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VoIP to Fuel Plague of 'Dialing for Dollars'/Spam
Ant writes "Broadband Reports says Internet News is exploring how telemarketers world-wide are realizing they can dodge long-distance costs (and U.S. "Do Not Call" restraints) by voice spamming VoIP users. Different from SPIT (spam over internet telephony) because it's not automated, an analyst in the article predicts homes and businesses could see some 150 calls a day from overseas call centers."
I am surprised that this hasn't happened sooner but I believe it will happen. I wonder what sort of culture shock we will have when our home telephones are rendered useless because they ring non-stop? I am getting just over 400 email spam a day so 100 to 150 phone calls a day (especially at a cost of only a penny or so each according to the article) seems believable. While spam filtering rids me of all but two or three email spam a day in my inbox, is there a technology that will do the same for my home phone. God, this sure will be interesting (and yes, I understand I have employed a bit of hyperbole).
http://www.busyweather.com/
What happens if the cost of each almost-continuous call is incremental?
Say the first 10 VOIP calls are free, and if you make the 11th call within 5 minutes of the 10th call, you pay 1 cent, and if you make your 12th call within 5 minutes of your 11th call, you pay 2 cents, then 4 cents, 8 cents and so on.
Private callers shouldn't have to pay anything due to the engaging nature of personal calls.
Businesses will have to register to get exemption from the charges, thus easily identifiable.
Like spam filters, this won't stop spammers from spamming, but hopefully it's enough to make it less profitable.
We didn't see email spams coming, but we should definitely do something on VOIP when we have the opportunity.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"The average enterprise or household could see as much as 150 calls a day from these telemarketers. It has to happen, because it is a market force that takes the market feedback and makes it into a profitable approach."
:-P
Ah, so this is how they are going to use all that dark fiber.
Seriously though, it would be in the phone companies best interest to figure out how to block this. After the legislation for the do not call list, calls to our home plummeted. And rightly so. If I have to deal with telemarketers calling my home again, I will simply have the phone company disconnect my land line, especially with the prospect of 100-150 calls/day. Most people that really need to get ahold of me immediately can use the cell phone or email/IM me anyway. As for calling people at work, I cannot figure out how businesses will tolerate this. Businesses will be more likely to pressure phone companies to limit this kind of activity as it impacts productivity.
So, I don't really care how they do it, but from an end users perspective......They can either fix the loopholes and prevent phone spam or they will lose business.
On another note. Serious question to all the Slashdotters: Has anyone here actually bought ANYTHING from a telemarketer who called you? I have never purchased any good or service solicited over the phone, and I am wondering who it is that actually keeps these knuckleheads in business.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Gentlemen, start up your whitelists!
You mean U.S. laws don't apply everywhere? We should get that law changed!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Russia, China, India... Who'd have thought these would be new sources of spam?! I routinely block these domains/net blocks from sending email into our networks (along with a few of the other well known spam sludge pits), so would it really be that difficult to firewall out all VOIP traffic from these places too? Maybe if enough people just cut them off they'd change their attitudes to providing havens for (mostly) American spam "companies".
In fact, I'd imagine these call centres would be easier to firewall off the 'net than spammers, as it would be harder to switch net blocks once a blackhole service was set up to list the offending address ranges.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
So how long until someone hunts down those IPs and offers up a list for call blocking of them? Also, how long until someone writes a program that will DDoS of some form or another those same call centers or something similar that will harass the call centers?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
So, when one of these turkeys calls me, I can keep them on the line until I traceroute where his call is coming from, then go after him and his ISP with any number of legal charges as well as possible DDoSs.
Yes, that sounds like a GREAT way to make money.
www.eFax.com are spammers
And with VoIP it would be quite easy to enable an easy to update whitelist for inbound calls. People could use something like the various spam blocking sites (i.e. Spamhaus) that would put and end to that crap.
/dev/null.
/dev/null. I would sort of expect these options to be built into the software and easily enabled by end users as that would make the most sense.
There are so many possibilities for controlling this crap that I don't even want to go into it. Personally? I would use my addressbook (LDAP?) as the whitelist. Anyone else would get a message to find another way to contact me to be added to the whitelist, to enter the passcode to get through, or they be routed to
Anyone showing up as "UNKNOWN", "UNAVAILABLE", or originating numbers coming from outside the country would automatically be re-routed to
Yeah, it could cause you to lose some callers. How many times do people call you that you don't know and that you actually want to hear from? I'll take the 1 caller a year that doesn't know the passcode and can't find another way to contact me.
YMMV.
It's already starting.
Ignoring people who have abandoned land-line phones for wireless, most of my friends are in the "phone by appointment only" mode.
If you want to talk to me on a land line, email (or IM) me first and tell me when you'll call. Otherwise, the damn thing stays unplugged, and/or with the ringer off. If I ain't expecting someone's call, it ain't getting answered.
I was wondering when people would start talking about this. Its just another form of communication that people will use to exploit and take advantage of others.
Yes VOIP is good, so was the telephone until people realized their was money involved.
The only way I can see being able to slow down the title wave that is going to hit is for the companies that are supplying VOIP to listen to customers when they call and complain about phone numbers spamming them..... But again, we all know how well that works with telephones.
TruePunk | Games
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Won't this be a lot easier to stop than telemarketers? Can't I simply block the IP address or block of IP addresses?
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
recieving wierd calls on my Skype account.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As long as I'm paying the price I'm paying for VOIP now (read: inexpensive), I'm not going to complain; I'm going to use the technology to filter out the spam! Besides that, the tech will keep improving and will be light years ahead of anything regulation could provide.
1) Get me a shotgun /. pay to send me overseas
2) Users from
3) End to all of this crap
and not a single telemarketer or sales call.
Infact i get more on my cell phone than i do on my VoIP.
VoIP spamming will be far more intrusive than email spamming, since a phone call *demands* an action in real time. This will make it far more annoying.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You can automatically block all VoIP call from your phone for just $1. For $5.99 you can add a whitelist. Or you can just tell all your friends to get a MaBell line and save that $5.99! Sounds like a win-win for the Bells!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
until I start re-routing their calls to each other. Think of it, a simple firewall that sits on your network that re-routs overseas calls to each other. Just keep a list of numbers and add new ones as they come in, completely automated...get a couple thousand Voice over IP users to do this and viola, problem solved. Old fashioned ping of death, DOS attacks. Perfectly legitimate because I am just returning their calls right???
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Auto Attendant!!!
(or is that one word - autoattendant?)
Maybe I'm looking at this in a too simplistic way, but why not make it illegal for telemarkers who circumvent national do not call lists to trade.
Or to put it another way - if you go to India to get cheap VoIP calls and to get round our do not call regs. Then we will make it illegal for your products to be traded, sold or delivered in our country.
