Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FTC Awards $50k In Prizes To Cut Off Exasperating Robocalls

Posted by timothy on from the award-the-perpetrators-jail-time dept.

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.

38 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. I know ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:I know ... by canadiannomad · · Score: 2

      Except as a normal course of work I do call from another country... I could use skype but it isn't as clear as a land line.

      Here is where I see a problem... I'm not too sure, but I seem to remember something about spoofing phone numbers/call display via an asterisk server. If that can be done then using phone numbers would be useless.

      --
      Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
    2. Re:I know ... by rabidMacBigot() · · Score: 2

      Meh, I get more junk snail mail than junk calls, and even though snail mail doesn't actually interrupt what I'm doing, its still pretty annoying because of the environmental cost and the cost of recycling, which is born by the council (and hence the council tax payer).

      Yes, but in the US, at least, bulk mailing subsidizes ordinary first-class letters. It's annoying, but it's the postal equivalent of advertisements on the radio - the noise pays the bills for the signal. I have no idea if it works that way in the UK, though.

    3. Re:I know ... by FireFury03 · · Score: 2

      Yes, but in the US, at least, bulk mailing subsidizes ordinary first-class letters. It's annoying, but it's the postal equivalent of advertisements on the radio - the noise pays the bills for the signal. I have no idea if it works that way in the UK, though.

      I have no interest in this subsidy. If someone wants to send me something through the post, they can damned well pay for it rather than expecting me to be subjected to the junk mail just so they can save a bit. Add to that the cost to every household of disposing of the junk, and the net result is it probably doesn't actually make anything cheaper anyway. Junk-mailers should be taxed heavilly.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    4. Re:I know ... by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dear gstoddart,
      Thank our lucky stars we've found you on Slashdot! We have tried to contact you by cell and land phoneline both work, and at home and each time without successful. We have only one chance left to you respond or forever your loss. Please text OKYAGOOD to #3832 to claim free cruise or to #2231 to lower your credit rating!

      PS: We have noticed your email is full of virus and we can help you clean that out. Text STOPSPAM to #2002 for reply.

      Sincerely,
      Hazel from Rhodesia

      --
      Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
    5. Re:I know ... by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      It would be better to expensively fine the businesses who use the robo-callers to advertise their products and services.

      Good luck with that ... the calls I get are either from American area codes, or call centers in India who are there just to scam people.

      So much of this is going to be outside the reach of any enforcement as to make it a joke. They don't care because nobody can touch them.

      Send in the Seals or cal in an airstrike. ;-)

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    6. Re:I know ... by dcollins117 · · Score: 2

      Junk-mailers should be taxed heavilly.

      They should pay the same postage that everyone else has to. Right now they get a discount "bulk rate" even though delivering their junk requires the same effort as delivering first class mail. This would cut down on the amount of their obnoxious spam and help the post office stay afloat.

      Also, if a person doesn't want to receive unsolicited mail, it should be trivial (and free) to return it to the sender. Let them throw it away.

    7. Re:I know ... by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      Good luck with that ... the calls I get are either from American area codes, or call centers in India who are there just to scam people.

      The hardware is on local soil.

      Start fining people who install hardware that's subsequently used for robocalling. After a couple of large fines you can be damn sure they won't be installing equipment for any more foreigners (or will be asking for a million bucks in escrow as 'insurance' - same effect).

      --
      No sig today...
    8. Re:I know ... by nukenerd · · Score: 2
      Mousit wrote :-

      Honestly, I'm shocked anyone even answers an unknown call at all anymore.

      You sound like you live in a rather small circle. Here are some wider-world reasons :-

      1) Elderly mother has collapsed in the street somewhere and a Good Samaritan/police/hospital are trying to contact me (she carries my contact number)

      2) Daughter's car has broken down somewhere with no cell phone coverage and she is trying to contact me from a payphone.

      3) A hobby club meeting I go to weekly has been cancelled and a fellow member is trying to contact me to save me the journey (gets my number from the member's list)

      4) An old friend, who's number has changed since I was last in contact, is trying to get in touch again.

      5) Father-in-Law's care home is trying to contact me from any of the several phones it may use for this purpose (several land lines and the mobiles of any of its senior staff) and I cannot be arsed to find out and note down every one of these possible numbers.

