[HN Gopher] FCC fines robocaller a record $300M after blocking b...
___________________________________________________________________
FCC fines robocaller a record $300M after blocking billions of
their scam calls
Author : rntn
Score : 199 points
Date : 2023-08-03 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| Google234 wrote:
| 1 second of jail for every second of American time wasted
| coding123 wrote:
| That doesn't even account for the scams, life savings lost,
| ruined relationships.
| m463 wrote:
| From what I understand, these huge fines are never collected.
| coding123 wrote:
| This is the way to do this. If more of these scam calls & texts
| are found to be coming through certain pipes, fine those parties,
| jail those parties so that there is an incentive to stop it. I
| don't know why its taking them this long to figure this out.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| couldn't disagree more. this is pointless and useless. jail
| time is required, not an uncollectable fine from the perps. a
| more palatable solution would be fining telcos (because it's
| collectible and damaging) for allowing it. we'll then see good
| blocking measures in place.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Telcos actually don't have that much leeway in whether they
| can allow this stuff on the network. That's part and parcel
| of the whole "common carrier" thing that some people wish
| would be required of internet service providers; as a common
| carrier, they _can 't_ block legitimate, legal use of the
| service until some authority tells them it's not legitimate
| or legal, and that's a (due) process.
|
| So not to go to bat for Ma Bell and her li'l babies here, but
| fining the telcos for following the law would be counter-
| productive and unfair.
| lightbendover wrote:
| Not even sure why telecoms are allowed to allow spoofing.
| Should be absolutely illegal both in their own network and
| they should be disallowed from peering with networks where it
| is allowed.
|
| Actually, I do know: it's profitable to them and they lobby a
| lot.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I haven't answered the phone in years. All calls from unknown
| numbers go straight to silent, and anyone in my contacts knows
| not to call me anyway. What kind of real person uses the phone
| nowadays? It's literally scams, customer support, billing
| departments, credit collection agencies, and generally people you
| don't talk to as long as you can avoid it. Normal people use
| FaceTime, WhatsApp, Messenger, Zoom, etc.
|
| There's basically zero upside to phone calls, and frankly nor is
| there much for SMS either. I would suggest that phone companies
| completely deprecate their telecom networks and go all-in on
| internet, but then the spam would migrate to the apps (it's
| already begun with whatsapp), so I don't want to give them any
| ideas.
| beebeepka wrote:
| This reads like sarcasm to me.
|
| I barely use my phone, yet calls is 99% of what I do. I get
| less than 5 unsolicited calls per year. Don't use any of the
| things your imaginary "normal people" use. What a weird thought
| process. I guess the world does revolve around you
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| What do you mean calls is 99% of what you do? For work?
| Doesn't that just prove my point? You're not using the phone
| system for personal calls. You must work somewhere doing
| outbound calls for some reason or receiving them for another.
| And yes, I would include sales in this classification.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm with you. My Phone app is probably the least-used app
| on my phone, because pretty much all inbound calls are
| unwanted. I occasionally need to make an outbound call so
| my Phone app usage is not quite zero.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Note, Roy Cox was previously sanctioned and fined for the exact
| same behavior - his $1M settlement was suspended due to
| "inability to pay".
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2013/02/...
| edgyquant wrote:
| So take every cent from him and jail him if he makes no cents.
| Inability to pay is bs
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| We don't really do debtor's prison anymore...
| dymk wrote:
| That's fine, but we do prisons for criminals, and the guy
| is a fraudster
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Nintendo can garnish a dude's wages to the tune of $10M for the
| rest of his life for IP violations but we can't put the screws
| on a phone scammer that steals from our grandmothers? Sheesh.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones. They don't even have
| wikipedia entries.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| A hack someone introduced me to that I cannot recommend enough if
| you still, for some God-unfortunate reason, have a landline:
|
| Record the audio for the "We're sorry, this number has been
| disconnected" message from Verizon or whoever. Keep it on your
| phone. If you get a lot of telemarketers, queue it up before you
| answer an unknown number. Hit 'em with it if it sounds like a
| robocall.
|
| Robocalls still cost time even if they're functionally free
| money-wise, so a lot of systems will key on that message and will
| yank your number off their call list.
| phkahler wrote:
| This kind of thing is why a lot of people dropped their land
| line. Sure it was made largely redundant with mobile, but it also
| became _primarily a nuisance_.
|
| Facebook and others keep that in mind as you relentlessly
| monetize without offering value to people.
