FTC Offers $50,000 For Best Way To Stop Robocalls

coondoggie writes "It's not clear if the Federal Trade Commission is throwing up its hands at the problem or just wants some new ideas about how to combat it, but the agency is now offering $50,000 to anyone who can create what it calls an innovative way to block illegal commercial robocalls on landlines and mobile phones."

Comments

Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem solved.

Re:Death Penalty

[Kergan]

No need to be that extreme... A hefty fine for companies that do it and another to the carriers that put the calls through should be enough.

Re:Death Penalty

[The Grim Reefer]

Nuke them from orbit (it's the only way to be sure).

Re:Death Penalty

[dywolf]

Dear FTC,

Grow a pair, ban robo-calls, and follow through on enforcement.
You can send me my check at your convenience.

Signed,
Me

Re:Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

PEOPLE. PLEASE READ THE COMMENTS BEFORE POSTING!!!

YOU MAY THINK THAT SOMEONE IS CALLING YOUR SPECIFIC PHONE NUMBER.

THEY DID NOT. THEY DID NOT CALL YOUR NUMBER SPECIFICALLY.

YOU WERE RANDOMALLY "ROBO" CALLED WITH A SPOOFED PHONE NUMBER ON A CALLER ID FOR A SCAM COMPANY.

Important message to all those that have received a call from this number:

There are several companies engaged in scam business using auto dialers. They are ALL scam outfits. They spoof phone numbers of victims all the time. Sometimes, they spoof non-working phone numbers. The phone number you searched for is just another victim of these scumbags. I've done a lot of research of these companies. Actually, there are several affiliated companies, that try to scam innocent victims. They are either owned by the same people, or they sell their business model to other crooks.

One scam is about auto warranties. The other is about credit card debt relief. They even have scams about dish television, home alarms, carpet cleaning, political surveys, free cruises, and more. Their MO is the same. The use an auto dialer, and call thousands of random numbers. They have no regard to the do not call lists. Your demands or complaints to them are worthless. They will continue to call you.

They will not remove you from their call lists. Why? BECAUSE THEY DO NOT MAINTAIN ANY. THEY ARE CROOKS. THEY HAVE NO REGARD TO THE MANY LAWS THEY BREAK.

BEING ROBO CALLED BY A COMPUTER IS A FEDERAL CRIME. NEED WE SAY MORE?

If they call about a car warranty, the message says something as "This is the second notice on your extended vehicle warranty. Press one now to speak to a representative..." The message about credit debt mentions "This is Account Services. We are calling to lower your credit card debt. Press one now to speak to a representative..." or "The is an important call from your cardmember services. This is your Final Notice. We have been trying to contact youâ¦." The message about carpet cleaning begins "This is Diane, would like your carpet professionally steamed cleaned?"

These crooks can be beaten! Here is an example of what happens if ALL OF US contribute to taking them down by following the steps below:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2012/02-09-12.html

So, now you want to get these crooks. WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS? If you want to stop these crooks do the following:
:
1) You need to speak to one of their customer service representatives. Pretend to be interested in either lowering your credit card interest rate or a car warranty, having your carpets cleaned, etc. DO NOT GIVE THEM ANY REAL INFORMATION. Do not ask how they "got" you number. (Remember, your number was randomly dialed by a computer)

Tell them you have $20,000 in credit card debt. Give them a fake credit card number, a fake name, and a fake SS#. If the call is about the auto warranty scam, tell them you own a Ferrari, or a 1937 Dodge (however, if you really own one of those two, tell them you own a Buick). Give a made up VIN number. Or tell them you have 15 rooms of beautiful plush wall to wall carpet. If they ask for your name and phone number, give them the info for the person you hate the most.

