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FTC Awards $50k In Prizes To Cut Off Exasperating Robocalls
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said it picked two winners out of nearly 800 entries for its $50,000 Robocall Challenge which dared technologists to come up with an innovative way of blocking the mostly illegal but abundant calls. According to the FTC, Serdar Danis and Aaron Foss will each receive $25,000 for their proposals, which both use software to intercept and filter out illegal prerecorded calls using technology to 'blacklist' robocaller phone numbers and 'whitelist' numbers associated with acceptable incoming calls." Can't wait until Symantec, Kaspersky, etc. sell competing anti-spammer packages for phones.
Your proposed solution will not stop robocalls because...
Offer $1k for the heads of anybody who runs one of these organizations. ;-)
It's gotten to the point where pretty much any unknown caller either gets hung up on immediately, or told to PFO since I can't believe they are who they claim to be.
If I actually have any business interest with you, send it to me in snail mail, because I no longer trust incoming calls -- between the fake tech support, notification I've won a cruise, or someone offering to lower my credit card interest but who has no idea of who I am, the vast majority of calls I receive are clearly fraudulent and coming from another country.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Fifty grand buys a lot of bullets.
It's the only way to be sure.
I just got a call from this lady who said I could make at LEAST that much EVERY WEEK all at home using my computer. I even get to go on a cruise for a small deposit.
So shall the dialer VS the anti-dialer war continue. My company makes an auto-dialer product used by a lot of these contact centers. We will just outsmart whatever technology sits between us and the callee. That said, some tech-savvy people may be able to beat us, but the general population won't.
I live in Europe (France) and I don't receive robocalls. I don't even know why. Might be a good idea to check what is being done on the other side of the ocean.
The article is a bit thin on detail on how exactly this will work and I suspect it will be a matter of minutes after the winning solution is implemented until the spammers find a work-around. A couple of key things working against an effective solution are: - Low cost calling. If there was at least some sort of opening fee for calls the ROI for spammers would be too high. - Lack of ID. With many types of phone trunks you can inject the caller ID you want to display and only the core carriers see the true IDs for billing purposes. Basically it's the same problems as SMTP has!
Hire some investigators to wait by the phone for a robocall. When they get one, play along. While they play along, collect evidence. When you have enough evidence, arrest the perp and send him to prison.
Is this a trick question?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If a caller can mask or spoof a phone number and hide their identity, the root of the problem is that this is even possible.
If the phone system could trace calls to actual addresses, people and accounts, there would be better ways to deal with this that would be less open to abuse. Even if someone needed a court order, that would be ok, as long as the means for actually finding these idiots exists.
We need a better mechanism for finding the perps.... so that law enforcement can put them in jail or vigilantes can break their legs. Oh, I know, I know, you all say that these calls come from overseas. I don't believe this. 99% of the ones I get appear to be from legit USA numbers. How are these not traceable?
Worthless. 99% of all illegal robocalls currently spoof their CallerID. I get robocalls that appear to be coming from my neighbors (robocallers frequently spoof a number that is in the same areacode and prefix as the number they are calling). When I subpoena phone records, the calls actually came from across the country from some podunk reseller in California. All that will happen is that robocallers will start spoofing the whitelisted phone numbers.
You need 1) some indication that the callerID has been falsified (i.e. does not match the exchange of the originating ANI) and 2) have carriers impose restrictions on their clients ability to spoof CallerID, such as requiring them to register the numbers they want to spoof in advance, and prove they have a right to use those numbers in outbound calls (such as a call center making calls for a client, where they legitimately need to put the client's inbound 800 number in the outgoing callerID).
Don't some people use a loud whistle to discourage unwanted callers?
Hello! How would you like to have your business appear on the front page of Google search listings AND be automatically whitelisted on millions of residential phones? Press 1 now to speak to a representative and help your business succeed . . .
IF there's any good to come of this, it'll:
1) accelerate the decline of POTS telephony, and
2) everyone will be have been so frazzled by being robocalled at mealtimes by claims farmers (or the scam du jour); that nobody will trust anything a stranger ever says over a telephone, making life much harder for everyone, but especially the scammers, who will have successfully pissed in the well for their friends and future selves. A classic case of the Tragedy of the Commons (where the 'commons' in this case, is the ever shrinking pool of exploitable marks reachable by telephone).