| vkou wrote:
| I get mobile robocalls, too.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| sure, now. but at the time it was one of the drivers for
| cutting the land line
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Most of them get a "scam likely" flag these days though.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >Facebook and others keep that in mind as you relentlessly
| monetize without offering value to people.
|
| Pretty much all of my communication on Facebook Messenger is
| with my friends, and the rest is with some groups I'm in to
| find local events, which I could leave hassle-free at any time
| with the click of a button. No communication with spammers or
| businesses, with the exception of someone with an obviously
| hacked account once every few years.
|
| With the rare exception, my incoming calls on my phone are
| either my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone),
| or spammers (who I don't answer).
|
| So I would say Facebook keeps this in mind much better than the
| phone company.
| smcg wrote:
| This could deteriorate at any point. Facebook owes you
| nothing.
| [deleted]
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Sure, I don't think Facebook is benevolent. I hear Whatsapp
| (also owned by Facebook) has plenty of spam, and I don't
| use that, much to the dismay of some of my non-American
| friends.
|
| The phone companies also owe me nothing, and they provide a
| worse experience and will likely continue to do so unless
| forced by the FCC (which seems to be getting better
| lately).
|
| I do use SMS/MMS but forwarded to my web browser so I don't
| have to look at my phone.
|
| At the moment, Messenger is better for both text and
| voice/video calls. If that changes, my friends and I will
| adapt.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone)
|
| My would you not answer if you don't expect someone? Pranks?
| Sellers? I have never experienced any door knockers that are
| obnoxious, except one seller once. Mostly it is friends,
| neighbours or missionaries who are unannounced.
| monetus wrote:
| Not the OP, but, I once fought off a robbery with a fencing
| hammer, that started that way. Maybe look for balaclavas
| before you open the door.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Even before I had door cameras, I would just not answer the
| door if I wasn't expecting someone. Everyone I know would
| know enough to call or text before coming over, and anyone
| in an emergency would keep knocking.
|
| I've had plenty of obnoxious salespeople and other
| solicitors, especially religious ones. They even have the
| nerve to claim that they aren't soliciting because they're
| not selling anything for money. And none of them have the
| good sense to accept that they're bothering someone that is
| obviously not happy that their door was knocked on.
|
| Unless I'm already in a really bad mood, I generally start
| off nice, but I turn serious as soon as they refuse to take
| the first 'no'. Except for the ones I argue with for a
| while to waste their time and energy.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's my time. I will regularly just not answer the door
| even if they're looking right at me through the bay window.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Door to door solicitation is obnoxious even if the people
| are polite, IMO.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sure, but not in the same league compared to sellers
| calling over the phone in my experience.
|
| I guess it comes down to the effective wanna answer the
| door to not wanna answer the door ratio. I don't want to
| miss someone I'd like to meet to avoid the 1/X chance of
| a seller. As sibling comment noted that ratio probably
| depends on local circumstances.
| lazide wrote:
| Someone in person is a lot harder to ignore if they get
| pushy.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Does solicitation include political lobbying?
| baseballdork wrote:
| Yes
| CameronNemo wrote:
| _Solicitation is the act of offering, or attempting to
| purchase, goods and /or services._
|
| Can you explain how talking to my neighbors about
| important social issues falls under that criteria?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| No, because if you're going to try and start that
| conversation I'm not going to answer the door. ;)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| You sound like a pleasant person to be around. /s
| lazide wrote:
| A neighbor talking to their neighbors about _actual_
| important political issues isn't typically what people
| don't like.
|
| People they don't know trying to convince them they
| should care about a political issue they don't care about
| or they are terrible and bad people is what people don't
| like. It's usually the second one, even if someone things
| it's the first one.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| Friends and neighbors are the primary people I don't answer
| the door for.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| If I'm not expecting someone to ring my doorbell (or call
| me on the phone, which is certainly rarer), my phone is on
| silent. So I simply wouldn't notice unless I happen to be
| looking at my phone.
|
| I have my other communication (mostly FB Messenger, but
| also Discord and SMS/MMS) set up to work on my computer.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| Depends on the neighbourhood. I moved recently and now a
| salesman or charity is a 3-4x a week occurrence for me. I
| also get a bunch of teens selling various goods that I'm
| 90% sure are stolen, in order to raise money for their
| education.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Although even today I still have a "house phone", I haven't
| used a POTS land line in 15 years or more - I switched to VoIP
| long ago because of related nuisances.