If you take away the market, then hopefully telemarketers will stop.
How about just a built in traceroute and block?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Scenario 2 is to have a SPIT box making one call at a time over a cable modem from 8am to 10pm everyday. Now THIS is profitable! This scares the hell out of me. I get bombarded at work with "Hi this is Sally and I'm selling crap! Press 1 now to speak with an operator about buying some of it"
I boycott signatures
Won't work.
Obviously they are NOT going to respect "caller ID".
This is just more proof that the Internet is the worst thing that could have ever happened to our civilization. No, really. It'll all end in tears and heartbreak.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
Can we please block Anonymous Cowards from posting? ...
er... wait. Never mind. Erase erase.
Problem solved...
However, we're also going to need some software tools. A lot of sites, my own workplace included, are rolling out VoIP systems. Some of these are COTS systems of various levels of quality. Others (like us) are using open systems like Asterisk PBX and SIP Express Router (SER). Currently, as far as I have seen neither the proprietary nor the open tools have what it takes regarding abuse rejection:
Next, a numeric code to let whitelist people through when not calling from a whitelisted telephone number.
Third, ASAP simple voice recognition to replace typing in a code for whitelisted callers. (E.g. "Hi, it's Mom...").
Someday, absolute identification of the person making the call so that Caller ID is accurate (i.e. "Insert national identity card in slot to complete this call..."). (Note to privacy freaks: When you're calling me, you already know who is on the other end of the telephone line, and I feel I should have that same right in return.)
If technology can create the problem, it darn well ought to create the solution as well.
And when technology doesn't work, massive fines for those who invade one's private telephone space!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
After these businesses start getting enough special packages from our cabin living friend, these type of businesses might dry up.
Hopefully, the cell phone companies see this coming and will start to work on technology to drop calls from known offenders. A cell phone provider that can pull this off will likely have large groups of people flocking to their service if cell phones start to see this kind of call volume.
I've learned to live with the telemarketers calling my house frequently because friends and family rarely use my home phone unless they just want to leave me a message. I'd be very upset if my cell phone started ringing constantly, though.
This comment was generated by a squadron of trained super elite albino ninja chickens for you.
this could become a problem without an extension of the do not call legislation. Phone companies can't filter out spam calls since they're common carriers. VOIP companies probably have a bit more leverage but would also directly profit from having VOIP spammers. All the parties will feel heat if the do not call legislation is expanded since it would probably require some form of gatekeeping by a domestic company somewhere along the message path.
It seems like there is a whole lot of potential for messing with VOIP spammers' minds, moreso than over a telephone or through email.
Push the incoming stream quietly into the background while you go on computing, no problem. Tie the spammer up as long as they'll let themselves get tied up. No skin off your nose.
For example, the VOIP software could have a set of control plugins that could be used to redirect the spammer's voice back at them (WILL YOU STOP REPEATING ME?), or direct your outgoing voice stream to a looping message about how you don't accept spam. If you get two spam calls at the same time, hook them to each other and let *them* figure it out. Do it a la JACK -- if you want a new plugin to hassle would-be telemarketers (put reverb on their voice as you pump it back, or cange the pitch maybe?), just write one up and plug it into your existing sound architecture.
I imagine doing this at a desktop, so maybe that why it seems so controllable to me. Especially with the Libre OS of Your Choice at the helm. Mobile VOIP devices might be tougher... or maybe not.
Parent should be modded 'Insightful', not 'Funny'.
I want to say its as simple as detecting whether they are using a blocked number. None of these people are going to offer up their number right? What are the legal issues around spoofing? I know this is another capability asterisk has, but I would think there would some issues with a telemarketer using this to outright lie about where they are calling from...of course, would be hard to catch them too.
once you go slack, you never go back
How long until we see IVR (Interactive Voice Response) honeypots written for Asterisk?
I can see it now, an UNKNOWN/UNKNOWN call comes in and is immediately kicked into a simple IVR app that says "hello", waits for a pause and then says "Very interesting, tell me more" and repeats until the person at the other end realizes that there's noone there.
You could even add automated attacks against the originating system, as well....
If the call doesn't interupt anything important, talk to them, the time you are talking to them is time they are not bothering anyone else.
I think of it as a small contribution to the improvement of the world.
Actually we did. The infamous Green Card Lawyers carpet-bombing Usenet told everybody paying attention that we stop it now, or it will only get worse.
Problem with politicians is that they don't react to a problem until after it has grown out of control. And they don't listen to the people who do see it coming.
That's why to this day, CB radio skips clear around the world. They didn't listen to the experts about assigning frequencies. Even now, with spam a problem for everyone, there is little in the way of effective law against it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...I will start a white list. And I will only accept phone calls from people on my white list. I meet you, you give me your phone number, and I make sure I can recieve your calls when I get home.
Spammers will find their way around that too, I have no doubts. I can already change my outgoing callerid #, so i don't see why they can't either.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Even if 99.9% of people they cold-called call back and demand that the charges get removed, enough people won't call back. Do the math and you'll find this is highly profitable.
[o]_O
Get a cell phone, it costs a little bit more, but no one can telamarket to you on it (legaly) and only the people you tell (or call) have your number - use the voip for crap like subscriptions and any list that may get sold.
"Hi this is John. I am screening my calls. Please leave a voicemail and I will call you back."
"Hi John, this is Pete. You just tried to call me, and left me voicemail about my attempted call a few minutes ago. Please call me back."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It ought to be free. Even better, they ought to pay you to allow them to block VoIP. After all, you've just asked them to kill their only real competition!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
> stick with tsunami
unless you mean a "tidal wave"
Firewalls will be your friend to stop this sort of thing. The backlash will be harsher too- people are more likely to get irked at phone calls than emails; spam is something that you can take care of at your leisure. A phone ringing at 3 AM, not so much.
"an analyst in the article predicts homes and businesses could see some 150 calls a day from overseas call centers."
Any chance this analyst has recieved money from the bells recently?
I can see a big market for automated RBL (Real-time Black Lists) for phone numbers caught spamming. Also someone with a little turnkey Astreisk based computer that has a "junk" voicemail box, recognized calls ring through, everything else silently gets sent to the junk box.
I think it would be great if we had little boxes at home that we could flag messages as SPAM, that would update a RBL. And also check the CallerID against an RBL before answering.
We have fairly mature methods for identifying spam. Obviously the phone stuff will be a little more difficult because we won't be able to adjust filter based on subject or content (at least easily). But some type of automated RBL should be relatively easy with VoIP. A fix for the Caller ID spoofing will have to be in place for this to be effective.
Though it seems like there would be a way to distinguish between a real and a spoofed number. Maybe not at the handset, but at the point of entry on the VOiP network. It would seem like a call from a regular POTS line would look much different than a call orginating on a VOiP line.