      6) I am expecting a furniture delivery and give my phone number to the company because their driver will need directions when he gets near (my place is in the sticks and hard to find). I (and they) will not know when I place the order who the driver will be nor, therefore, his mob number.

      7) I phone the local council with a tax query and they need to pass the query to another department who will investigate and phone back later (maybe several days later). There is no knowing in advance what number they will be calling me from.

      8) I order something from a shop who need to order it from the makers themselves. Could be days or weeks. They will phone me when they have it in.

      I could go on and on with examples. A common point in several of these scenarios is that if I am expecting a one-off call, even if I do know the number I do not want to have to keep editing a whitelist to accomodate it.

      These days Caller ID is almost universal--certainly in the U.S. (this being a story about the FTC), but I'd wager the case is pretty similar in most any first-world nation.

      Not in the UK. It is available, but at a price, and I do not see why I should be put out of pocket by these salesmen. In fact the UK Telephone Preference Service works quite well (for me at least, YMMV). When, occasionally, a salesman or scammer does get through I have some fun with them, but that is another story.

    9. Re:I know ... by hawguy · · Score: 2

      Actually I do. I get multiple spam calls from mainly home security companies. They're all under two entries (I filled the list for 'Spammers' last year so I have a 'Spammers2' list) so it'll pop up as one or the other when they call.

      If they are known companies and they don't stop calling, why not sue them?

      http://www.impactdialing.com/2012/05/how-to-sue-a-telemarketer/

    10. Re:I know ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Pretty much all of these 'problems' can be solved by the caller leaving a message. A delay of a few seconds, even a minute or two, before I check VM is not going to make a difference.

  2. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by Anon,+Not+Coward+D · · Score: 3, Funny

    Your proposed solution will not stop robocalls because you are not using a host file

    FTFY

    --
    Sometimes it's better not having signature
  3. Nuke it from orbit by space_jake · · Score: 2

    It's the only way to be sure.

  4. Pfffff 50k? by dmomo · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  5. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by mbkennel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    (x) it doesn't make the return from doing illegal activities negative
    (x) it doesn't make the people who deserve to go to prison go to prison

  6. Good old fashioned police work. by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:Good old fashioned police work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because robocallers are not the people selling goods and services. Robocallers are "lead generators" meaning they sell leads.

      Say you get a robocall for burial insurance. You press 1 when prompted, and "play along." A few days later, you get a salesman from ABC burial insurance calling you to sell you a policy. Sue the shit out of ABC, and you find out that ABC never even heard of robocalls, and doesn't know anything. ABC bought "leads" -- names and phone numbers of people who were interested in burial insurance. ABC buys leads like that from several different sources. Some come from door-to-door salesmen, some from live telemarketing, some from web sites visitors who complete a form, etc. They have no idea which lead generator they got your name and address from. (BTW, warm burial insurance leads sell for $5 to $20 a pop).

      So ABC didn't make the calls, and isn't liable. Even if they can tell you the lead generator that they got your name and number from, that is a long-gone empty shell, operating a VOIP phone bank from Indonesia, or a block of prepaid SIMs using untraceable wireless numbers.

    2. Re:Good old fashioned police work. by TopSpin · · Score: 2

      arrest the perp and send him to prison.

      Investigating, arresting and prosecuting people for violating these kinds of laws is unbelievably difficult and expensive and rarely nets more than wrist-slaps. Cases take years, litigators cost millions and there is and endless supply of replacement spammers to replace the prosecuted. Governments executives and their staffs know this and have better things to do.

      Finding the least statist solution is my preferred remedy in any case; make the practice economically infeasible by creating a generic regulatory mechanism (white/black lists based on working caller ID and enforced by the network operator, perhaps) and leave the cops/prosecutors/courts/prisons out of it.

      The carriers are a part of this as well. They facilitate spammers by deliberately not making caller ID work end-to-end in all cases like it should, streamlining mass account provisioning, etc. They get revenue from calls, spam or otherwise. Even your legislators are part of it; they exempt themselves from robocall laws and email spam laws creating all sorts of loop holes and special exceptions in the system that carriers can and do use to deflect blame.