Criminals, in general, are not a very clever lot.
...follow the money trail and file a RICO suit against EVERYONE involved in the money trail, especially managers and executives or anyone else who would have "created a climate accepting of working with illegal businesses".
Perp walk those fuckers on national news, naming names and home towns.
If we ratchet up the fear factor high enough, nobody will work with these assholes anymore, and if you can't collect money what's the point? Sure, some politically minded assholes will still robocall ("Stop Obama!", "Legalize Gay Marriage", etc), but if it doesn't make any money, nobody will do it.
There's a big chunk of the "legitimate" economy at work here to keep these guys going -- if we take away their 2% take and make sure some of them do 20 in Lewisberg while desperately holding the soap then this will dampen the urge to dabble at the fringes of the economy.
Why can I not do a black ( or white) list of callers on my cell phone?
Even if they charged for it, this would be useful.
Fricking ripoff cell phone providers.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Greetings, friends. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've
got the power inside you right now. So, use it, and send one dollar to
Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay, eternal
happiness is just a dollar away.
Rather than try to use technological stopgaps, this should be treated as a law enforcement issue. The purpose of these robocalls is to get people to pay money to the scammers running the operations. Follow the money, and you find the scammers. The FCC should get a surveillance warrant ahead of time, then call up pretending to be a normal customer interested in whatever product or service they're hawking, and pay with a traceable bank account. Find out where the money is going and you've got your perps.
Isn't blacklisting / whitelisting a bit of an obvious solution? I'm sure someone could have come up with that without opening a competition. I was expecting something more inventive like scoring callers based on frequency of calls, number of different and type of numbers called (residential vs business), attempts to manipulate or block call ID, etc.
(click) Hello! Are you tired of receiving those annoying "Robo-Calls" in your home, your office, even in your car? What if I told you that there was a product that recently took first place in a competition sponsored by the FTC that you could use to get rid of these calls... without blocking calls from your friends and family and people you trust? Think how much this would be worth to your peace of mind. Now suppose I told you that you could also get the same high level of protection when you or your family surf the Internet... at no extra charge! Now how much would you pay?
What's with robocalls that hang up on you if you answer and don't leave a voicemail message if you don't answer. I get at least one of these per day. What can they possibly be trying to determine from that - whether I'm home?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I don't want to run fucking antispamware on my phone.
Telephone exchange operators should be running this software and doing some basic sanity checks on calls entering their networks from the outside of them.
Individuals or businesses abusing trunk lines should be barred from future service. CLECs and other carrier-like entities who permit abuse should lose network access as well.
What boggles my mind about all this is the carriers standing around with their dicks in their hands with a "gee, there's nothing we can do..." attitude.
The FCC should impose fines on the carriers, too, and then we'll see how quickly they can fix this problem.
Can't wait until Symantec, Kaspersky, etc. sell competing anti-spammer packages for phones.
My google voice number discards spam calls all the time. Including political calls.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235637/google_voice_spam_filter_blocks_unwanted_calls.html
Best thing ever.
This seems like a late 90's solution to email spam. Why not a system that prescreens the call with a welcome message from you. This would trip some sort of probabilistic model that matches known waveforms of audio data that are robocallers. If after a few second delay it doesn't match anything, let the call through. Phone numbers in your contacts list are automatically let through. *123 reports a caller as a robocall at anytime during the call if one gets through. Anti-spam companies already have a good deal of the staff needed to implement this sort of thing. My guess is not enough people are affected by this to think this tech will be profitable.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Problem solved.
Simple, use captcha type audio to trip up bots. All calls allowed through either from the white list or through a quick Turing test (captcha). 1. Use a white list of all known contacts, and let all from the list directly through. 2. All not recognized calls are given a short recording: "press 123 to continue your call". Rotate the numbers and vary the voice message to ensure its not being translated by the bot. Get creative with Captcha type sentances: How many toes do you have... Nothing too difficult, and nothing too costly. Where's my 50K?
Simple and already exists, the first time a number is seen the caller gets a machine asking them to leave a message, this then gets forwarded to the recipient who can choose to take the call or not based on the message.
Once the call is taken the number is whitelisted and the caller gets through first time the next time.
