Slashdot Mirror
FTC Gets 744 New Ideas On How To Hang Up On Robocallers
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said the submission period for its Robocall Challenge had ended and it got 744 new ideas for ways to shut down the annoying automated callers. The FTC noted that the vast majority of telephone calls that deliver a prerecorded message trying to sell something to the recipient are illegal. The FTC regulates these calls under the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Challenge was issued to developing technical or functional solutions and proofs of concepts that can block illegal robocalls which, despite the agency's best efforts, seem to be increasing."
Until something better presents itself.
Or maybe just actually investigate consumer complaints.
There are currently no problems with your account...
(Was 'summary execution' one of the options? Because that's still too good for some of the more egregious offenders...)
Too bad the FTC just can't apply for an overly broad patent and sue all of the automated callers in the Eastern District of Texas.
This works well for land lines. The calls stop. On my cell, it hasn't been much of a problem.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Why not get rid of robocalling altogether? These are not the days where it was difficult to get the word out to the public for fundraising or other reasons. The reason that robocalls are increasingly made up of scammer activities is that legitimate uses of the technology have gone elsewhere, to email or other online methods which are far cheaper and which leverage existing multipurpose infrastructure...and which, unlike telephone-based communications, also provides for more robust metrics regarding responses.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I'd really like to know why there's so much !@#$ like this going on. Spammers pollute the net with crap, and we can't find them to make them stop. Assholes build botnets to do that and worse, and we can't find them to make them stop. Robocallers annoy millions of people daily wasting their cell minutes, and ...
This's the 21st Century. Why is any of this still happening? Why can't/don't the telcos police their damned networks?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Somewhere along the line, it must be technically possible to identify that the number isn't coming from where it claims to be.
Most of the obvious fraudulent crap is all using fake caller IDs and they're calling another country.
If I could simply tell the phone company that I'm not willing to accept numbers which don't match their origin, that would kill off all of the crap I get. And I don't care about the legitimate ones, because by masking their real phone number they're no better than the scammers.
Unfortunately, these guys lobby hard enough that they make sure nobody could pass anything which cut into their business -- because they feel it's their legitimate right to call us.
It's gotten to the point where even the ones with legal exemptions like charities and political parties usually get an earful of profanity.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If there was a widely publicized shortcode you could text with a number to say has been spam calling you then people could do that, and set up an ENUM–style directory which has the RBL info for use by phone companies.
Also phone companies could text people with information about this shortcode the first time every month that a previously unknown number makes a call or sends a message (until they say STOP of course ;-))
Might work for mobile spam, at least.
I've arrived at the point where I hate my land line. I'd drop it in a second but my wife thinks it's important. None of our friends or family ever call the land line, it's always trolls. I dunno.
But I digress. I had a new one last night. My land line rings and I can't help myself, I need to see what asshole it is this time. I've been getting a lot of survey calls recently and I'm now openly hostile to them "get a real job, f-ck off". This time it's a robocall collecting names for a class action lawsuit against a medicine. "Have you ever taken whateveritscalled and experienced the following side effects? Blah Blah Blah. If so you are entitled to receive penies on the dollar while our bloodsucking ambulance chasers get rich"
So now we have lawsuit trolling to look forward to.
I understood this as the FTC getting ideas that only they could read write and execute, while I could only read.
It also helps to never give out your cell # except to friends and family. I found that a lot of the businesses I was giving my phone number to were somehow passing it along to telemarketers (I could tell because sometimes I would vary my name slightly just to see).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Every week I get several calls telling me "this is your last chance to lower my interest rates" or "related to the stimulus" or something. Caller ID is useless, all spoofed. The message says "Press 2 to discontinue these messages" - works for a day, maybe. Press 1 and get to a live person (eventually). If I ask any questions, like "who are you" or tell them to stop calling, they hang up. A day or two later, they're back.
What I need is an app with automated responses to their canned question so my machine can waste their human's time...and lots of it.
Google: "Roy M. Cox and FTC" - If it isn't his operation, its a twin.
Executions. Make it a capital crime.
Follow the money trail. Once you know what company is getting the money, find out who owns the company.
Once you find out who owns the company, you shoot them.
