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FTC To Trap Robocallers With Open Source Software

Posted by Soulskill on from the about-bloody-time dept.

coondoggie writes: The Federal Trade Commission today announced the rules for its second robocall exterminating challenge, known this time as Zapping Rachel Robocall Contest. 'Rachel From Cardholder Services,' was a large robocall scam the agency took out in 2012. The agency will be hosting a contest at next month's DEF CON security conference to build open-source methods to lure robocallers into honeypots and to predict which calls are robocalls. They'll be awarding cash prizes for the top solutions.

6 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. They should also go after... by rs1n · · Score: 4, Interesting

    the folks who keep calling about my (non-existent) google rankings for the (non-existent) business that I don't own.

    1. Re:They should also go after... by roc97007 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I've gotten lots of those calls, and I don't think "on the his pc" is a typo. The speech patterns are definitely "lccnglish". (Pidgen english spoken by phone workers from a Least Cost Country.)

      "Hello we are from the microsoft (or sometimes, "the internet") and we are calling you because that we have noticed your pc is infested with the viruses."

      What's chilling is that they used to start in on their spiel to the first person to answer (daughter would listen a few seconds hand it to me "it's for you"....gee thanks...), but lately they ask for me by name.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  2. Really? by Scutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    'Rachel From Cardholder Services,' was a large robocall scam the agency took out in 2012.

    Are you sure about that? Because I still get calls from Rachel and friends several times per week.

    --

    "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
    1. Re:Really? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ditto. That bitch is still around. Maybe the FTC is losing hard-drives too.

      Same here. I always press "1", which transfers to a live operator, and then I play along for a few minutes. Then I ask her what color underwear she is wearing. Most hang up at that point. but a few continue the conversation. If we all waste a little of their time, then these business will no longer be viable.

      What would be really nice is a CAPTCHA for phones. So if someone calls me, they get a message that says "press seven if you are a human", and my phone only rings if they pass the test. It would also need to have a whitelist, since I get legitimate robo-calls from my kids' school.

    2. Re:Really? by theskipper · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you're the type willing to spend time messing with them, consider adding this to your arsenal:

      If you have Callcentric or another VOIP provider, you then have the option to create call treatments for forwarding a good percentage of telemarketing calls to any number you want, including the telemarketers themselves.

      For example, one of the ways I get target numbers to forward to, is by responding to the Google SEO guys then pretend to be cut off mid conversation. When they call back since they think they have a good lead, the caller ID (surprisingly) is almost always a valid number to the call center. That's the target number. Even just faking an emergency and asking for their number so you can call them back usually works. Once you have that, Bob's your uncle since there's not much reason for them to change their block of unpublished incoming numbers.

      Then it's simply a matter of going into the dashboard, creating a forwarding treatment of all obvious caller ids (i.e. any 800*, anonymous, +1, etc.) to the target number and voila, the call center gets hit with all my forwarded telemarketing calls transparently. And of course forward the target number back to itself, or even better, another target.

      The best way is if you can whitelist your incoming calls and simply forward any non-matching numbers, especially since most telemarketing calls these days use a random out-of-area code caller id number. Not realistic if you're running a business but for personal lines you can whitelist the area codes you might expect valid calls to come from.

      Obviously this doesn't work all the time. But when it does, it's pretty satisfying to check the online report at the end of the week to see all the forwarded calls that transparently went to Raj and Rachel. My way of paying forward the opportunity to lower their interest rates.

  3. She called me 6x / hour -- This is what worked: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or at least she was as of two weeks ago... After a while, I got tired of constantly dropping what I'm doing to run to the phone to see if my kids had gotten hurt (again) only to see it was rachel from cardholder services. So I started having fun.

    The name of the game is keep the human on the phone for as long as possible. While it is ever so satisfying to answer their question of "Do you have at least $2000 in debt?" with "No, I don't have any debt.", the real goal is to stall them for as long as you can. So ask them if your mortgage counts... Or a home equity line of credit. How about your car loan? Ask them if Diners club counts. Do they take american express? You get the idea! Play dumb. Have fun with them!

    And always, ALWAYS!, be sure to point out that since they're calling dozens of times a day, you felt obligated to talk to them since they must really want to talk to you.

    It took a couple of days, and quite a few runs through this game, but now Rachel won't call me anymore.

    I feel like I should feel rejected and not nearly this pleased with myself...

    Their business model depends on automated harassing of folks. People cost money. If we all did this, poor rachel might go out of business...