|
| The straw that broke the camel's back was that _somebody_ had
| their fax machine to send something to a (wrong) number every
| night at 2am. The phone company said they had no way to just
| block that number for us, but that for abusive calls we could
| talk to the police. The police said they couldn 't do anything
| because although it was an extreme nuisance, it didn't fit the
| legal definition of abusive. Since we were going to have to
| change our number because of this anyway, we decided to just
| move to a platform with which we really could manage blacklists
| and such.
|
| A prior experience had a debt collection agency calling us a
| couple of times a week, asking for some guy we never heard of.
| Each time we'd tell them that this was a wrong number, but
| they'd just call back a couple days later anyway. I tried using
| logic: the person they were looking for apparently had a
| Florida address, while the number they were calling at was a NJ
| number (back when you could pretty definitively link phone
| numbers to geography). The guy calling us agreed that it didn't
| make sense, but that didn't matter. I finally told them that
| the guy was deceased, and oddly, they seemed to buy that.
|
| Anyway, my experience suggests that the demise of land lines
| has been not just because of the nuisance itself, but also
| because the technology and regulatory situation didn't allow
| people any effective way to deal with it.
|
| Makes me wonder what that will eventually mean to email, SMS,
| etc., if anything.
|
| EDIT: my current solution for spam calls on our VoIP line is
| three-pronged.
|
| 1) Known abusers are blacklisted, never to be heard from again.
| I don't really use this, though, because they're probably just
| spoofing the number anyway.
|
| 2) Everybody on my contact list can freely ring our phone, no
| problem.
|
| 2) Otherwise, the call is intercepted by a voice response
| system. It just tells them that if they want to talk to us, to
| push "2". Bots never do that, so we're very nearly 100% free of
| spam calls.
| miked85 wrote:
| Mobile doesn't help very much - I ended up just silencing calls
| not from contacts, which I get at least 5 or 6 a day
| supertrope wrote:
| Previously the FCC has collected $0. The most they ever collected
| was a few thousand. They have to ask another agency to enforce
| these and by then Shady Telecom LLC has been shutdown by the
| owners without any forwarding address.
| devindotcom wrote:
| they've collected considerably more than that, but you're right
| that it's not likely to be anywhere near $300M. but it's up to
| justice to collect, something the fcc wants to change (as
| Rosenworcel says ITA).
| plagiarist wrote:
| It's insane that this is not a solved problem. Here's a thought:
| if I could collect $100 from my carrier for each spam call they
| put through, this problem would be solved overnight.
| ipython wrote:
| You can collect $$ for spam calls already in the United States,
| with laws on the books today- see the [TCPA](https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Telephone_Consumer_Protection_...). Problem is that
| you have to track down the individual/company that's doing it.
| That's become _dramatically_ more difficult over the past 15
| years.
| viraptor wrote:
| Time for my usual comment. No, it's not difficult. Every
| Telco knows where the call comes from and where it's routed
| to. Sure, the end-user doesn't necessarily know the origin,
| but there's regulation that would trivially solve this. "For
| each spam report, you're responsible unless you point out
| where you got the call from" if enforced would sort out the
| problem almost immediately.
|
| Telco can't say how the call happened? Fine them. Telco can't
| sort out their spammy customer? Fine them. "Oh, but
| international calls!" - they can drop the spammy
| international peer - the US is large enough that nobody
| serious would risk getting disconnected.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| First, telcos are not permitted to refuse calls from other
| telcos unless they receive permission from the FCC. This is
| what it means to be a "common carrier," an old regulatory
| regime intended to prevent larger telcos using carriage as
| a negotiating tool over small telcos. The internet has this
| problem to a degree, which has lead to years of conflict
| over "net neutrality." Part of the new regulatory regime
| intended to address spam calls is that the FCC now
| regularly grants such permission when they determine that a
| particular telco is failing to uphold its obligations.
|
| Second, telcos do not necessarily know the origin of calls.
| Virtually all spam/scam calls originate from the internet
| via a VoIP gateway. There are numerous VoIP gateways, they
| often obtain their traffic from yet other VoIP gateways,
| and they often introduce traffic into the US PSTN through a
| foreign telco. At each of these steps, the origin of the
| call is usually lost. Telephone circuits are always
| established in the "forward" direction and there is no need
| for reverse routing information, so historically it was
| never provided. At the extreme, some calls are introduced
| into the TDM telephone system by boxes with multiple SIM
| cards that relay calls from IP to a cellular carrier (this
| is not very common in the US because cellular carriers
| aggressively monitor for it, but it's very common in for
| example Africa---where this method is often used to carry
| legitimate traffic at a cost savings!). All of this means
| that tracing the origin of calls can be surprisingly
| complex, which is why USTelecom (an industry association)
| funds a consortium to perform tracing for the FCC.