Problem solved.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I solve this problem by having asterisk prescreen all incoming calls. An IVR prompt requires you to press a combination of numbers before it actually rings any phones. A white and black list for caller ID data are used to bypass or simply play line disconnected tones and hang up.
It's the only reason I still have a POTS line. I never give out my cell.
Any law that is not enforced is meaningless. And that's the big problem here. If I get one of these calls that is clearly violating the law, then what? There is no one I can can contact who will immediately take action and prosecute the person who is breaking the law. It would take an enormous amount of resources to really clean up this problem, and so nothing is done. And the people making these calls know that.
The only issue here is that phone companies refuse to enact these simple and common sense solutions. They either refuse to allow the subscriber to manage call, as is true for most cell phones, or they charge for it. Really this is a business model issue, not something the end user can deal with. The FTC just has to put forth regulations.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The FTC aren't in a position to really handle robocalls and SMS spam, other than acting as a last resort legal hammer for egregious cases.
The telcos, on the other hand, could *trivially* stop the vast majority of it if they had any interest in doing so. But they don't have any interest in that - they get paid by the various crooks doing this sort of thing. And it doesn't cost them any customers - what are the customers going to do, move to a different US telco that's just as bad?
Our submission is at: http://robocall.challenge.gov/submissions/13007-save-me-time
I found that most suggestions fell into the following buckets
*Things the Govt can do*
- FTC needs to ensure caller ID cant be spoofed
- FBI needs to hunt down the racketeers and bust them
- FTC needs to mandate (likely by fiat) that the telephone companies make the robocallers pay the full cost for the call
*Things you can do*
- Use an audio capcha system
- Provide a system to black list known and irritating callers
- A few people discussed how Google voice might solve the problem.
I did not expect to see that many people going through the submission process which tells me that the pain point is real.
However, I think people are mostly converging on how they intend to block the calls and the winner will get decided on how good your execution measures up to every one else.
What FTC finally does implement based on the contest is another matter.
Can't Congress just pass a law prohibiting this like they are doing with guns and murder?
Examples listed are all variations on a theme. All technical solutions, which are always known to fall to technical attacks (Payment? Use stolen credit card. Whitelist? Implausible if you're running a home business.)
The only way to stop robocall telemarketing is to cut off the source of income, or make it too expensive to obtain income. Always try to get a live agent (robocalls ask you to press 1), delay tactics to keep people talking as long as possible, providing fake/stolen credit card info, and the like.
If I'm called by an automated dialler from a party I have no involvement with, then the damage is already done. I hang up as soon as I realize it's a recording, which is usually only a second or two after I say "hello".
They've already wasted my time by calling me... and with an automated call, I'm not wasting anyone's time by trying to stay on the line and see how quickly I can get the salesperson off of their script (which is a very entertaining activity, by the way, and one that I highly recommend, although you really need to have some good ideas before you start, or else be very good at improv).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If Homeland Security, et.al., can eavesdrop on any phone call in the U.S. at will, they can certainly track illegal Robocallers. Do they just refuse to do anything that could be considered productive?
Or make *yours* do the same. I expect this is US-centric again.
Write your congressmen. Protest. Don't let them into the bitches of business... wait, you DID let them happen? Then get up and protest. Write letters. Start campaigns. Be loud. You are the freaking Land of the Free and Brave, the inventors of Democracy, yes? Then act like it, get a few million citizens together, rally the media, and in 12 months that crap is over.
Don't let your government kill another brown person in some faraway country before you quit getting robocalls.
I am constantly getting robocalls from "Card Services" at the phone number 775-410-1104. I haven't ever owned a credit card. I've tried my best to try and get information so that I can do something about it, but they hang up as soon as they think you are on to them. You can't call the number back. Is there anyway to nail this entity?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The have had decades to help us resolve the issue, but haven't. Clearly the FCC is not on our side. We have come up with our own solution.
1. Unplug all phones from land line if you have Internet over it, and completely remove land line if not.
2. Use a white list on your cell phone. If anybody calls that you do not, just BLOCK the number, and delete any message left without listening to it. If you listen to it, the person that left it will be able to tell if you received it or not. Give them NO INFORMATION.
Do those two things and most problems are solved. Some will argue that they need to be able to get ahold of you. I say, they should have done a better job of protecting your personal information, and following the spirit of the law.
