and Technology show cause within 14 days as
| to why the FCC should not remove them from the database.
| Removal from the database would require all intermediate
| providers and terminating voice service providers to cease
| carrying the companies' traffic. If that were to occur, all
| calls from these providers' customers would be blocked and no
| traffic originated by the provider would reach the called
| party."
|
| Full version: https://pastebin.com/xDLxLxv4
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I suppose this was a good start. My heavy handed preference would
| be they use eminent domain after 3 strikes and liquidate the
| business to augment pay for the agencies that deal with fraud.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I don't know why, but in the last couple of weeks the number of
| spam calls I get has ramped way up. Perhaps they were trying to
| get it all in before the cutoff? It used to be 3-4 per day to
| both landline and cell phone, and in the last few weeks it's gone
| up to about 10-15 on each per day. And it's almost always the
| same 2 calls - either "... wants to give you $10,000 in clean
| energy upgrades ..." or "... This is the social security
| disability administration on a recorded line..." Yeah, whatever.
| Fuck off.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Over the last couple of months I went from maybe one per day to
| dozens. I am lucky that my phone's area code is 1200 miles away
| from where I live so for the most part I can ignore everything
| from that area code. In addition, I changed my default ring
| tone and then went into each of my contacts and set my normal
| ring tone. This lets me know if I should be motivated to answer
| the call or let it go to voicemail.
|
| For me the increase correlates to buying a car so I thought
| that the dealer was at fault but maybe it is just a
| coincidence.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Oh, it's very likely it could be the car dealership.
|
| I bought a vehicle from a major dealership, their paperwork
| had my name mispelled, but I didn't say anything or correct
| it.
|
| I registered the vehicle with the state with the correct
| spelling of my name.
|
| I started getting snailmail car warrenty spam with my
| mispelled name shortly after I bought the car.
|
| The dealership said those spammers must have got it from the
| state's vehicle registry. I told them my name is mispelled on
| their paperwork and is mispelled exactly the same way on the
| spam, but is spelled correctly on the vehicle registration.
| *crickets*
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| You need an automated answer service:
|
| "Type 121 to be connected or hold the line for endless cat
| facts at $5/min ... Did you know cats on average have just
| under 4 legs ..."
|
| With the code being randomised and an actual pay service.
|
| Someone in the UK did something like this, apparently, and made
| money.
| thedougd wrote:
| The robocalls I get these days ask you to press a button to
| continue, hearing more about your expiring warranty, etc. If
| you don't respond in a few seconds it disconnects.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| So have it press a button. It's just a DTMF tone. (Is that
| a redundant acronym phrase?)
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > a DTMF tone. (Is that a redundant acronym phrase?)
|
| Technically not, since "DTMF" is a proper noun referring
| to the overall encoding system, and is used as a
| adjective indicating that this particular tone is
| associated with that system. Compare "That farm raises
| KFC chickens. (That is, chickens intended for use by the
| resturant (chain) that calls itself "Kentucky Fried
| Chicken".)". Or "The left is what a MacOS window looks
| like, and the right is what a Windows window looks
| like.".
| tonypags wrote:
| I would like to know more about this exciting income
| opportunity.
| RoadieRoller wrote:
| I've a free Google Voice number I use as proxy. If I've to use a
| phone number for one time use (maintenance person, Online waiver
| forms etc) I give the google voice number. For friends, families,
| banks, office, I give my ATT number. So far it has kept me away
| from spams. My Google Voice number gets all the spam and I care
| less.
| RobLach wrote:
| Very light response but it's something.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Very light response but it's something.
|
| The FCC is going to block all access to other telecoms from
| these companies unless they implement STIR/SHAKEN, essentially
| putting them out of business unless they comply with the FCC's
| order.
|
| Granted, it's not a firing squad for the C-suite or a cruise
| missile on their offices, but it's essentially a _corporate_
| death penalty for the non-compliant telecoms. I wouldn 't call
| that a "light" response.
|
| Or am I missing something?
| tradertef wrote:
| This is great. Everyone hates robocall and these companies that
| still allow robocall do not deserve to be connected to our
| data/voice networks.