|
| The underlying reason is simple: nothing in the telephone
| system requires calls to identify their origin. There are
| two (and in many cases more) different concepts of
| "originating number" on a telephone call, CID and ANI, and
| neither are required or even expected to correspond to the
| origin point of the call. The purpose of STIR/SHAKEN is to
| introduce such a requirement for the first time,
| standardizing a header (in the case of VoIP) or SS7 message
| (in the case of TDM) that declares the carrier with which a
| call originated. This will vastly simplify tracing and
| blocking of calls from problematic carriers, which is the
| motivation behind the mandatory rollout that is currently
| in progress. One of the broader goals of the STIR/SHAKEN
| program is to introduce a degree of liability at all points
| in the process, as every carrier is responsible for
| ensuring appropriate attestations on calls they hand off to
| customers. This seems to be having a positive impact,
| although as with most spam mitigation efforts, it does have
| the downside of making it more expensive and complex to get
| access to the telephone network, mostly to the financial
| advantage of Twilio.
| viraptor wrote:
| > telcos are not permitted to refuse calls from other
| telcos unless they receive permission from the FCC
|
| Yes, that's exactly the part that could've been changed
| long time ago to solve this problem. That's what I'm
| describing.
|
| > telcos do not necessarily know the origin of calls.
| Virtually all spam/scam calls originate from the internet
| via a VoIP gateway
|
| They know the next hop though. Knowing the ultimate
| origin doesn't matter. You can iterate until a) you find
| the origin, or b) you find someone who doesn't keep
| records - in either case, they're the problem to deal
| with. It doesn't matter that someone uses a VoIP gateway
| - now it should be the gateway operator's problem to
| point out the origin or pay up.
|
| I worked at a VoIP provider. We had full records already
| available for billing purposes. This is why I'm so angry
| about this every time it comes up, all this technical
| talk is true and completely irrelevant. Let FCC fine the
| first entity in chain which cannot say "we got it from
| X", or "we got it internationally, here's the fine
| payment from our side, they've been warned/disconnected".
|
| The shaken/stir provided a small tool which avoids
| addressing the actual issue. It's a fun tool which would
| make the above slightly easier - but doesn't actually
| enable it.
| ipython wrote:
| Well, it's not quite that simple- especially for an end
| user. I don't have the ability to trace it- and even if I
| did most of the scam calls I get these days are from
| overseas voip providers. So I have to invest a lot of time
| to get to a U.S. based business that benefits from the
| calls. Even then, the tcpa may not allow you to collect
| (some state laws do)
|
| It is difficult enough that there is a full on coalition
| dedicated to this (the trace back working group that's
| mentioned by the fcc in this order)
| viraptor wrote:
| You don't have to trace it yourself. The simple solution
| is: a online portal, you report a spam call to your
| number with time and origin as you see it, your telco is
| required to act on that, FCC or someone else gets to
| audit and assign fines. From there it would be each
| telco's responsibility to do the same from their end.
|
| Trivial for the user, and likely apps would be created to
| automate it. As I mentioned, international VoIP providers
| are not an issue if you make it a local telco problem:
| whether they forward the cost of the fines, drop the
| peer, or pay the fine themselves. Any serious telco
| abroad will solve the outbound spam to the US rather than
| get dropped.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Change the law so that telcos are on the hook for fines if
| they can't identify who the call came from.
|
| Just like you have to pay a speeding ticket if you lend your
| car to someone and don't tell the police who was driving.
| sgustard wrote:
| "Two of the central players ... were under lifetime bans against
| making telemarketing calls"
|
| Wait, why isn't every human under such a ban?
| csa wrote:
| > Wait, why isn't every human under such a ban?
|
| Because it would kill cold sales calls, which I think have a
| ton more value than you probably think they do (when ethically
| done).
|
| For reference for a business I previously owned:
|
| - Per 100 cold calls based on leads we qualified...
|
| - We actually spoke to about 30 people...
|
| - Of which about 10 were actually interested...
|
| - Of which about 3 became customers.
|
| - Customers paid on a monthly basis for an average of well over
| two years for our service.
|
| For loosely qualified cold calls, this was a pretty big
| success, imho.