Why aren't there any smartphone auto-screening apps available? Maybe they'd need a rooted phone to operate, but basically, they could intercept phone calls and let numbers on a whitelist through, auto-hang-up on blacklist numbers, and send greylist numbers to a skill-testing screening question asking them to enter, for example, the sum of 8 and 10 using touch tone digits, to prove that they are actual people. Auto-dialers wouldn't do this and thus, wouldn't bother you. The skill test could be more sophisticated or could even use voice recognition. The calls that don't get through never bother you, except showing up in screener statistics when you want to look at them.
And if they are outside of the US, we have drones.
Just like there was a "Captain Crunch" guy that could whistle at certain tones, why cant a group of "trusted parties" have
a special audio signaler that sends a signal -back- to the originator of the call. This signal could be heard by the phone
companies and they would know what circuit has the mad dial-er on it.
Just an idea.
So, *86?
Somewhere there is a story about someone that actually got charged with blowing a loud whistle into the ear of a telemarketer. I think this was before it was actually illegal for them to call. Now that it is, it is really tempting to do. And no, I don't care about the poor underpaid schmuck on the other end of the line, they deserve what they get.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
It takes a bit of effort, but works great.
Says right there on the youtube:
Please don't watch this video. Don't send it to your friends to watch, either? Don't even leave a comment. It's just a sad waste of time.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Tell the govt, police to start doing their jobs. What are we paying them for?
The one thing which really scares crooks is a decent chance of facing serious jail time. I'd imagine that in the US, the significant chance of getting raped in county/medium security prisons too, is a good deterrent -- so you want to put them in county jail with the gangbangers and meth heads, not the minimum security holiday farm. As the Chinese say, "kill the chicken to warn the monkeys".
Once some of the big players see what they're up against, it puts the fear of God into all the other little crooks and chancers.
Why isn't the government using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to arrest and prosecute these criminals like they did Aaron Schwartz? Schwartz didn't actually hurt anyone or do any damage but robo-calls do annoy people. They must be using some kind of computer to make the calls so the Act would apply if the government was serious about the issue.
Instead of trying to find ways to hang up on them, just get rid of them instead. If you have an ant infestation you dont try and squash every ant, you go after where they are coming from instead. The real solution is to figure out how to make it not profitable. If telemarketers cant make money they will dissapear overnight. Just creating more laws and such wont do a thing except slow them down a tiny bit. You either need to go after them hard, or you need to make it so there is no money to be made by them.
But the problem there is no money in getting rid of the problem. If you instead spend years coming up with ways to subvert the calls then you can continue budgeting for it thus using taxpayer money. Get rid of the problem then you lose and excuse to spend money and the FTC will never do that.
My solution was to get rid of my home phone completely and just have a single cell phone. Sure like once a year I get a telemarketer call it but thats about it really
Then get up and protest. Write letters. Start campaigns. Be loud. You are the freaking Land of the Free and Brave, the inventors of Democracy, yes? Then act like it, get a few million citizens together, rally the media, and in 12 months that crap is over.
We tried that in 2011. We were roundly dismissed.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
... is for the phone carriers to test the caller ID coming from their customers to validate. If the caller ID info is not associated with the customer of that trunk, then do not complete the call. Additionally, if the outgoing volume exceeds a certain amount (around 1000 per month), the business gets classified as an outbound caller, and their numbers get added to a list of publicly available numbers people can look up for free to find out the legal name of the company, their address, main contact phone number, and the legal service address. Also if that volume is exceeded, anonymous calls are not permitted (and these will not be completed, either).
The whole idea is about truthfully knowing who is calling. That doesn't deny anyone their free speech rights (as questionable as that is for telemarketers).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
First the so-called companies that break the law are not businesses at all. They simply conspire to break the laws and use a business license as a burglary tool.
Prosecute the owners of these companies for conspiracy. Do not allow the corporation mode of defense. In other words if you own it or fund it you are guilty. If you receive money from it then it is illegal. Due to the very long periods and ease of proof of conspiracy charges we could easily put a telemarketer in prison forever. We also have extradition treaties with most nations. Now that we have them by the short hairs we might just be able to get them to sign over everything in the world that they own or get from a trust fund as well as a large chunk of any future earnings from their new, legitimate job. We also need to disallow these owners from any employment that requires a business permit or ownership or control of any business for life. Life as a ditch digger may be enough to discourage others from opening phone sales businesses.