| mjevans wrote:
| I agree, this should have happened years ago.
|
| """ What's New: Today's Enforcement Bureau orders demanded that
| Akabis, Cloud4, Global UC, Horizon Technology Group, Morse
| Communications, Sharon Telephone Company, and SW Arkansas
| Telecommunications and Technology show cause within 14 days as
| to why the FCC should not remove them from the database.
| Removal from the database would require all intermediate
| providers and terminating voice service providers to cease
| carrying the companies' traffic. If that were to occur, all
| calls from these providers' customers would be blocked and no
| traffic originated by the provider would reach the called
| party.
|
| "These and other recent actions reflect the seriousness with
| which we take providers' obligations to take concrete and
| impactful steps to combat robocalls," said Loyaan A. Egal,
| acting Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. "STIR/SHAKEN is not
| optional. And if your network isn't IP-based so you cannot yet
| use these standards, we need to see the steps taken to mitigate
| illegal robocalls. These providers have fallen woefully short
| and have now put at risk their continued participation in the
| U.S. communications system. While we'll review their responses,
| we will not accept superficial gestures given the gravity of
| what is at stake." """
|
| Also, FFS, FCC please have press releases on normal HTML pages,
| not PDFs, so the pagination is client side and no one has to
| fix your hard wrapped lines or make things display properly on
| differently sized devices.
| xani_ wrote:
| At this point I take the PDF over many "modern" webshits
| jandrese wrote:
| At least a PDF isn't going to try to do some infinite
| scroll thing that screws up all linking and makes it nearly
| impossible to find something again.
| b3morales wrote:
| So (still trying to understand exactly what's what)... those
| companies are the ones providing connectivity to the actual
| scammy robocallers? Or what is it that they do?
| jffry wrote:
| I think these companies are failing to implement
| STIR/SHAKEN and are running into expiring grace periods.
| That's not necessarily evidence of guilt - they might claim
| that as a small business they cannot afford these changes -
| but it seems like the only option to clean up the mess
| caused by spammers.
|
| The protocols are meant to allow tracing which network
| originated a call - at their root is an attestation by the
| network that a call they are originating for one of their
| customers is allowed to use the number in caller ID. If
| you're a network who wants your originating calls to be
| carried across other networks, you can't just set up a
| promiscuous attestation system that allows your customers
| to just slap on any random caller ID that they want, or
| else you'll get blacklisted real quick.
| rolph wrote:
| yes, or else they are the scammies themselves using a
| shell.
|
| so, due to not taking mandated security measures thus
| allowing blackhats into your system, [company] is banned
| from the network.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Also, FFS, FCC please have press releases on normal HTML
| pages, not PDFs, so the pagination is client side and no one
| has to fix your hard wrapped lines or make things display
| properly on differently sized devices.
|
| That would be nice.
|
| In the absence of such niceties, I chose PDF for the
| submission because it was the least obnoxious format
| available. The press release (as well as the specific orders
| for each provider affected) can also be had in docx and txt
| formats[0].
|
| [0] https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-remove-companies-
| robocall-d...
| sprokolopolis wrote:
| In my experience, it seems like most spam calls that I receive
| are using a spoofed number over VOIP. Reporting the number as
| spam, basically reports the number they are spoofing, rather than
| the people making the call. Is that correct? Will this new action
| have any effect on these spoofed VOIP calls? It seems like there
| is no way for people receiving these calls to report these
| callers without having the carriers recording the source IP
| addresses of these calls. I don't know all of the inner-workings
| of the phone network, so maybe I am making incorrect assumptions.
| pavon wrote:
| Yes that is exactly what this is about. A few years ago the FCC
| mandated[1] that all voice providers implement a set of
| standards called STIR/SHAKEN that are essentially cryptographic
| signatures that a call originated with them and that the Caller
| ID information is valid. They have since been gradually
| increasing penalties for providers that are not in compliance
| with those standards. This move is the strictest yet -
| completely disconnecting some providers that are not in
| compliance. The companies in question aren't an exhaustive list
| of providers that still allow spoofed Caller ID, so it won't
| end the problem. I'm still curious as to how far they will be
| able to go with foreign services. At the least they should
| eventually be able to prevent spoofing of domestic numbers.