The other thing if VOiP lines are being used as SPAM calls it seems like it would be relatively easy to see a pattern in call logs. I.e. a disproportionate amount of outbound calls to inbound calls. The amount of outbound calls per day. The length and duration of outbound calls. The destination of outbound calls.
The VOiP providers should also have a internal call number or something so that when we look at our logs we can flag the call (via a web interface) as probable SPAM. The provider could then use their internal tracking number to determine where that call came from. If it orginated on a competing provider hopefully there would be some type of industry wide anti-spamming effort to make sure assholes like these Spamming vermin don't ruin it for everyone.
I am just speculating as to possible methodsto combat the problem. There are obvious issues with my suggestions, like number poratibility and privacy issues, but the fact remains that if VOiP spam becomes a problem there *should* be some ways to leverage our existing expertise in weeding out shitty shit spewed forth from the lowest life forms that we are currently forced to share of planet with.
It would obvisously be nicer if there was some way to instantly smite the scum with the wrath of God, and have them immediately and permantently cease their existance; however, since that seems unlikely, a combination of filters, RBL and industry action seem like the way to go.
MS2k
"Russia, China, India... Who'd have thought these would be new sources of spam?!"
Make sure you add to your list America's own 2nd/3rd world state, Florida.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You're missing the point here. The cell phone companies want you to use your phone. You don't have unlimited cell phone service. The more minutes you use, the more you pay. This is to their advantage, because where else are you going to go?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The little old ladies that are just waiting for someone to talk to them are waiting.
I bet even some of them will actually pay the upfront cost of shipping from China for that new car they won from a contest they never remembered entering.
I am going back to smoke signals as my primary from of long distant communications.
SPIT=SPam over Internet Telephony
I know it will get annoying fast, but if I actually catch a live person trying to sell me something, I have an opportunity to try one of the many tricks suggested, to bang the phone loudly on the desk, or to unload all the rage I've built up for thousands of pieces of spam that I couldn't reply to. Maybe I'm just bored.
If you have a router with the ability to restrict the IP ranges of incoming traffic as well as the ports then would it not be sufficient to block traffic from entire countries on the ports that your IP phone is using? For example, I do not normally receive calls from India, China, or Eastern Europe so would it not be a simple matter to set up the filter table so that incoming calls from these regions are entirely blocked? Alternatively, would I not also be able to create a whitelist of ranges from which I will accept calls and all others are blocked? As long as the phone is plugged in behind the router the router gets to enforce routing rules on all traffic, including traffic which is meant for the IP phone.
Obviously they are NOT going to respect "caller ID".
Who said anything about caller ID? Use IP addresses. They can't spoof that and be able to carry on a conversation. Any proxy servers that use this would get blocked (or you could automatically block proxy servers anyway).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Y'know what? People aren't going to answer 150 calls a day. They'll shoot the damn phone, or something. Seriously, if it gets to be that bad, the public will raise such a huge stink that something will get done.
I did find one thing the article mentioned interesting, though... the possibility of combining spyware with VOIP telemarketing. Say you go browsing the 'net for DVD's, and all of a sudden your phone rings, and it's a telemarketer offering low, low prices on current major releases!
better yet, we need to port ELIZA to voice recognition/speach synthesis. Plug 'em into that, and it doesn't even matter if the recognition rate is say 60% or so.
Why?
Because the user has many software tools availible here that simply aren't doable on landline systems. Hell, the easiest first method of screening is using a simple whitelist. Can you do that with normal landlines???
Since voip is run by software on your computer you *have* the possiblity of applying code to the screening process, in other words CAPCHA of one sort or the other, can you do this with landlines?? the captchas don't even have to be complicated. It could be a verbal command requesting the user do do a simple task (type a number, say a word, look up something on website, send an email). What ever it is, this is to time-comsuming for spammers. All of this is simply not possible on landlines.
I can't help but think that this "prediction" is simply the drawing of a parallel from email spam to voip spam. The reason why email spam is hard to block, is that you don't want to throw away legitimate email. Why is throwing away legit email bad? Because the legit sender already sent it and assumes you got it and will read it! That doesn't apply with voip. If you block a legit caller he immediately knows you didn't get his call! For this reason applying spam filters to voip is much easier than email.
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
so in the future when everyone is using VOIP i'll start getting people i don't know calling me to try and sell me things??? wow that sounds awful...
OH WAIT THAT ALREADY HAPPPENS TO ME ALL THE F***KING TIME ON MY NORMAL PHONE LINE.
how is this any different?
Redirect the call from spammers to one of the other spammers that calls me, so now the spammers are just all calling each other.
Don't know if all VoIP services have individual phone number redirecting, but i use Lingo, and they do :)
This comment was generated by a squadron of trained super elite albino ninja chickens for you.
For once I'm happy that I live in a country, which does not have one of the major languages as the principal one.
/. with interest for future updates on this issue. Have fun answering your phones, folks!
Spam phone calls in English will be totally ineffective here in Denmark: Those, who are fluent in English, are not stupid enough to fall for junk calls, and the dumb ones left school after seventh grade and will hang up on any call not in Danish.
Finding foreigners with any capacity to speak an understandable version of Danish is a rare occurance indeed. I somehow find it extremely unlikely that the far east call centers will be able to find any significant number of them, no matter how hard they try.
I will be watching
pbx with PIN number. anyone who doesnt enter the PIN gets silently dumped to voicemail -- your phone never rings. the PIN gets them to immediately ring through, bypassing voicemail.
simple. elegant. failsafe.
you're welcome.
It was bound to happen... We've outsourced SPAM! Guess the rising cost of electricity is making it too expensive to spam from the US.
With IAX (Inter-Asterix Exchange Protocol), volunteers have provided gateways so that you can actually call many U.S. area codes for no charge.
beat
Do'h!
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
That I haven't seen raised much, is that the costs of doing this would be hugely higher than spamming via email, which is so prevalent because it's so bloody cheap. I think we'll see an increase in this sort of thing, but not to the tune of 150 calls/day, simply because of the economics of the situation.
A call center costs money, and the best telemarketers can only talk to a few people an hour. Your throughput of calls goes up only as your costs for warm bodies to man the phones goes up, and that increases your overhead.
Email spammers can simply jump to another location to keep spewing when the banhammer falls. A VoIP-based call center might have a bit more trouble.
That's all I got say about that.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Heck, I bet some sort of distributed retribution system as detailed in "Murder on the Orient Express" would be an effective way of dealing with evildoers like spammers, Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay.
(Note to our friends at the BFI & SNA -- ha ha, I maek joke!)
*sigh*
Cordless was supposed to be better.
- Yes, because I'm not tethered to a wall in my house.
- No, because the neighbors can eavesdrop.