I love phonetray. I have all my house phones on silent and let phonetray decide when to create a ring noise, silently let the call go to voicemail, hang up, or even play a recored 'We do not accept unsolicited calls'. The only downside is you have to have a computer you are willing to keep running 24/7 and have a way to have a speaker on each floor you want to hear the rings on.
http://www.phonetray.com/
I was so satisfied I upgraded from free to the paid version simply to support this great product even though the free version works perfectly fine.
If I get a call and I'm at a computer, I quickly load up a soundboard and answer with that. Duke Nukem being my favorite.
For telemarketers, I make it a game of 'first person to hang up loses'. I try to keep them on the phone for as long as possible, never really committing to anything, asking for more information. Sometimes I ask for the exact information they know about me, such as my address, phone number, etc. Then I ask for that same information from them to "level the playing field". I often get a phone number from them, which I'll immediately call with my cell phone, to find out that it's a fake number. So, I call them out on it. It's all quite a lot of fun.
But I tell ya, now that it's a game and I'm winning, I actually look forward to telemarketer calls.
Robocalls, on the otherhand; I just hang up, there's no fun in that.
Make all cell phones and land line phone carriers provide (without charging more) more advanced answering services such that when anybody calls a user customized recording will say "If this is a personal call press 7 or business call press 2, if this is a telemarketer press 6 or hold on to leave a message (which will automatically get deleted after 7 days if not listened too). Only if the correct response is selected will the call actually ring out to the person's phone. The correct number to press can be randomized and since the recording is customized by the owner of the phone, it would be hard for simple speech recognition to figure out the correct response. Also have features to only allow calls to go through to the phone if the phone number is recognized by the phones contact list. Otherwise all calls should go to voice mail.
After the third strike, the entire company gets disconnected from the telefone network and is prohibited to ever reconnect. Works great for citizens and the internet too, no? I'm sure everybody would like that.
There's a large ecosystem that provides most of the pieces - call centers that accept calls, equipment and service providers for making calls, workers willing to listen to abuse for low pay, credit card companies that will pay merchants. Long distance telephone calls cost next to nothing even before VOIP made them cheaper, and the Caller ID system wasn't designed to prevent spoofing (in fact, spoofing is a feature, because it lets your office PBX output your phone number instead of the main number for the office, etc.) You can pretty much outsource the whole scam, and do the potentially-getting-arrested parts from outside the US.
And since "Cardholder Services" isn't already a fake scam business, there's no reason that another scammer can't take advantage of Rachel's reputation and run their own scam.
On their last few calls, I've been offering "Rachel"'s minions opportunity to make $50,000 for ratting out their boss to the FTC. I've gotten some really amusing profanity in return.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If there was a widely publicized shortcode you could text with a number to say has been spam calling you then people could do that, and set up an ENUM–style directory which has the RBL info for use by phone companies.
Also phone companies could text people with information about this shortcode the first time every month that a previously unknown number makes a call or sends a message (until they say STOP of course ;-))
Might work for mobile spam, at least.
Unfortunately, the most-common victims of telemarketing spam are older folks, ones without computers, mobile phones, or any technical savvy to make use of even the easiest blocking technology.
I'd thought of something similar - distributing telemarketer lists as reported by those receiving calls - as a vcard that can be imported into a contacts list and auto-blocked (at least with Android). But then realized that the targets of the calls wouldn't have a) knowledge of such a thing, b) ability to install a vcard, c) call display, d) ability to quickly scan any print-outs of the numbers (it'd be a huge list).
Just send the jackbooted thugs who are persecuting "terrorists" (with chemistry sets), "meth cookers" (with colds), and "hackers" (with wget), and the Reaper drones being used on random enemies of the state, and redirect them towards telemarketers.
Then they simply dissolve the company and form a new one. It's like $50-200 dollars and an hour's time to form a new shell company.
I don't read AC A human right
I've had the same landline for 12 years. Well, I've moved over those 12 years, but managed to keep the number active. I use it for daytime calls (my cell plan counts daytime against me even if it's local calls), I give it to doctor's offices and important other organizations who need a better assurance to reach me, and so on. It's been useful for when cell goes down, or my internet is disrupted I do NOT get ad calls. I do NOT get survey calls. Well, maybe a few times a year, but not anything worthy of being called a nuisance. Why is that?