|
| [1] https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication
| carom wrote:
| I have done CNAM lookups on the numbers and contacted the
| originating VOIP companies, and they just say "we won't let
| that number contact you again". It's infuriating. Don't let
| that customer contact me again, they can change their number at
| will. Scumbags.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Right before my spam call problem got out of hand, I called
| back a number and it was a backdoor to some community's 911.
| The 911 operator had her ass on the dashboard demanding to know
| how I got the number. I felt like a kid in the principal's
| office.
| [deleted]
| permo-w wrote:
| are robocalls illegal in the UK? I've never got one
| gwd wrote:
| About once a year I get a "I heard you were in an accident"
| robocall. But the main reason they're not a problem in the UK
| or Europe is that the _caller_ pays for the mobile airtime;
| which is standardized at something like $0.20p /minute.
| Robocalling 1 million people would cost you PS200k -- not
| generally cost-effective.
|
| In the US, the _callee_ pays for airtime; so the cost to the
| robocaller is fractions of a cent, and the 1-million-person
| robocall thing is a lot cheaper, and thus more cost-effective.
| Literally all the US has to do to make the problem go away is
| to charge people who call mobile phones $0.30 per minute. For
| legitimate callers, this will be nothing; generally included in
| their monthly plan; but it would cripple the entire robocalling
| industry.
| permo-w wrote:
| >In the US, the callee pays for airtime
|
| that is literally shocking. so not only are robocallers
| irritating, they're also _costing you money_? America needs
| to get its shit together
| jandrese wrote:
| This is rarely true 2022. Most phone plans have unlimited
| (unmetered) minutes. Back when people had to pay for their
| minutes there was a LOT more pressure to keep spammers off
| of cell numbers.
| terinjokes wrote:
| Mobile numbers in the US are also assigned geographically
| alongside landlines. So it's not possible ahead of time to
| know if a number is mobile or not, making caller pays very
| unpredictable.
| enobrev wrote:
| What I really want is an advanced caller id system that
| encompasses the whole process, in which the "caller" or "sender"
| never actually has my phone number (or email or mailing address).
|
| I can generate contact-ids on the fly, which I can give out to
| anyone - public or private. I can generate them for each person I
| give them to, or for posting on a billboard if I'd like.
|
| When a person adds that id to their contact list, the "system"
| would notice that I've never set that up the caller to contact
| me, so I get a notification that "[Caller] would like to contact
| you". I can set the method and schedule they can contact me:
|
| * Text / Email - Weekdays between 9 and 6pm (work)
|
| * Phone / Text / Email - Any time, Always, Until Disabled
| (family, friends, etc)
|
| * Phone / Text / Email - Any time until Summer (my kid's school)
|
| * Text-Only - For the next 3 days (maintenence, etc)
|
| * Snail Mail Only - 3 Weeks before election (local politicians)
|
| * Snail Mail Only - Once per month (local grocery)
|
| The caller gets a notification that they can contact me, how, and
| when, and from then on, they look me up on their devices / apps
| and hit the "Contact" button. They are then presented with the
| options I've given them "Sorry, You can only call or text during
| work hours". "This person only allows text messages at this
| time".
|
| Some interesting bits about this:
|
| * No contact info for spamming
|
| * No possibility of harassment
|
| * No distractions outside of what I've personally defined as
| available.
|
| * Commercial / Political entities aren't cut out from people who
| want to hear from them
|
| * Mail can be forwarded to me anywhere in the world, since the
| sender would just be sending a package / letter to my id, and not
| to my actual address. The PO would then send it to whatever
| address I've most recently set. (no more forwarding address or
| crap for the people who used to live where I do).
| FrasiertheLion wrote:
| Requires massive centralization of data and complicated logic
| for access control enforcement, which now has to happen for
| every call.