Cell was supposed to be better,
- Yes, in that I'm not tethered to my house.
- No, in that it still doesn't work as well or as often as my landline.
VOIP was supposed to be better
- Yes because it's cheaper / no old stakeholders
- No because it's not protected like my landline,
- No because this new stuff can happen,
- Maybe since we're not sure is it an intermediate step or is this "it"
And how many times have we had to ask THAT question... CDs were "it". DVDs were "it". Cable was the last pipe we'd ever need. No make that IP over Powerlines. Scrap that - wireless broadband! This just in - WiFi Mesh. 802.11 A - I mean B... er, no, um... G! Oops - N!
And I thought they were making up that stuff in the Matrix movies about only trusting physical landlines...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If someone has to be on the other end of the phone when you answer it, it will be a lot more dificult to get 150 calls a day out to every house. On the other hand, with spam, you just hit "Send" and you're done.
But I do see this becomming a problem. Maybe there will be a setting you can set to block all calls from IP, rendering the entire technology useless.
I won't have a problem completely disconnecting my phone if I get 15 calls a day from telemarketers though.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
That like saying the following back in early 90's -- "I have had e-mail for over a decade, and I have not had any spams..."
Rest assured that in a year or two we will look back with great fondness to the days before some cow poop eater pester us with penis enlarger over VoIP...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
One problem: what if your company routinely does business with Russia, China, or India? One of the shining advantages of VoIP over standard telephone is virtually free long-distance calls. My company makes hundreds of calls every month to Chinese vendors, and the savings involved with switching to VoIP would be MASSIVE. But it wouldn't work too well if we firewalled the entire domain because that's also where most of our spoIP originated.
with Zapateller and a voice menu from hell.
BRING "EM ON!
As someone who worked as a Telemarketer for about a year, i can tell you that this will happen. the company that I recently worked for was putting together a "voIP team" to tackle all the new tech popping up around it. Sad that this is the world we live in now, where people feel the only way to sell a product is to market it directy to someone over something as personal as a Telephone.
"The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars" - Johnny Cash
And that's not the problem.
The problem is that email is only useful with the "network effect". Of *course* I can implement this (spam free email) -- and be an island of one. Indeed, even the smallest step towards this is not tolerated.
(which would be -- grab my public key from the MIT key server, and encrypt mail you want to send to me. Personally, I would be FASCINATED to see what spam would warrant encryption and the CPU cycles that it entails!).
And, I won't "sell out" the technology. Which means that I, and ONLY I, control my mail server.
So you can have your spam-free world, but (1) you will be talking to less people and/or (2) you will have no control.
Solve all three of these problems and you will have a winner.
The same problem will afflict VOIP. But, people seem willing to give up control of the technology (witness the purchase of VOIP technology from middle vendors, who cannot possibly be adding value to the IP based connection you ALREADY have!).
And in that there is a solution.
Just some shit for you to ponder...
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
If you hear the phone ring and walk to it to check the caller ID, the damage is already done: you've been interrupted. Picking up the phone to dispatch some telemarketer is actually the fun part.
I dont think this will ever happen, Ive been in telemarketing for 5 years and the hardest sells are always the customers who receive more cold calls a day from other telemarketing companies. Now if everyone was getting 150 calls per day I dont care what the call costs are, paying my wage is too expensive for my boss if im never going to make a sale.
serenity now!
How long before someone writes some malware that adds numbers to your skype account, and tells some of these nice telemarketers your account details?
:)
That sounds like a whole lot of fun
So how long till we see all the distributed Windows/PC Zombies unleashed with a prerecorded sales pitch over VOIP? Nice...
So I guess Janis Joplin was actually asking God to help her with her spam business?
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV?
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town?
I'm counting on you, Lord, please don't let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town?
Everybody!
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
VOIP is a technology that reduces the cost of phone calls. Telemarketers make a lot of phone calls, so any technology that reduces costs improves the profitability of the telemarketer.
Even without VOIP, long distance costs have been dropping dramatically for the last 10 years.
This is a minor change. The incidence of telemarketers isn't going to change dramatically as a result.
PHLEGM PHoning Longdstance by Eurasian Gangs / Marketers
No, not the MacGyver episode. Spam email is supposidly very ineffective. Everyone receives thousands of spam mails, but who actually does business with the company? The return rates are supposidly very bad, perhaps 5 people per million messages sent.
Spam mail is sent with a computer, in bulk, really fast.
One saving grace is that the telemarketers will generally use peopl (yes, there are some IVR calls, but the majority are humans). So hopefully the rate of return on the bulk number of calls needed to get a sale will make this ineffective.
I was telling people this before... "VoIP and other cheap unregulated phone service is great... but it will degrade into a state like email flooded with garbage"
Oh, and for fun, next time a charity calls... ask what percentage goes to the organization they are representing. Fun game.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Use the laws to file a lawsuit against the spammers that spam or the people who hire the spammers. Spamming is motivated by profit, lawsuits against spamers will remove that motivation.
I got spammed by Avtech Direct. I sent a demand letter, they were nasty in their response. I filed a lawsuit against them, and arranged for 15 other people to file lawsuits. When they appeared in court against me, I served them with the 20 other lawsuits. So far, only 5 of 21 cases were heard, they have over $11,000 in judgments against them. I have not seen any spam from them since.
Fight Spammers!
Couldnt agree more :D
I got a spam call 2 days ago. It was a recorded message saying I "could have won" a car and to call a 1-900 number (charged at $5/minute) to find out. I'd be very surprised if spam calls aren't all automated like this.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
The Thread suggests that this will be a problem for VoIP users only; but it seems to me that the overseas callcenters will call whoever they want regardless of what type of carrier the call-recepient uses. I don't think it is less expensive for them to call another VoIP line than it is for them to call a land-line or cell phone, but maybe I'm wrong.
Another thing... Is there a way that VoIP numbers are indexed or listed? Is there such thing as a listed or unlisted VoIP line?
I predict that: access lists will come in play - either implemented in the voip phone or - offered by the voip providers Today I can do this on my GSM phone: explicit definition of who can call me, the complement gets a fast busy, no ring on my side.
Hallowed are the Ori
So they use zombies to foil your IP checks just like spammers do.
Because in a way spam still exists because we all 'tolerate' spam. It's a time shiftable bother. You can deal with it like doing dishes: after, and not during your favorite TV show. Or after, and not during work that requires concentration. You can still maintain your own agenda.
SPIT rings the phone and keeps you busy the moment it comes in. It will call for revenge, in a way. A "now" problem demands a "now" solution, and that demand will be quite effective because it is pushed by an emotion called anger. Making spit a problem not only for the spit receiver, but also for the poor guy/girl receiving your input.
Concerning spit, the person in the chain between problem report and solution that said "who cares" in the case of spam, monopolies, patent directives and other forms of marketing mechanisms must fear for his life.