My wife and I have been wondering just what the public reaction would be if there was another mass shooting, but this time at a boiler room, scumbag call center. Y'know, line up Rachel and the whole cardholder services crowd up against a wall and let 'er rip. At the very least, I bet it would make the gun control debates a bit more interesting.
Passing more laws is not going to help.
My Android phone gives me a work-around though. I have discovered there is a way to have calls from numbers in my address book routed straight to voice-mail. Each telemarketer gets one shot at calling me, then I add that No. to my address book entry labeled 'Telemarketer' and I never hear from them again. I have never had a robo-caller leave me a voice-mail. Blocked numbers I just avoid answering.
Another US problem I don't understand. Over here in Germany, it's not a problem and never has been. The only calls of this kind I sometimes get are for surveys, and by "sometimes" I mean on the order of one or two a year.
So, just an idea, maybe look at what you guys do differently from everyone else in the world and then, just this once, drop the "not invented here" blinders and do what works?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In a nut shell, I make them regret they even considered calling me. Generally speaking, I get them to run from the cube sobbing, never to return to work again. Ideally, they quit their job right then and there. Been close to that, and I've deffo scored the sobbing and a coupla "unscheduled breaks" from the cube. One of these days, I will get one to quit right then and there.
Throughout that mess, I remind them about that recording for quality and I ask them whether or not they really want to face the ribbing they will get when the call gets checked. "Jesus, look at what happened to Ron last Tuesday! Holy fuck! What a lamer!" Or whatever...
There are a few rules to this.
1. You have to keep the call time high. It takes some time to break through their script and understand them well enough to impact them personally.
2. Every single word is double edged torture, laced to the max with empathetic expressions of wonder and disgust over how they can even consider doing that work, while at the same time establishing a rapport on some common ground basis they can identify with. This really gets to them.
3. Use profanity very lightly, if at all, and always use it in context that can be taken to be colorful, passionate expression, not anything they can take personally. Demean the work, the company, everything, but make sure it's one citizen to another trapped in a hopeless machine kind of way.
4. Use their name frequently, and if you suspect it's fake, work 'em for the real deal, then continue.
I've stopped most of them on the first call. Once or twice I've come up on the dialer within a short time frame. Typical responses are, "Oh fuck, it's you!" to which I start in as if nothing ever happened, happy to be speaking with them again, and where did we leave off?
The best is when they lose it big! Usually, it's some rant, or really sorry story, involving crying, yelling, frustration, you name it. And I listen intently, looking for just the right response to send them over the edge hard.
Call me, you might lose one of ur doodz.
Fuck, if I know the answer to this mess, but I do know how to raise the cost and I've got some great audio archived.... Hey Brandon from Vonage! Yeah, it's me. You know who I am, and are you still working there after our last two calls? Jesus dude, I told you how to get hold of me. Quit that shit and I'll do my best to hook you up. Just let me know.
Blogging because I can...
most diallers have "detect Autovoice" play recorded announcement instead of send to agent to hock BS you don't need functionality built in.
License it from Bell. Phone detects autovoice, plays GFY message to robocaller.?
How hard was that?
Why couldn't this be a new use for all of the drones being used by all the branches of the military and the cia and the local police forces? :
;>)
.
Couldn't the geniuses at AT&T, a branch of the NSA, put together a system that would
-- pinpoint the true location of the spam caller,
-- allocate a vote tally system and tabulate how many people have reported that particular spam location (not just number on Caller ID, but number as in billed-to-number, and the physical location of the system making the call)
-- keep some sort of time-adjusted average and when it passes the magic threshold value...
-- send out the GPS coordinates of that caller location for the next drone attack. I'm sure a few civilian casualties of the telemarketers sitting around them would be acceptable collateral damage, eh?
.
the Challenge was issued to developing technical or functional solutions
*69? Ummm
1. find out where they're calling from
2. fuck them up
The telephone network is the telephone network. It's completely impossible to make an anonymous call. Your phone number is like your IP address but more exposed. It seems pretty damn obvious to me, except of course for digital phone. Even then, there's a handful of carriers and that's it and obviously that volume of calls could trigger a very simple pattern recognition system. AT&T can hand me an itemized bill of every single number I called all month. So can Time Warner. It's their fucking network! I bet the #1 suggestion was JUST FUCKING LOOK UP UP WHO THEY ARE.