| bl_valance wrote:
| I don't know if I'm just lucky, but I've rarely gotten
| unsolicited (bot)calls in the 10+ years that I've had a google
| voice + tmobile number. Anything online related I use gv#, for
| immediate family I use tmobile#. GV, from what I've seen, usually
| filters out spam calls by default so maybe that's why I haven't
| noticed.
| dcist wrote:
| I've muted all phone calls for anyone not on my contact list
| because of robocalls. It's absurd that this is a problem in 2022.
| solvitor wrote:
| Minor, but I'd rather click to a web page than have a PDF auto
| download. Consider this link https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-
| remove-companies-robocall-d... instead of the PDF.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| I cannot understand why my iPhone, which can both id spam likely
| calls, and mute calls from unknown numbers cannot mute spam
| likely calls. This is exactly what I need
| spc476 wrote:
| Well, it's not the cell phone (iPhone or Android) that is doing
| the spam ID, it's a service being queried as the phone call is
| being placed. Something like, Alice (the originator) calls Bob
| (the terminator). Just before the phone network causes Bob's
| phone to ring, it requests (via the network) a service that
| says "classify the originating number" and that service might
| return both a name "Alice" and some form of reputation (like
| "normal" or "potential spam") which then gets sent to the phone
| that causes it to start ringing (I know, because I worked at a
| company providing such information).
|
| What I found works for me is to assign "silence" as the default
| ring tone, and give each of my contacts a non-default ring
| tone. If someone not in my contact list calls me, they can
| leave a voice mail message. Yes, it means I might miss a
| critical "deal with me now" call, but that's a chance I'm
| taking.
| codemac wrote:
| This is what the pixel phone screen feature does for me.
|
| The difference between my partner and I's phone frustration is
| obvious. My unknown calls that are questionable get sent to
| voicemail nicely with a bot asking them what their name is and
| allowing me to pick up in the middle if I notice something I
| need to pay attention to, her iphone just rings with a pop up
| as "SPAM RISK" and she has to mute it, or she blocks unknown
| numbers and misses calls.
| [deleted]
| tomphoolery wrote:
| if you're not texting me or emailing me i am ignoring you...most
| of the calls i get are from recruiters talking about a stupid
| java job or something that i don't want
| didgetmaster wrote:
| My personal phone is also my business phone which means a
| potential customer could be calling me from anywhere. My project
| is software that is in open beta, so the calls could originate
| from anywhere in the world. If I simply ignore any calls that are
| not in my contact list, I risk alienating a customer. Some might
| leave a voicemail, but I certainly can't count on it.
| andirk wrote:
| These steps work like a charm to stop SPAM calls and junk postal
| mail:
|
| - Stop unwanted postal mail
| https://www.usa.gov/telemarketing#item-35222
|
| - Stop credit and insurance offers
| https://www.optoutprescreen.com/selection
|
| - Stop "direct mail" for $4 https://www.dmachoice.org/
|
| - For everything else, collect your junk mail and occasionally go
| through each piece individually and enter it into
| https://www.catalogchoice.org/
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Consumers can register at DMA's consumer website:
| www.DMAchoice.org for a processing fee of $4 for a period of
| ten years. Registering online is the fastest way to see
| results. DMAchoice offers consumers a simple, step-by-step
| process that enables them to decide what mail they do and do
| not want.
|
| I'm going to start a business that delivers several one ton
| concrete blocks directly in front of the front doors of the
| offices of firms associated with the DMA. They can opt out for
| 40 thousand dollars or simply spend a few dozen hours with a
| pickaxe and wheelbarrow to dispose of the blocks when they
| arrive unasked for.
| valleyer wrote:
| This doesn't ring true to me at all. The majority of junk calls
| I get are not from legitimate businesses that would have
| anything to do with the links you provided.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| Your second link is broken
| error54 wrote:
| https://www.optoutprescreen.com/
| [deleted]
| jijji wrote:
| Reading the announcement, the threats sound like a stretch of the
| FCC's mandate. Do they really have the authority to remove
| carriers from the phone network? I'm sure that would be
| challenged up to the supreme court.
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