|
| Yes, we mildly bothered 70 people (unanswered call), and we
| bothered 20 more with an unwanted sales pitch (usually less
| than one minute), but we had good conversations with 10 of
| them. Whether they became a customer or not, I think that we at
| least helped them understand clearly what their options were in
| our product market.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The problem with this point of view that all businesses seem
| to have is you're not the only ones doing this. Those same 90
| people you're providing negative value and nuisance to are
| getting it from hundreds of businesses a day, gradually
| driving the signal to noise ratio of all communications
| channels down to zero. It's entirely possible one of the
| hundreds of real estate investment companies calling me every
| day trying to buy one of my houses was going to make a
| terrific offer that would have provided me with value. But
| I'll never know, because if I answered the phone and actually
| talked to them, I'd have to answer all of these calls, and
| doing that would leave me with no time to do anything at all
| except answer phone calls and listen to sales pitches all day
| every day.
| i5heu wrote:
| Fun fact:
|
| Cold calling private individuals is illegal in Germany.
| [deleted]
| Alupis wrote:
| There's very little point in having un-enforceable laws.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You have provided a great example of how worthless cold
| calling is to society.
|
| Ten percent of your interactions were even close to being
| considered not a nuisance (more like 3 percent were actually
| not a nuisance, someone listing to an advertisement willingly
| is still being interrupted and annoyed)
|
| Fuck that man, come on. If you are bothering 100 people to
| POSSIBLY help a couple people possibly find a service that
| might help them, you are spam.
| csa wrote:
| > You have provided a great example of how worthless cold
| calling is to society.
|
| I think you are missing the big picture.
|
| Assuming that we waste 1 minute of time for 90 people, and
| everything else is productive, it's:
|
| - 90 minutes of aggregate inefficiency...
|
| - to benefit 7 folks who have a much better understanding
| of the market for their current and future needs...
|
| - and 3 people who are scaling their business _for years_
| via delegating something they are not good at to folks who
| are.
|
| I don't know about you, but I've had many many dud
| 90-minute encounters (much less one minute encounters) that
| were all worth it for the one encounter that moved the
| needle. This could be sales leads, training, dates, finding
| new restaurants... there are many domains for which this is
| true.
|
| Frankly, I think that this is a fairly efficient ratio
| compared to most value-seeking activities in the world.
|
| Edit: Note that the close rate was close to 40% live
| (versus 10% calls) with a non-significant n, so I think the
| medium itself was one source of inefficiency. The product
| was clearly needed by our leads, but trust-building was
| tougher over the phone.
| ryandrake wrote:
| From your point of view, it's great--there's no downside.
| A little "Aggregate inefficiency" as you put it.
|
| From the point of view of the victims (or leads, as you
| might describe them), 70% deftly avoided you and 20% were
| annoyed that you intruded on their lives, albeit briefly.
| Or put another way, for every new customer you got, you
| actively annoyed ~7 of them, and confirmed the problem of
| unsolicited phone calls for a further ~23 of them.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > Assuming that we waste 1 minute of time for 90 people,
| and everything else is productive
|
| Most people aren't interested in being tricked into
| opening their wallet, sorry. If I want your services,
| I'll seek them out. You're not entitled to even a second
| of my time.
| csa wrote:
| > Most people aren't interested in being tricked into
| opening their wallet, sorry.
|
| I'm very curious about why "sales" automatically equates
| to "trickery" for you.
|
| Ethical, high quality sales is the efficient matching of
| goods and/or services with folks who want them.
|
| These types of sales exist and are not as uncommon as
| some HNers seem to think that they are.
|
| > If I want your services, I'll seek them out.
|
| You seem to assume that most people are good at finding
| services they need. In general, I have found this not to
| be the case both for me and many of my customers (at
| least not initially).
|
| For me personally, I spend a shit ton of time on
| discovery, and I still find that random ads and sales
| pitches introduce me to things that I was not aware of.
|
| FWIW, my service was a tech service, and my market was
| decidedly _not_ tech savvy. One of the challenges of the
| sales process was getting them to understand and believe
| that we weren't trying to bamboozle them (as many
| competitors were). We couldn't sell them with technical
| explanations of why we were good or why some other option
| was not as good -- we had to use non-technical
| explanations and an onboarding process that minimized the
| friction.
|
| Ultimately, the proof of the pudding was in the eating,
| so we retained customers for much longer than industry
| average, with most of our churn being due to businesses
| being sold, closing, or moving beyond what we offered (at
| which point we referred them to an ethical provider that
| was appropriate for their newfound needs).
|
| > You're not entitled to even a second of my time.
|
| Honestly, I think you're living a lesser life (especially
| professionally) if you are not willing to defer seconds,
| minutes, or even hours to speculative engagements.