      --
      Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
    3. Re:Good old fashioned police work. by sjames · · Score: 2

      They bought leads. And the money for those leads went somewhere. Ask ABC where the money went and claw it back.

    4. Re:Good old fashioned police work. by Obfuscant · · Score: 3

      So ABC didn't make the calls, and isn't liable.

      The second that ABC called my number they were in violation of the DNC legislation. That makes them liable.

      Prosecute enough of these innocent "lead buyers" who are paying people who create phone spam and people will stop paying phone spammers. Phone spammers don't work for free, so they'll eventually stop when nobody buys their services.

      The same policy can work for email spammers. If nobody paid Constant Contact to spam potential or current customers, Constant Contact wouldn't spam anyone.

  7. Worthless... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

    1. Re:Worthless... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mod Plus a billion! Why the hell does number spoofing still work? Something is very broken in a system which allows this.

    2. Re:Worthless... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Caller ID spoofing works because PABX systems regularly have different outgoing numbers to the most relevant incoming one. When someone calls you from a large company, it's generally useful for their direct number to show up, not the one for the PABX.

      Number spoofing, in the sense of spoofing the real originating number, doesn't work and never has. The telephone company knows what number a call really originated from, even if the caller ID doesn't match it.

  8. Re:Like the pirate VS the DRM wars.. by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

    And here we have it folks, the real reason that Slashdot should not let people log in using Facebook or Google credentials.

    Pure, unadulterated evil.

    Right here on Slashdot.

    Mark my words, it will make the Endless Summer seem like a spring picnic.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  9. One step further... by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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.

  10. Re:Like the pirate VS the DRM wars.. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Your candor is impressive. Most people who attract the loathing of virtually everybody for a living are a trifle more reticient about it.

  11. Robocallers that hang up on you... by Rob+Y. · · Score: 2

    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...
    1. Re:Robocallers that hang up on you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, he does, but you don't. Certain types of robocalls are illegal if they use a prerecorded message, but legal if a person is doing the talking. Like the other guy said, they call a lot of numbers at the same time, but since there are not that many people available when calls are answered, some of the calls just get terminated when answered.

  12. Shouldn't this software be at the telco level? by swb · · Score: 2

    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.

  13. anti-spam for phones by kwerle · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  14. Simple Turing test is best by MadCow-ard · · Score: 2

    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?

  15. Re:Like the pirate VS the DRM wars.. by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 3

    That said, some tech-savvy people may be able to beat us, but the general population won't.

    You mean tech-savvy enough to look up your Facebook account and administer said beating? That's not a particularly high bar...

    --
    Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  16. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And yet those are the least interesting, most annoying calls I get. Actually, those are the only robocalls I get. I can't think of a single person that I know that has a neutral or non-negative stance towards political robocalls.

  17. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by Joce640k · · Score: 2

    Your proposed solution will not stop robocalls because...

    It doesn't throw the parasites who installed the robots in prison then throw away the key.

    The USA has more people in prison than any society in history but they're the wrong people.

    --
    No sig today...
  18. Crude ACL by PhraudulentOne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  19. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by somarilnos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With that in mind... Rasmussen still gets enough people to respond to actually publish polls, and they strictly make automated calls to gather this information. That means that their intended purpose (spamming a large enough population with a low percentage chance play) is still a successful business model. All it is is spam for phones, and it wouldn't happen if it didn't work. No matter what peoples' attitudes are towards it.

  20. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by dkleinsc · · Score: 2

    (x) It has no impact on political robo-calls, which are the vast majority of robo-calls made and are unsurprisingly, completely legal.

    No, they aren't. Most robo-calls are commercial scammers: Rachel from Cardholder Services, fake cruises, etc. Although I could understand how you, like me, have difficulty telling the difference between a scammer and a politician.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  21. Re:Where's that checklist when I need it by DedTV · · Score: 2

    Worse, I've now started getting flooded with the "Have you or a loved one used Fixilfakeadine and suffered spontaneous anal ejaculation, moderate club foot or sudden gender change? If so, call our hotline now! You may be entitled to financial compensation." messages.
    At least the politicians never had their robot call me more than once or twice a day. One of those ambulance chasers called with the same message 7 times in an hour before I got around to blocking the number.