Your goal is simple. You want to engage them in friendly conversation to keep them on the phone for as long as possible. Be nice and friendly. Your goal is twofold. You want to learn as much as possible about them. They will refuse to give you a website, phone number, or maybe even a real company name. They will attempt to give you a generic name such as "Account Services," "Financial Services," or "Dealer Services." This is done for a reason, to throw you and the government off their tracks. Do not accept this. Keep pressing for info during casual conversation. You will need this (see below). Often when pressed for questions, they will hang up on you. Remember, they are instructed to do this. That is why you must not be confrontational. Be fr

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Large fines to the telephone company that passed on the robocall. That will be more than enough incentive for them to figure a solution that avoids the fines by stopping the robocalls.

Re:Solution

[Stewie241]

Our phone carrier (Bell Canada) sometimes calls from a number where the number is listed but the organization name is not listed. I assumed it was a telemarketer or something because it was an 800 number. When I finally picked up after numerous calls from the same number it was them (or at least somebody claiming to be them). Seems I forgot to pay the bill. *Then* they asked for my credit card details to collect payment.

I asked to speak to a manager and ask about how that correlates to the fact that their website says that their Website says "Do not give out your personal information. Legitimate companies will never call or e-mail their customers requesting information such as passwords, bank account information or a credit card number, unless they are responding directly to an inquiry you know you have made (See Bell’s Privacy article.)".

Nobody seemed to have anything to say about it other than that it was standard practice for them to make such calls. I had no way of knowing with certainty that it actually was Bell Canada and not some other organization performing a phishing attack.

Re:Solution

[omnichad]

Whenever you get such a call, you should immediately hang up and call the company at a known good phone number. It's the only way to verify, as the caller could have spoofed their caller ID.

How about them fines

[guruevi]

It seems the best way to make corporations comply is to have rules that have teeth. Regardless of what you're going to implement, if you're not planning on executing it, it doesn't matter.

There are rules, enforce them. If it's not enough, make the whole foodchain (corporations that advertise and service providers that do the dirty work ) that supplies such robocalls pay for it - 10% of their yearly income to begin with and $1,000 per call.

Ok, how about this

[Weaselmancer]

Have some feds buy some land lines and cell phones. Give them a few credit cards. Then when the robocall comes in, answer it and buy whatever they are selling.

Track the transaction, figure out who is responsible, and then arrest them.

If they are in another country, contact that government and have them arrest them. If they won't, sanctions. If that doesn't work threaten to cut their cable.

Re:Ok, how about this

[HungryHobo]

fantastic. when I want to put my competitors out of buisness all I have to do is pay for some robocalls advertising their products.

Re:Ok, how about this

[Xest]

This is the often cited excuse for not dealing with it in the UK that BT uses.

So in my mind the best solution is to penalise BT financially for each call someone registers as being an illegal automated call. BT can then pass the cost on to whoever routed the call to them such that effectively as the cost gets passed back down the chain the cost of illegal calls eventually gets passed on to the source making it not cost effective.

Re:Ok, how about this

[jkflying]

You also need to buy and ship their products and use the fed's CC to transfer money into *their* account. Yeah, not that simple.

Re:Ok, how about this

[drinkypoo]

You know, the phone system is computerized now. They know who called who when. They claim they don't if you call and complain about a harassing call because they don't want to deal with you.

Re:Ok, how about this

[dargaud]

That's a good solution. Another one would be to require the phone companies to have a 'declare spam' number. After receiving a spam call, you call that number and simply say "the last caller was a scammer". They are obliged to track down the number (even if hidden), put it in a database, and after enough complaints show up they have to investigate, fine them and cut them off.

Stupid question from across the Atlantic: What?

[captainpanic]

What is a robocall? We just don't have them where I live (Western Europe).
Also, since we don't have robocalls, and have never had them, how difficult can it be?

DId you see the part about the prize?

[jbmartin6]

Why are people posting their ideas here? Didn't they see the part about the prize?

Same way you do spam...

[The1stImmortal]

Just run the phone number equivalent of a blacklist directory. Exempt such directories from any legal liability, and just make it compulsory for telcos to provide (as an opt-in service) call filtering based on the blacklisting.