|
| It doesn't take long to qualify a sales call for fit --
| the good sales people will know how to what itches they
| are good at scratching and whether you might have those
| itches.
| Alupis wrote:
| Cold Calls aren't the problem though. Getting one random
| call a month or whatever never was an issue in the past.
|
| The issue is getting 10 completely silent calls per day,
| sometimes with an additional "your car warranty is expired"
| call. That's the issue everyone has a problem with - it's
| made answering your phone nearly useless.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Annoying 90 people to make a marginal profit from 3 seems bad
| for society, and I would fully support a ban.
| csa wrote:
| > Annoying 90 people to make a marginal profit from 3 seems
| bad for society, and I would fully support a ban.
|
| I mean, that's easy to say in a glib way on a site like HN,
| but are factoring in the full consequences of the knock-on
| effects of a high-friction economy?
|
| Oh, ads are annoying? Ok, everything that is ad supported
| _ceases to exist_. Little or no TV, no social media (ok,
| this sort of seems like a win), no newspapers, no
| magazines, no radio, much smaller movie scene (since they
| can't advertise), etc.
|
| I'm all for having healthy boundaries and being able to set
| healthy boundaries, but your solution seems like overkill.
|
| Fwiw, I set my phone on do not disturb for numbers not in
| my address book. That's an easy way to not be bothered if
| that's your jam (I just check messages if/when I want to).
| cwkoss wrote:
| I would also happily tax advertisements extremely
| aggressively to the point that most advertisements cease
| to exist.
| hanniabu wrote:
| America, where you can inconvenience an entire nation as long
| as there's money to be made
| azinman2 wrote:
| Better than inconvenience due to inefficiencies and
| stupidity with no money to be made
| bediger4000 wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head. The US could have stopped
| robocalls years ago, by enforcing accurate caller ID and
| maybe policing who got to hook up to the SS7 network, and
| aggressively enforcing whatever laws could be used against
| the scammers.
|
| But instead, the phone companies probably decided they
| could make extra cash off the robocallers, not realizing
| they were killing the golden goose. I'm also 100% certain
| that both phone companies and members of Congress received
| bribes i mean sizeable campaign contributions and cushy
| think tank jobs over this.
|
| So maybe 50-100 people made money, and absolutely ruined a
| working communication system. I hope it was worth
| inconveniencing the entire US population to make a little
| money, you shameless wieners.
| pnpnp wrote:
| If I had to guess, capitalism?
| wombat-man wrote:
| Would love to see some jail time too. What a nuisance.
| jasonmp85 wrote:
| [dead]
| babyshake wrote:
| I don't even try to stop the scams anymore for the most part. I
| just assume that anything incoming is a scam until I am able to
| verify it. It is kind of crazy making, but maybe not as crazy
| making as trying to stop the flood.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Tmobile and others have some ot-in feature that prevent most of
| the scam calls from getting to your phone. I went from a couple
| a day to a couple a week after turning it on.
| [deleted]
| larperdoodle wrote:
| My phone hasn't rung with a scam call since I enabled Google
| assistant call screening. Unknown callers have to explain why
| they're calling
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What's in it for Google?
| kramerger wrote:
| It's part of Googles strategy for adding human-level AI to
| Google Assistant and Android.
|
| See the restaurant reservation demo from Google IO 2018.
| esalman wrote:
| They can sell more Pixel phones.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah. I ragequit Android when they went back on photo
| storage promises but wowza I did not think that Apple
| would be so bad at handling spam. Unless they get their
| act together I am ragequitting the Apple ecosystem back
| to Android for my next phone.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| Isn't that more of a carrier thing?
| sudobash1 wrote:
| People buying their phone?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Oh. Is that also why they continue to remove features
| that I use?
| thatfunkymunki wrote:
| The answer to this question is probably also yes,
| regardless of how orthogonal it is to the previous
| question.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Knowing every inbound call made to that number and
| collecting ML training data.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| It decreases user availability to non-Google advertising
| vectors. I would also assume that if Google can figure out
| who's trying to sell what to you, they can use that to
| better funnel ads your way on their own platform.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Curious if this has worked where a valid caller with a valid
| reason made it through the screen and how you could catch
| false positives. Sounds like a great idea if it works so
| that's why I am asking.
| xur17 wrote:
| At least so far there don't seem to be any false positives,
| but it does seem like something that could easily be
| botted.
| larperdoodle wrote:
| I think if they say anything, it rings and shows a
| transcript of what they said. At least, that's what
| happened the few times I've received a legitimate call from
| an unknown number (think calls like a contractor or a
| doctor's office).