I'd agree, except you need to keep reverse 911. It's incredibly handy for chemical spills and fires. Of course we'd like to get rid of chemical spills and uncontrolled fires altogether; but first things first...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The solution to this is to ban autodialers and robocalling unless you have a legitimate valid reason (and get a license and specify that reason)
So it would be possible for those entities that use robocalling to warn people of tornadoes, hurricanes, snowstorms, school closures or any other similar emergency would be able to get a license. But someone wanting to sell you internet service would not be able to get the license.
All the other call centers (such as Comcast calling you to offer you their services or some charity wanting donations or a political party wanting votes and funding) would be able to do what they do, they would just have to do it with humans and not robots.
I use the CID to search in realtime for non local or whitelisted numbers in both http://whocallsme.com/ and http://www.listaspam.com/.
For recognized spammers a snarky syntetic speech rejecting their call is played and the audio and call info logged.
Still the new spammer numbers must be added manually to these sites but also get included in a local blacklist that now has over 240 entries. This method has cut the need to answer annoying spam call to 3% or even less of the 180 spam call of the past year.
And no, they don't stop whatever you do. It cost them nothing.
She reached under the counter as if to retrieve a weapon but found herself looking at my carry piece faster..
Are you seriously trying to say that you went into a call center, and you thought the receptionist was pulling a gun on you? Sales calls are annoying and all, but it's important not to get too carried away.
Guns may not kill people on their own, but trigger-happy people with guns may be part of the problem.
1. Find out the personal numbers of the biggest amount of politics you can
2. Spread these number through the biggest amount of robocallers you can
3. Peace
A state institution near town is plagued by staff shortages as the GOP government wants to shut it down or privatize it, driving off all the experienced staff and the new, lower-paid hires don't last as they're abused as well. They are forced to call folks at home who are off or work a different shift and beg them to come in early every day. Most staffers at least once a week are literally held hostage, not allowed to go home as there is no one to relieve them - even going over the 16 hour OSHA rule once in a while.
Now, this publicly funded State institution is hiding their caller ID as most staffers began to ignore calls from the truthful ID. Some of the schedulers are apparently using their own cell phones just to show a different number. How this is legal is beyond me, but then again, law in the US for the mere proles no longer exists.
I placed two programs on SourceForge.net that deal with this. Program jcblock blocks calls with caller IDs that match ones in a blacklist. It works for landline phones. The other, JCBloc, is an Andriod app that works similarly for a smartphone. It works for Andriod 2.2. Android blocked access to phone operations after that version. Hope this is helpful...
The problem is that there is no technical difference between the legal robocallers and the illegal robocallers.
What is the technical difference between a charity calling to sell you something and a company calling to sell you something?
Recipients of the call don't see any difference, the phone system sees no difference. The scripts are likely no different.
We have long had money spent (in the USA) on bringing phone lines to rural areas to serve the majority of the people. Today we should be extending the internet to all people, and then you could just use a bloody IP phone. POTS has always been great because of its battery backup, but nothing prevents the same being implemented for the last mile internet architecture, whatever that looks like. Today, IP phones are extremely inexpensive and many if not most people own a device which can function as one already, so there's no good reason to stick with POTS over internet access which I think we can all agree has greater utility. I'm not talking about guaranteeing every citizen "broadband" speeds (currently defined by government as what, 4 Mbps or better?) but at least enough to be useful for most types of communications, a number which we could argue about but which might be placed around 512 kbps if you want to support a typical household's worth of users all making high-quality voice calls at once.
Then the problem turns back into dealing with spam :) But we have lots of filtering techniques for that. POTS phones are too dumb and adding Asterisk is not yet as inexpensive as an answering machine. A solution which made it so (and as simple) might go some distance towards solving this problem technically on the user's end, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I say line them all up next to a trench and put a bullet in their heads...
We can all dream: http://i48.tinypic.com/2dc8kg1.jpg
Here: http://unvexed.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-firewall-your-phone-system.html "How to Firewall Your Phone System against Robocallers, Telemarketers and Other Pests