Does anybody know why the NRA robo calls people and then simply hangs up on them when they answer? I've had it happen to me several times. What do they hope to accomplish? I finally called the number that called me, got a NRA recording with no options given to remove myself from their calling list until I hit a random number during their "please tell me more" recording. I'm almost tempted to think that some anti-NRA group is doing it to turn everyone against the NRA. Is the NRA really that stupid?
This is a regulatory issue (unlike many other technical issues where the US government is more than happy to legislate on). Require phone companies to block spoofed phone numbers and alert law enforcement for their point of origin, unless they are explicitly authorized by the owner of the phone number. Phone companies have the technical capability to do this. What they lack is the incentive to do it. A simple fine would be more than enough to convince them them that it doesn't make business sense to allow robocalls from spoofed phone numbers. We don't even need new laws for this. I would imagine that FTC and FCC have the authority to put such regulations in place under existing laws like once that establish the 'Do not call' list and outlaw wirefraud. Where I can get my $50K?
I'm curious as to where they get my number in the first place. Are the calls just randomly generated to call any ten digits? Or does some company I'm affiliated with sell my info?
Either way, phone rings there's only two people I answer to. The rest goes to VM. I for one wish there wasn't such a need for a phone.
I think this would stop 98% of spam calls that I get. It seems to me that there should be an answering machine with multiple mailboxes that can provide this feature (If you're calling for Pete, press 1, for Pattie, press 2, etc.), but I can't seem to find one.
And they picked a system that can't possibility work. It is obvious that they don't want to solve the problem. I'd immediately zero their entire budget, and be done with them.
The solution is trivial. Pass a law that every vendor of phone service must implement a * that bills the caller of the last call $1. You dial it after you get a call you didn't want. The phone company gives you $1 every time you use it. They are obligated to pass this onto the previous hop originator of the call with the relevant call info from that session. If a company making a million calls a day can pay their million dollars a day bill, fine. If they can't, well, then the phone company is free to terminate their service for failure to pay, or otherwise restrict their ability to make outbound calls. This works, because the phone company is in the position to know on which trunk the last call came in on, and _who_ is at the other end of that trunk. They can then bill them, and if the entity on the other end doesn't want to pay, then the phone company can pull the connection, or at least the inbound calls side of that connection.
Does anyone else get these calls that ask if you have stairs in your house?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You wouldn't need technology, you'd just do it anyway and blame the robocalls on the rival political party.
I run a telephone network in Canada, and I have somewhat of a Crude "ACL" for a system-wide blocklist. I have been using it for years, and it's pretty effective though not very efficient to manage.
I monitor incoming trunks and alarm on spikes. When I get a spike from a robodialer, I look up the number online to see if it's listed as a scam or generic robo call. If it is, I simply add it to my "ACL," and all further calls coming into my system are rejected with a short message. The message states that if they would like to phone anyone on our system they need to first call our main business office (the only number they are allowed to dial) and explain who they are.
I have a large list of obviously fake numbers that I reject (all zeros, 01234567890, 1111111111, etc )
Occasionally I will have a collection agency that phones in and complains that they are a valid business, and that they should be let through (using a number such as 1-000-000-0000. I explain that there is no valid reason why they would need to spoof their number, and that they should dial as PRIVATE or BLOCKED if they want to proceed. I simply do not allow them to phone in.
I'm not totally sure on the legalities of this, but customers love it, and I enjoy the satisfaction of blocking a tonne of calls. I have no way of dealing with companies that spoof local numbers, but I can at least block all of my exchanges as they would never be coming back in over the same trunk group as these robo dialers anyway.
This is one of those projects that I have slowly tweaked over time, but I am considering writing scripts that will go out and crawl those common telephone complain sites to build a list on the fly every week and add those numbers to my 'ACL.' It would be nice if there was an up-to-date 'spamhaus' equivalent for phone numbers.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
I get at least two or three calls a day on my employer-provided cell phone from someone who wants to lower my credit card rates. You have to press "1" to talk to someone about it. If you complain to them or ask who they're calling from they instantly hang up. Unless I'm very busy I always put the phone on speaker and press 1. Then I say hello to the human, and wait for them to say something. If there are other people in ear shot I'll take the phone off speaker and and stage-whisper "die in a fire!" into the phone before hanging up. If there's no one else around I will say something considerably more creative along the same lines. Something that will come to them in their dreams for weeks or months, I hope.
Worst case I cost them some minutes and lowered their rate of return.