| esalman wrote:
| Isn't this feature only available in Pixel phones?
| Bloating wrote:
| Been using this for what seems like years. Initially Google
| Asst screening would throw some legit callers off base, but I
| haven't had a false-positive or scam calls for years. Google
| Asst also manages the call when put on-hold. Would be more
| fun if it could emulate Its Lenny
| rmason wrote:
| Someone has figured out how to break it. I have it enabled
| yet I still receive one call a week from a Chinese speaking
| robo caller. Everyone I know gets these calls, some daily on
| their cell phones. Must be a very profitable product they're
| selling to afford making 600 calls to reach one person who
| understands Mandarin.
| VintageCool wrote:
| Those calls threaten their Mandarin-speaking target that US
| Immigration services are going to kick them out of the
| country. But the scammers (who might be dressed up as
| immigration lawyers) will take care of the problem in
| exchange for a bunch of money.
| unsignedint wrote:
| Implementing a challenge system could be a potential solution. In
| this system, each outgoing call would require the caller to pay a
| dime as a deposit. If the recipient marks the call as legitimate
| after the conversation, either through the app or website, the
| caller would receive the dime back.
|
| To ensure customer convenience, inbound business numbers could
| have the option to opt out of the challenge deposit requirement,
| allowing customers to call in without any deposit.
|
| While requiring all outgoing calls to be charged might be more
| effective, it might not be a popular direction, especially in the
| United States. Thus, the challenge system with a deposit and the
| optional opt-out for inbound business numbers appears to be a
| more balanced and acceptable approach, considering both the need
| for legitimacy verification and user satisfaction.
| j-bos wrote:
| This would be a cool idea for an email filter.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| There was a proposal for this in the 90s called Hashcash.
| Senders would have to brute force some random data to append
| onto email headers until they found some such that the first
| n bits of the hashed header were 0s. Sending emails would be
| computationally expensive, but not to a point that it would
| impact non-bulk users.
|
| The proof-of-work email use case never took really took off,
| but if you're acquainted with cryptocurrencies some parts of
| the implementation might sound familiar :)
| coder543 wrote:
| The recipient of the call would have zero incentive to mark any
| call as legitimate, so this system would not work due to sheer
| apathy. All calls would automatically be considered
| illegitimate.
|
| Unless you're proposing to also fine people 10 cents for every
| call that they receive that they don't mark as legitimate or
| illegitimate? That's not going to be popular either.
| unsignedint wrote:
| Under the challenge system, your friend pays a dime for the
| call, providing an incentive for you to return that money
| unless you want to be inconsiderate.
|
| For other callers, like businesses, if the recipient does not
| mark the call as legitimate, they have the option to
| discontinue offering calls to that customer in the future or
| absorb the associated cost.
|
| To strike a balance, the cost for the challenge should be
| small enough for typical calling cases, allowing users to
| accept the occasional expense if necessary. However, as the
| calling volume becomes excessive, the cost should increase
| significantly, serving as a deterrent against excessive or
| spammy calling behavior. This way, the system encourages
| genuine calls while discouraging misuse of the service.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Under the challenge system, your friend pays a dime for
| the call, providing an incentive for you to return that
| money unless you want to be inconsiderate.
|
| _At most_ , this "consideration" would extend to a handful
| of people. In reality, no, most people would not care to
| mark calls as legitimate, even from friends.
|
| > For other callers, like businesses, if the recipient does
| not mark the call as legitimate, they have the option to
| discontinue offering calls to that customer in the future
| or absorb the associated cost.
|
| Yes, it would just be part of the cost of doing business.
| It would be a tax on all phone calls. No one would mark
| these calls as legit.
|
| > This way, the system encourages genuine calls while
| discouraging misuse of the service.
|
| Again, the incentives aren't aligned. It would not work.
|
| If you had proposed the opposite, your idea would have a
| much greater chance of working, but you didn't. If more
| than a handful of people mark a particular number as having
| called them illegitimately, then yes, fine that number a
| large sum of money. _That_ would work. People are
| incentivized to complain when they receive spam calls and
| texts. People are not incentivized to confirm that normal
| calls are normal.
|
| Imagine applying this idea to credit card fraud instead of
| phone calls, so you had to mark every single credit card
| transaction as legitimate, or else the business gets
| charged an extra 10 cents. The customer faces no
| consequences for "forgetting" to mark the charges as
| legitimate. The people who empathize enough with the
| business to do that for every single charge would just be
| faced with a major hassle, and the credit card companies
| would have a null signal where most "illegitimate" (by
| default) charges are actually legitimate. People can
| already contest illegitimate credit card charges, and that
| system works much better than a default-illegitimate
| system.