This will be dealth with quite efficiently.
Whenever I get an automated telemarketer call, I press '1' to talk to someone. Once they get on the phone, I start talking in an uncommon language. People have various reactions to it, but I've been taken off of at least one list. I find it really effective to say the name of one of those languages with the proper accent as well. Honestly, you don't even need to know that much of the language...
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
...the VOIP providers will simply setup all accounts to default to not receiving international calls, and filter those calls using publicly available public IP-block info. Because although they can move thier Vonage phone # to another country and nobody here can do anything about it, what they can't change is the country assignment of their ISPs block of IPs.
They would then implement a whitelisting service so that callers who weren't in the called party's address book would get a recording directing them to answer a series of questions (correctly) to send a whitelist approval request to the subscriber's personal web-page with a voice message attached.
YOu could even include a "Permanently ban and report voice spam" feature if a tele-scammer managed to answer your questions correctly and leave you an advertising message in your whitelist approval voicemail.
Or we could just rig the IP telephones with a cattle-prod-like function, so that the tele-scammer receives a searing 10,000 volt shock through their headset when they start pitching viagra.
Personally, I like the second one better.
Tough day? How about a free Mac mini?
"an analyst in the article predicts homes and businesses could see some 150 calls a day from overseas call centers."
Sometimes I love all those red states and the way they've kept up their lynching techniques.
ok, so the slashdot summary makes it sound like only people who have VOIP service would have to worry about this, but as far as I can tell from reading the article, the problem is that if the spammers get VOIP service, it makes it cost effective for them to spam anyone, so once this catches on, we would all be at risk, right? i don't see anything in tfa about whether the spamee has to have VOIP for this to be a problem. or am i misreading something?
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
As I understand it the VoIP works this way: Phone #1 -> traditional carrier -> PSTN exchange -> VoIP carrier -> VoIP router (and phone#2 IP address) -> phone #2
So the only place where IP comes into picture is between the VoIP carrier's servers and the home VoIP router. Is'nt that link reasonably secure? Is it possible to hijack it without the VoIP carrier's assent?
Or is this a scare story to halt the advance of VoIP? If spam calls are introduced at any other point, then VoIP spammers can spam any phone (not just VoIP phones)...
1-Some of us don't have caller-id.
2-Why should I spend money to keep a nuisance out of my hair?
But look at Skype. It 'just works' for the simple reason that it effectively uses proxy servers (P2P technology) to carry calls, so people behind retarded NATs, etc, don't have to have a dedicated IP addy. Block proxies, and lose your service... if you're using something like Skype.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I answer only calls that match my contact list - and not all of them, either. Everything else goes to voicemail. VoIP itegrates with my contact list, like landlines and mobiles never did. All these new opportunities from VoIP will translate into some opportunities for other people at our expense. But the same sword cuts both ways: it offers us opportunities to handle the calls better. And in the middle: software developers humanizing the new machine.
--
make install -not war
Why would you think these Spammers would only spam land lines? Why should they?
When they can just set up their systems to dial random numbers beneath known prefixes. Even old modem based auto-dialers can listen for a voice then transfer to a live operator.
The spammers will randomly hit numbers all across the country, Phone, Fax, and yes, even Cell. And because they'll be calling from the other side of the planet, the calls will happen all day and most of the night. They won't know whether they're calling a cell or a landline, and they won't care.
That is, if the Telcos let it happen. I wouldn't worry too much about this, because the US Telcos won't let this happen. If they even let it start happening, their customers would go into full riot.
And if (when) VOIP phone spam starts happening, I expect every major landline Telco, Cell Phone company and even major US VOIP vendors will firewall third world VOIP callers.
Yes, it will suck for people in the third world trying to make cheap calls to the US. But these companies make almost no revenue from incoming third world calls. They phone companies will firewall half of the planet, and 99.x% of their customers will thank them.
WTF? No way.
They don't want you clogging up the system using up your minutes. They would much rather you buy the 500 minutes/month plan and then only use 10 minutes of air time.
That is unless you get no free minutes at all.
Using air time costs them money because there business is based on the fact that people buy some expensive plan but don't use it fully.
" Go to the Sheriff with the judgement and hire him to go in and start confiscating property. Show up with the Sheriff to helpfully point out particular items that they should take."
Wow! When companies do this to companies (BSA), and individuals (RIAA/MPAA). We don't like it. When it benefits ourselves, then it'a whole different matter.
At home, if unavailable or unknown (sometimes goof and I know the number) otherwise we just don't answer.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Yeah, I don't get much spam from my addresses that I keep secret. I only get it from addresses that are used in public mailing lists, discussion boards, usenet, etc. And I get an assortment of foreign language spam which I presume are ads for Chinese herbal viagra and Russian home mortgages.
Hehe. Isn't it nice when the same technology used by basement pirates is also used by basement spammers.
If there are to be protections in place by the US government for VOIP, there will be taxes. Huge taxes, like $5 a call, due to lobbying from the phone companies.
Even more if its overseas, or out of your immediate area!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Yes, the cell phone companies want you to use your phone, but they don't want your cell service to become useless. They know that, if the utility of the service drops, people will disconnect in search of another carrier or another way to communicate. Besides, even if telemarketing calls go unanswered by people using Caller ID to screen, those unanswered calls still clog their switches and towers, reducing the number of legitimate calls that can get through. And believe me, this is something the cell companies do not want.
Oh, they listen all right, but only after you've opened that shiny black briefcase you've brought with you and shown them their bribe^Wcampaign contribution. It's better if you can pay them to write the laws for them, that's how the DMCA was born.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I use kphone with http://www.freeworlddialup.com to call my parent's VoIP phone (at least until this weekend when it didn't ring there and I only got the voice mail).
My solution is to just not run kphone unless I'm going to make a phone call. No one can possibly telemarket to me when I'm not running my SIP phone.
Swtiching to only cell phones wont stop them.... But it might cost you to get the calls. ( depending on your calling plan )
A simple old answering machine works here for me, if its a friend, they will talk to it. If its a telemarketer they wont.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1 - receive spam ( regardless of what format )
2 - find responsible parties
3 - kill them
4 - repeat until spam stops.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"an analyst in the article predicts homes and businesses could see some 150 calls a day from overseas call centers."
we have nukes for that kind of problem.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/2 044255
Would adoption of IPv6 make it more difficult for people to make unsolicited calls with VOIP? One of the advantages of a 128-bit IP address is that the number of IP addresses that are in actual use is small compared to the total address space.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The problem with the situation is;
too many people put up with it. too many people tolerate it. Companies would not engage in spam, if they did not believe it was profitable.
If the spam armageddon described in this article *does* come (and I'm feverishly praying it will) - then a critical mass of people will finally get fed up and do something about it.