The carriers always know the calling number even if the caller id is blocked, so it should work if done at the exchange.

Alternatively, someone could throw together a little telephony device (or app in the case of smartphones) that sits in between the phone and the wall socket and queries public blacklists based on caller ID, and screens out anonymous calls.

Not that hard surely?

A truly heafty fine

[Kolisar]

I agree with the Hefty fine, but I think that the fine should be a calculated as a percentage of the company's worth, with a minimum of $200,000 if the company is not worth anything. Then a fairly large percentage (25%), that way, a large company that has 100's of millions of dollars will not just laugh off a $50,000 fine. The fine has to truly hurt the company for it to be a deturrent.

Business Proposal

[gmuslera]

The problem with robocalls is that there are humans behind. We propose a robotic solution for it.

Our company, Cyberdyne System, offer advanced technology in automatization, artificial intelligence and robotics. We propose to build smart assistants to help to solve some of today's world problems, including robocalls, internet trolls, lawyers, and politicians. A central mainframe will take orders and deliver them to the assistants, but they anyway will have an AI smart enough to make choices if they are offline. In a future we might make them look like humans, maybe using famous actor faces to make them look less intimidating.

Re:A modest proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't effective because it isn't done in public. Back in the good old days you'd strap a crook to a rack and pull out his innards in the middle of a town square. Then you'd use a couple of horses and pull of his limbs, which you would display all around town. That scared the shit out of people. Nowadays all that you do is give a lad a couple of injections in front of maybe a dozen people. People can get "deterred" by reading the news of the event if they want. Waste of time if you ask me. If you want to deter crime, then the criminals-to-be need to hear the screaming.

*FO

[anyaristow]

*FO to report a call as abusive or illegal. Too high a percentage of *FO responses gets your service terminated.

You cannot fine that which does not have a number

[rtfa-troll]

The problem is that most of the real difficult companies are hiding their numbers and identities. Any solution to that is going to reduce the usefulness of the phone system because it will allow unscrupulous bigger operators to block calls from certain origins (e.g. international calls routed through competing operators). Probably the only solution is some kind of IVR administering an audio CAPTCHA before allowing a phone to ring.

Re:A modest proposal

[causality]

Effective deterrent? That'll be why there are no more murders in US states with death penalty then. Wake up, deterrents don't work, people don't believe they will be caught.

Someone who would murder another human being (not talking about legitimate self-defense here) is either a cold-blooded killer or psychotic. There is something wrong with them that prevents them from considering things like the probability of getting caught, how wrong such an act would be, or that with modern forensics most murderers do in fact get caught. These are not people who think rationally and perform risk assessments prior to acting.

Compare to the sociopaths who tend to run corporations. They are all about their own self-interests. They do consider risk, in fact it's about the only thing that can alter their decision-making. A real law with teeth that poses a real threat to their income actually would make them think twice. Combine that with how unlikely it is that they would make a perfectly untracable phone call, plus the even lower likelihood of making a perfectly untracable financial transaction for whatever business they are doing, plus the number of complaints that would result from an automated system making tons of calls, and the likelihood of getting caught is very high.

Back on topic, I find not answering the phone works personally...

It's the same problem you find with spam. You and I may not talk to them and buy from them, but some moron out there will. Their costs are so low that they only need a very small rate of response to make money. Passing a law with teeth that targets a few centralized assholes is much easier than convincing every moron to put a little thought into how their actions affect others.

Re:Why the hell do phones not have a firewall??

[Lumpy]

My favorite is a telemarketer tormenter on Asterisk....

http://leifmadsen.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/telemarketer-torture/

I based it off of their ideas... I transfer the call to an extension that is nothing but random clips of someone agreeing, saying "yeah", etc... but waits for a pause in audio to trigger the next random clip. Some telemarketers wasted an HOUR talking to my torture device.

I just wish I could do this with my cellphone.