" ... Serdar Danis and Aaron Foss will each receive $25,000 for their proposals, which both use software to intercept and filter out illegal prerecorded calls using technology to 'blacklist' robocaller phone numbers and 'whitelist' numbers associated with acceptable incoming calls."
Wow !! Blacklists and white lists!! Whoever would have thought of that ?!
Alright, so, I hear we can track terrorists by analyzing their bank account usage patterns. Why not do a pattern analysis of the behavior of robo calls? If a number calls in the robo call pattern flag it as a likely offender. Have a human then look at it, make a determination, and block it if it seems to be illegitimate.
Someone named Serdar came up with a way to cut spam?
Someone named Foss submitted a closed algorithm?
Is it still April 1?!
That will raise the ante.
Or drone strikes.
"The third place idea, sawing off body parts with a rusty butter knife, was defeated by a narrow margin."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://www.itslenny.com/
Sample (MP3) - http://www.itslenny.com/recording.php?file=a8928ae6ef5256cced20b8ae7cfbfb56
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
to remember that caller id was originally promised to have whitelist and blacklist capabilities. Wonder what ever happened to that?
This works like a charm - learned it from a YouTube video:
As quickly as possible when a robocall is received, bounce up and down as fast as possible on the pound key (American - lower right on key pad). Keep blinking the "pound key" for as long as possible, like twenty seconds. Then hang up.
This makes the robo computer think it hit a fax machine and it will erase your phone number from it's list.
Over three days this trick eliminated six robocalls a day to one every week starting ten days ago at our house.
They should pay the same postage that everyone else has to.
They do. You can send bulk mail and they can send first class mail. The fact that you choose not to do so is beside the point.
Right now they get a discount "bulk rate" even though delivering their junk requires the same effort as delivering first class mail.
I'm afraid it doesn't. Much of the cost is in sorting and bulk mail tends to be pre-sorted which cuts down the cost to the post office. There are economies of scale at work here. I agree with your premise that postal spam should cost more but since 95+% of the mail I get (and thus the revenue the post office gets) goes straight to the trash I don't see this happening any time soon.
Pay $2500 for the express delivery of the cruise. I chose the $1000 standard delivery method, and due to Rodesia law I have to wait 9 months until the prize is delivered. Express delivery gets it to you in 3 months.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Or you could just make your answering machine start with the three-tone signal that indicates a disconnected line. (For information about these tones, look here. An audio file for the tones can be found here.
This doesn't seem to work in all instances—some telemarketers still leave messages. Robocall software can be configured to ignore the signal. But it does seem to lead to an immediate disconnect for at least half my spam calls.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I'm sure this will be just like the early email spam filters. It will work great for a month or two until the roboscumbags find away around it. Send them to prison, it's the only way to be sure.
This would cease to be a problem if the FTC stopped fining robospammers on the number of reported complaints and started subpeoning their phone records and fining them $500 each for the number of outbound calls they actually made to numbers on the DNC list. Robocalling is a problem because the FTC isn't doing their job and enforcing the law as written.
We recently had to replace our failing Uniden Cordless phones with a set of Panasonics from Walmart. What I really apreciate is that the phones already include a call blocking feature that is not dependent on the phone company (no extra charge). Several scams that have been coming in from places like the Dominicon Republic and other caribean locations are now blocked. The phone rang one time after the entry into the block list and hasn't rang since.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Unfortunately, as long as surveys and political calls are exempted from the do-not-call rules, the PERCEPTION will continue to be that these systems, and the laws regarding phone solicitation, don't work. The solution is simple. Incoming calls from non-whitelisted numbers are first asked to enter an extension number, as if it were a business. You then give out your number to people you WANT to call you with an extension number. Incoming calls that don't know allowed numbers just can't get through, and you can have a few valid numbers so that you can categorize your allowed incoming callers as well if you want. Extension number as password. Asterisk can be set up to do this.
Not to mention the whole 'We'll toss you in prison if you don't talk. If you DO talk, we'll simply let you off with a fine'.
I don't read AC A human right
If the robocallers were calling with their real numbers they would already be dead or in jail. As long as telcos allow them to spoof their numbers no number-based filtering will work.
Didn't the phone company (which I don't know) make that whole *69 thing to call back the last person that called you? Could not a similar system be used to get people to report fraud calls, then have the police take on the top X reported numbers each week and bring them in, or at the very least filter them out?