Not something ineffective like the national do not call list, or the can-spam act.
Something effective.
Blood will flow.
It will be glorious.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I know I came into this chat a little late, but I hope to put some ideas out there... Because VoIP is basically like a computer phone, and I know other Telcos have been in trouble for this, but can't you just BLOCK the incomming "v-spam"?? And, don't IP addresses usually tell what COUNTRY the computer or service is located in? WOuldn't it simply be possible to BLOCK all of the Over Seas countries IP addresses that "v-spam" you? I think there is a way to stop "v-spam" before it happens by doing just that...if enough people block India and China IP Addresses from their VoIP service, maybe the problem will simply go away?
--E--
It is based on what we think the fairness is. I don't think most people here would fault the MPAA for going that to someone who is copying DVDs and selling them on a street corner for $5/each.
Fight Spammers!
Sounds like an excellent opportunity to use the features of http://www.asterisk.org/Asterisk to send them all into the bit bucket. Better yet, drive 'em into psychotherapy with http://www.muzak.com/Muzak ;-)
I have always blacklisted telemarketers and spammers.
/. should spend time educating people in their communitiy about these hazards. Try calling your local DA and see if they give talks and if you can be a volunteer.
Today I got a call from a boiler-room stock broker. I asked about his NASD registration and he said he didn't need one to be registered but that he had some great recommendations. I asked if he had his Series 5 and he did not know what I was talking about.
These people use high pressure tactics and snare a small percentage of people. They have absolutely zero regard for laws and rules and I do spend a significant time educating older folks on how to say NO to any kind of sales pitch thrown their way, be it over the phone or via email (for those who even use computers).
Everyone on
You can hurt them. You can serve them at their address:
Avtech Direct
22647 Ventura Blvd., Suite 374
Woodland Hills, CA 91364
It is a Mailbox Etcetera, but under California law, they can be served there. If you get a judgment against them, I'd be happy to help provide the information you need to collect.
Fight Spammers!
You could (if you have a reason) go to Japan. Even as novelties, some of the phones there have a coolness factor that can knock your socks off, as long as most of the phone is usable when you have to leave the country.
/v 902sh/index.html
/v 802se/index.html
.s html
It can cost as low as the yen-equivalent of $25 per month to basic, to $45 for nearly unlimited send/receive e-mail, on into the hundreds if you're moving data and making LOTS of outbound calls, to have a phone connection.
But, here's the cool part: In Japan (at least on Vodofone and DoCoMo and a few others) your INBOUND call is free.
THIS phone:
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/kisyu/v4 02 sh/
can be had for ONE YEN (one PENNY) if you are going live there and are willing to pay for a Y3900 yen monthly payment for at least 3 months. It came out only last June, and it is mainly in the Asian markets, but I understand it is going to the UK, but maybe not in the US (probably another case of "They would't APPRECIATED it, and they don't DESERVE it.")
It also has SD data storage, and 8 MB of onboard data storage. Unfortunately, what REALLY SUCKS about this phone is that neither Vodafone, nor Ericsson, or the other company that shares with Ericsson the MP4 video formatted file made the file work for Linux users. I was told by a Vodafone store that Quicktime would play back my video footage. But, I cannot succeed in Linux. Even in win98 (running in Win4Lin in Mandrake 10.0) I cannot play back these WRETCHED ".noa" extension "Nancy"/MP4 files.
But the phone has voice recording so I can save in own voice in 16- or 32-bit files for quality as many minutes as I have memory on the SD card. It has TV and radio, text file/notes, and more. Plus, the built-in tones which can be associated with a person or schedule or alarm, are addictive. Even a picture can be associated with a phone number, and so can
A newer model, the 902SH:
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/domestic _3 g.html
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G
which right now costs about Y250 even with a plan, lets you RECORD the TV show you are "going to miss". It has other a slew of other features, and retains the swivel head. Sharp made the 402SH, and the 902SH.
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/
Analog ue TV phone:
See these:
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G
Now, bringing this type of phone into the US will get you only a few radio stations, and those are limited to FM and only in the band of 76 MHz to 90 MHz channels, and, for TV, maybe 10 stations-- depending upon the size of your home market. But, if you're like me and could care less about having umpteen gazillion channels and only want the local news or public or foreign-language channel that switches to english from time to time (Deutsche Watch comes to mind...) AND you want fast 30fps and not that crappy digital download that costs you $10 extra per month when you probably have BETTER things to do than watch TV (ALL DAY LONG) in your hand...
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/kisyu/v6 03 t/index.html
http://www.wirelesswatchjapan.com/archieve_index
You do pay (some 40 yen or maybe 45 cents a minute) to MAKE a call, but you can bypass that since probably anyone with a cell in Japan goes for the bells and whistles. Almost ANYbody with a cell phone on the Metro or JR Lines or even walking on the street has their phone open and are keeping income going for the phone companies.
The bad (depending on you see it) part is that sometimes your call will be dropped if it runs over two minutes. Actually that is NOT bad, since it directly or indirectly disciplines the user to mind their or their callers' minutes or not abuse the generosity. But, calls between carriers sometimes is a PITA. On the other hand, one can ride the Toei-Oedo line
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The current phone system (POTS) is analog based and thus does not lend it self to being manipulated by digital techniques for things like call screening and the like. Phone sysems and intelligent voice mail have made some inroads, but only after the call is actually answered. VOIP is digital data, and thus can be manipulated and sniffed by digital techniques. Meaning? Software will be created to thwart VOIP spammers. Why? Because it is possible to do, and we have proven that if it is possible to do, and there is a need, it will get done. Maybe I am looking at this through the proverbial rose-colored glasses, but this seems like a solvable problem.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
VOIP spam isn't going to be an issue. Install asterisk and setup a white list routing system, and a voice mailbox for those who aren't in your white list so you don't miss important calls.
As it stands now, I don't answer the phone unless its a phone number I recognize. I'd love to have a system like asterisk filter the numbers I don't recognize right into a voice mailbox without ringing my extensions.
There is no (real) credit for solving a problem until the public experience it.
It's much more profitable (appearance-wise) to wait, and look like a hero.
http://www.dundi.info/
From their site:
"DUNDi can also be used across the entire Internet to form a common E.164 web of trust permitting service providers to make real phone numbers available on the Internet. This permits true toll bypass with no subscription charges, no publication of information. An acceptable use policy prevents VoIP "spam" calls."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It should be easy to simply block all Voip calls. Naturally this would have to be done by the phone companies (implying that they aren't part of the problem). Seeing as how not that many consumers have it yet, it wouldn't be that big of a deal for everyday use and it would be an exellent threat to Voip companies that they need to get their act together or they will get blocked.
Not only this, but I could see common VOIP applications building an option that would block (or use whitelisting on) phone calls from certain countries or area codes.