| unsignedint wrote:
| Also, if anything like this were to be implemented, it
| would probably be through some sort of SaaS where payment
| is consolidated, perhaps as a phone bill, etc., instead
| of charging a credit card for each transaction.
| unsignedint wrote:
| Personally, I will never call you again if I don't get
| that dime back. However, it is also possible to design
| the system in a way that it actually comes with some
| disadvantages if calls are not marked in a reasonable
| timeframe. For instance, all the incoming call from that
| number is blocked if it is not marked within three days.
|
| I'm just providing a broad idea, and I'm pretty sure
| there are different types of details that can make it
| more workable.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| Like STIR/SHAKEN to provide affirmation that the calling number
| is legit?
|
| https://ribboncommunications.com/company/media-center/blog/o...
| unsignedint wrote:
| STIR/SHAKEN is a mechanism that validates the origination of
| calls but doesn't verify the legitimacy of the call, which
| can only be determined by the recipient. While it is a good
| starting point to protect against spoofing, what we truly
| need is an end-to-end deterrent to prevent these annoying
| calls altogether. I believe that imposing a potential
| financial burden on the caller could be the only effective
| solution to counter these calls.
| madsbuch wrote:
| While that would be a solution, it appears to be a solved
| problem. Neither my Portugese, nor my Danish number receives
| any robocalls. Frinds with US numbers get a lot of robocalls,
| though.
| submeta wrote:
| I got a lot of calls here in Germany from people with indian
| accent, pretending to work for Microsoft. At some point I
| wouldn't pick up the phone if I did not know the caller.
| lightbendover wrote:
| Size of market.
| arp242 wrote:
| I never got any in the UK either. Are you saying that 67
| million people is too small of a market? Even the 10 and 6
| million of Portugal and Denmark seems plenty large enough
| to make these type of things viable.
| lozenge wrote:
| They're not robocalls, but since my mobile number was
| ported to O2 I have received multiple calls a week of
| scammers wanting to access my account to order phones.
| lightbendover wrote:
| > Are you saying that 67 million people is too small of a
| market?
|
| Yes. If I'm a scammer, I'm going to target the most
| profitable single market that I understand. Building an
| international capability on top of that is a fairly large
| leap.
| arp242 wrote:
| You can apply that reasoning to every product or service.
| Do you actually have any knowledge on this?
| madsbuch wrote:
| I can ensure you that both Portugal and Denmark has
| plenty og spam and scams. Also in local languages. Just
| not robocalls.
| madsbuch wrote:
| The European union holds more than 100m more people than
| the US.
| supertrope wrote:
| Who speak different languages. It also costs much more
| per minute to call EU cellphones.
| itake wrote:
| Aren't most retired people's money locked up in gov
| pension and social programs as opposed to the USA where
| you're expected to mostly self-fund retirement with 401k,
| IRA, and savings?
|
| So older US people have more control of their retirement
| funds than Europeans?
| madsbuch wrote:
| I don't know how this related to robocall, but I like the
| question!
|
| I can only answer for Denmark, but there we have a thing
| called "ratepension" which I think is similar to a 401k.
| Retirement age in Denmark is 73 and the public pensions
| do only cover the bare minimums - you also need at
| private pension.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Random chance. Some people in the US get no calls, either.
| Some people in Europe get a barrage of calls every day.
| madsbuch wrote:
| I have never heard about anybody in Europe getting
| robocalls. It was a completely foreign concept for me
| before I hear about Americans getting them.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Well, given that there are people in this very discussion
| from Europe discussing the robocalls they get, I'd guess
| you are seeing only what you want to see. Can't help you
| with that.
| madsbuch wrote:
| Interesting! Can you lead me to those comments?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sibling comment of the root reply this is on. Everyone
| else can see it and it was posted before you made this
| comment so no idea why you can't see it but everyone else
| can.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's a start. Next time fine the carrier.
| [deleted]
| crawsome wrote:
| At the scale they are wasting people's time, they should be
| jailed for life. Plenty of lifetime's worth of wasted time.
|
| We should also retire auth-less POTS.
| TylerE wrote:
| Fine for stuff like this should be: You get audited, and pay 150%
| of what you earned from the illegal activity. Not "cost of doing
| business".
|
| Can't pay it? C-Suite goes to prison.
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