Re:You cannot fine that which does not have a numb

[cdrudge]

The problem is that most of the real difficult companies are hiding their numbers and identities

BAN anonymous calls or otherwise hiding their numbers and identities. I can't think of a single legitimate reason why a call should be anonymous.
REQUIRE carriers to supply valid CID information or otherwise allow calls to be identified.
REQUIRE carriers to have valid information that matches a phone number with a company.

Re:You cannot fine that which does not have a numb

[Senior Frac]

Oh that's easy.

Huge fines, but with the added requirement that the phone company must pay it if the caller cannot be identified.

"The phone company" being the company where the trace gets lost. The concept that the sender is responsible for provisioning his own caller id is a ludicrous design flaw. Something more akin to ANI is needed (host based)... plus some very aggressive regulatory enforcement. It's a political 3rd rail, however.

Here are several ideas...

[realsilly]

Kill the rule that allows for automated messages to be sent, ALL PHONE CALLS MUST BE FROM A LIVE PERSON WHO CAN INTERACT WITH THE RECEIVER.

Stop allowing Phone Companies to be Billing agencies for other companies.

Stop allowing call spoofing, where you receive a call and it's a hand up or something else, you call back and you get the Telephone company message "Sorry but this number is no longer in service."

Read the fucking web, there are thousands of gripes about robocalling violations.

Stop all Surveys and Presidential robocalls also.

Stop allowing companies to SELL OUR FUCKING INFORMATION.

Fine the telemarketer Managers and the companies large fees.

Trace the calls. You already monitor all of our lives anyways.

Repeat violators will be SHOT.

Don't let out of country business buy phone services in the US.

Let Anonymous go after them. They are great at track people down who piss them off, and their retaliation will be swift and painful.

Lets start with some of those.

Re:A modest proposal

[RabidReindeer]

It isn't effective because it isn't done in public. Back in the good old days you'd strap a crook to a rack and pull out his innards in the middle of a town square. Then you'd use a couple of horses and pull of his limbs, which you would display all around town. That scared the shit out of people. Nowadays all that you do is give a lad a couple of injections in front of maybe a dozen people. People can get "deterred" by reading the news of the event if they want. Waste of time if you ask me. If you want to deter crime, then the criminals-to-be need to hear the screaming.

One of the signature characteristics of criminals is that they're "special". Only Other People get caught. I'm too smart. So seeing Other People get executed in gross and painful ways does little to deter criminals, although it may make them think about using more extreme measures to avoid getting caught.

On the other hand, we're well aware of the desensitizing effects of repeated spectacles. When a Drawing and Quartering replaces Monster Truck Pulls as a place to take the kiddies, don't be surprised if the kiddies end up with rather brutish ideas of how to interact with other people.

While I would definitely enjoy seeing a few telemarketers being given an up close and personal exploration of their entrails, this kind of stuff isn't really about punishment, it's about revenge. Consider the quality of life in countries where revenge is the accepted means of dealing with injury. Even the so-called civilized ones. Where simply riding the bus can turn out to be an unexpected adventure.

Re:You cannot fine that which does not have a numb

[NevarMore]

This is how we lose our freedoms. An annoyance leads to bans and requirements that impact much more important matters.

rtfa-troll points out below that anonymous calls are vital for tipsters and whistleblowers. Are you willing to sacrifice that very important check for the sake of not getting a robocall?

More importantly, there are bans and requirements in place *now* that should prevent these robocalls from happening. Where did you get the idea that criminals follow the law?

Re:You cannot fine that which does not have a numb

[Dishevel]

I run the phone system for a taxi company.
I need the ability to control the number that shows up on a caller ID system.
I do not want 1 of 165 numbers I have showing up on a customers phone when a calltaker calls them back of the callout system tells them their cab is at the location.
Our recognizable 800 is what I want to show up. So that people know who is calling. Not giving me control causes confusion of who is calling.
Taking away the power of responsible businesses is not the way to fix a problem with fuckwads.