This is what makes VOIP such a great thing: innovative technologies cannot be squelched by a self-serving monopoly. If the customer wants a technology and his current "phone provider" doesn't care, he will simply switch to another provider who is willing to cater to the customer. What is right and wrong will be decided by the actual customer by choosing one phone provider over another, and not by throngs of high-priced lawyers screaming "free speech!!!"
An example of a technology that a customer would want but would never get in the USA could be this: Taking an idea from the ORDB, you could build a function into VOIP applications that allows the user to subscribe to a community-maintained list of telemarketers. If this function were implemented in POTS lines, we would have never needed the do-not-call list because telemarketers would have only called a few people before being blocked by the world. (Unfortunately for the proletariat, the US telephone companies always liked telemarketers because they brought in consistent revenue by virtue that they made heavy use of phone lines. I speculate that the deregulation of phone lines somewhat weakened and fragmented the big-telecom-lobby, and that's why we were able to get the do-not-call-list?)
Caller-ID-block is a weakness in this system, but if everyone also blocked the "blocked caller ID" people, then only the spammers would have caller-ID-block and the knot would untie itself.
You sure have a strange gf... Such number of emergencies.
But, here's the cool part: In Japan (at least on Vodofone and DoCoMo and a few others) your INBOUND call is free.
America is the only place where receiving isn't free!
Everywhere in Europe I've been (I live in UK) the offers have all been receive for free, unless you're roaming onto another network.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Actually, Vicimarketing have a predicitive dialler module for Asterisk. If call centres are asking for predictive diallers for Asterisk then it is only a matter of time that they discover IAX.
So, sooner or later you'll get telemarketing calls over IAX, rest assured of that.
Of course, if you are using Asterisk as your phone portal, then it is fairly easy to filter them out. Asterisk has a whole arsenal of tools to block telemarketers very efficiently.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
I've been spammed by those sleazeballs, though it's been a while. They were a major motivation for me to take a small social mailing list and have to more the thing to a majordomo environment (the previous maintainer just used sendmail aliases and by-hand subscription, which worked well until spammers got the address.) (That wasn't totally bad - some much more aggressive spammers or bank-fraud-virus or something started pounding the list about the time we moved it, so in one sense those scammers did us a favor :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Even for American spammers, if they've got any sense, which most of them don't, all they need to do is spend $100 to set up a Delaware or Nevada corporation, and have the corporation do the spamming. If they get caught and sued, and their corporation gets all of its non-existent assets seized, all they need to do is spend another $100 for another corporation and $6 for another domain name and they're back in business.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Forget all you know about SPAM blocking because blocking telemarketers is totally different and by no means anywhere near as difficult as blocking spammers.
If you do already have a problem experiencing too many calls from telemarketers, you should consider using Asterisk as your telephone portal. Asterisk can block those telemarketers efficiently for you no matter if they come in over POTS (plain old telephone system) or VOIP.
The simplest anti-telemarketer tool in Asterisk's arsenal is called Zapateller, a feature that if enabled will play a so called SIT sequence to callers which forces telemarketers' predictive diallers to hang up instantly. You won't even know somebody was calling.
Beyond Zapateller there are various ways to make sure you only get legitimate calls. An easy way to get telemarketers to hang up is to let Asterisk's autoattendant pick up the call and play a welcome message. Most telemarketers will hang up on that recording.
This is because telemarketer call centers are volume businesses where time is money. Every second their marketeers are not talking to potential customers are a waste of their time and money. Consequently they have invested heavily in equipment that makes sure that they only get connected when the system has determined that there is a real human on the line. Such systems are called predictive diallers.
A predictive dialler will pick numbers from a database to call and screen those calls when the line is being picked up. The marketeers will only be connected if the predictive dialler has determined that there is a human at the other end of the line. These systems are quite sophisticated.
This can be very easily used against them. In most cases it takes as little as playing a welcome message first. If the predicitive dialler is programmed to listen and wait for some time to see if the call gets put through to a human, then it takes as little as asking for some interaction, like "press 1 if you are not a telemarketer". Predictive diallers will simply hang up on this.
Asterisk has scripting abilities for building such voice menus which make it very easy to set up an autoattendant that will make telemarketers give up on trying to reach you. Further, you can teach Asterisk to put through calls from people you know immediatly and let them bypass the autoattendant. To do that, you teach Asterisk the phone numbers and names of people you know, and then ask those people to make sure they call you with their caller ID.
Really, I don't think that SPIT is going to be a problem similar to that of SPAM. Filtering out spam is fairly difficult. Blocking SPIT is rather straight forward. No reason to get paranoid IMO.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
All you have to do is let your telephone portal know all the phone numbers of people you know.
Then, you let your phone portal pick up the line and play a greeting to anybody who is not identified as somebody you know. The majority of telemarketer's systems will hang up on that already. However, after the greeting you let your portal ask for an action to be taken by the caller "press 1". Even the most persistent telemarketer systems will hang up on that.
The reason is that the folks who work for telemarketers don't usually call you themselves. The dialling is automated and calls are screened by automated systems. Only if a real human picks up will the call be connected through to the call center.
No, reason to get paranoid. Blocking telemarketers is far easier than blocking spam.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
It's calls for approx 1p per minute FROM a VoIP account - that means they can happily bombard your normal landline (or, in the US where mobiles are considered normal phones to call to, your cell phone) from a VoIP account. This means that blocking them/whitelists will be much harder to achieve (especially as they will almost always come through as 'number unknown' on called ID). It also means that those in the US who get these calls to their cell phones will actually end up *really* paying for spam (for those outside the US the cell system is very different to that in the UK and probably other countries in that your cell number has a normal regional dialing code so those calling you treat it as a normal cost call but you deduct calls to the phone from your 'free minutes' until they expire after which you are paying to receive calls). This could be bad. Very, very bad..... RikF
In Soviet Russia you own your cat
The telephone companies have created the spamming companies to kill VOIP, thus assuring the continued profitability of their current business model.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Setup an interactive attendant to "answer" incoming calls and ask the caller who they are and what they want. Then use speech-to-text to turn it into a text file which you can run through a filter to identify keywords for spammer or friend. Although most likely spammers won't even bother talking to the attendant they'll just hang up.
Too bad it just makes them look ineffectual and worthless to anyone with a 3-digit IQ, since by the time they decide to act, it's too late.
No, nothing from a Bell is free. $1 makes it sound value added, like tone dialing. My proposal for $5.99 whitelisting is the stick to get your friends and family off that "evil" voip stuff.
(Disclaimer: I don't have voip. My cable connection isn't stable enough for reliable voice traffic, and my long distance bills are less than $3/mo. For me, it just doesn't pay.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dogers,
You are correct. I neglected to mention that, maybe out of ignorance. Which seems to pervert the saying "It is better to give than to receive"... Sure, we, the consumer, "give" and they receive.
Here is what I feel about MOST of the cell phone industry:
I find it vulgar, incensing and utterly repugnant that the carriers have this adDICtion to coercing (by leaving no other choice) people into 1- or 2-year contracts subject to a penalty of $150 or more under "early termination" fee. It is NOT MY DUTY or RESPONSIBILITY to keep them alive. If they re-write they flawed, greedy, or obtuse business plans, they can get some or more of my money. Moreover, I'd like to see better interaction standards between carriers (and that means I wish that the various competing carriers in Japan would once and for all make it possible for phone callers to be able to reach a recipient whose number happens to be a cell phone, regardless of the recipient's carrier...)
WHEW, got that out of my system...
Isn't it NICE that in other countries, what we tourists find as nice is found by US-based business as ghastly or appalling or not businessworthy? (Again, it is annoying to make a call and find the pay phone denies access to a cellular number, but, OTOH, it encourages e-mailing, which can be done on the move, if you HAVE a cell; but for those on the move without a cell, this forces them to GET a cell, I guess. Maybe that is the motive in Japan?)
Truth be told, though, I more than likely got my phone at Y1 (around 1.2 to 1.75 cents) because it's likely a "loss leader". But, I didn't add all the doo-dads or bells and whistles other than having e-mail. I hope to return, and I intend to pay my Y3900 per monthy, so ethically I am not exploiting the system. Besides, I cannot use the phone outside of Japan and it has no SIM card, which is a minus, but not an unbearable minus.
I'd rather pay 50 cents a minute for making an outbound call, and in a $39.00/month plan, have ALL the free e-mails inbound calls I have time for and (almost) all the free e-mail can make. I also prefer to have an analogue TV phone rather than digital. I could care less about having all that digital content available. I spend too many hours a day surfing and researching and there are few hours left to actually achieve material advancement.
Just two nights ago, I watched, around 2AM I guess, Deutsche World:
www.dw-world.de
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=de ut sche+world+tv&spell=1
on my Sharp 402SH, sitting in San Jose. But, last Friday I browsed Fly's Erectronics (the switched R & L have nothing to do with Japanese or Asian occasional switching of those letters, but my interest in "Spoonerisms" , and I've been nicknaming FE with that switch for over a decade, anyway...) and I asked a cell phone specialist to tell me about a particular pphone that cost some $200 but streamed internet and TV. She tried to get the working model to download some sports information (of all the channels the phone seemed subscribed to, she must've assumed I would be more interested in seeing sports, but I was immediately wondering about the frame rate...)
The phone wouldn't connect, and I took the time to show her my Vodafone phone and then asked her, "That has all those channels, but they have to be downloaded, and probably are in a bunch of clips. Do they have this frame rate?" I showed her my TV. I also wondered what I'd lose when watching a live performance. Or in the case of news, would I get ALL the story and not have server issues.
I don't care to have such a digital stream chew up space on my phone. And, if I need international footage, I can get it when I get home, off the Internets... Umm, heheh, the InterneT, heheh....
The coolness factor of my phone is such that a T-Mobile sales guy offered $100 for it. I told him he could offer me $400 and I wouldn't sell it. But, I recommended the Vodafone site and suggested that if his bos
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Woah, thats a post and a half, heh :)
:D
:(
I agree about the contracts though, all networks over here (apart from the pay as you go ones, of course) have 1 year minimum terms. TMobile goes 18 months, which seems ridiculous to me as their offers seem to consistantly be the worst!
The cancellation charges I can understand though.. The networks heavily subsidise the handsets! Have you ever tried buying a phone without a contract? Ouch.. Motorola V3 Razr as an example - free on O2 200 contract (£~35/month) or you can buy the phone on its own for ~£400 and still have to arrange a contract on top of that!
The one nice thing they let us do over here though, is that after a year, we can upgrade our handset, in return for committing to another year on the same network. If you got a good phone in the first place, take the best cheap phone theyre offering and whack it out on ebay! Great stuff
Theres always rumours and talks about DoCoMo looking for european partners, but nothing ever seems to come about
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
It felt real good when I handed them the 20 complaints in the other cases.
Fight Spammers!
You know how many charges I've disputed with my carrier over the last few months? I'm sure I'm now flagged in their database :)
And, if they still object, I remind them that I called their President to have my internet fixed.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
So you routinely block all mail from
My example : I set up an email account at MAIL.RU over a year ago so that I could mail out from Russia when I was working there; I still use it because the mailbox is useful, receives very little spam, and I can access it by POP without needing a browser, java script, or any of that jazz. Frankly, it's the account that I don't mention to people except for work purposes (because our company doesn't do email for client-facing staff, but that's another story).
I have several friends who, for family-history reasons have at least one email address in .IN ; if I knew more oriental gentlemen, I'd probably know more people with .CN addresses [re-think : If I asked people at the Go club, I'd harvest several .CN addresses]
Bugger - must have hit the AC checkbox without noticing it. That's me with the .RU address. I was working there as a RockDoctor.
Oh, bowdlerise this silly 2 minute rule!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You can get a similar same deal on Sprint in the US - a new phone every 18 months. Came in handy when my wife lost hers. Of course, we did have to sign a 2-year contract, but we got a Samsung a660 for free. We're not going to change our contract (300 min for $35/month, AFTER taxes, free nights/weekends). And since we found the old one a few weeks later, there's a spare phone when I finally give in and get one myself.
VOIP isnt like normal phone communications.
Unlike POTS, you can actually block callers immediately with your phone, or firewall, if you're behind a firewall, block their asses.
or, to be sick, redirect calls to someone you dont like >:D or, redirect the calls back to the caller. it's possible. find the caller, find what port they recieve calls from, or find the company's phone and redirect all their office spam to the corporate offices. That's how VOIP spam will be killed. Unlike email, you can use VOIP against the spammers, effectively.
I predict another ugly problem with VOIP spam - add a worm to the formula. Imagine when the inevitable user clicks on that email attachment, and become a phone spam zombie? This is new territory for dealing with spam problems, because now you're crossing over from the data net to the phone net. Who's going to handle that? SBC/Norton AntiPhoneSpam 2007?
On a second note, exactly why do you think phone spam would be limited to POTS phones? Cells are 10 digits too and are perfectly viable targets for dictionary/incrimental number attacks.
Excellent idea.
And, it could be built into the software.
Further: Add a 'limit' to the block.. eg: The more people who flag it as spam the longer the block stays in place. Too high a count and the block is "long" (eg: 5 years)
It's unfortunate that 'average' people make up most of the general public. Occasionally this method works, we've seen it often here in Australia, and our PM has been in for four terms.
That quote was priceless.