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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.

8 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.

  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. Ah, how adorable... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not quite sure whether it is cute or sad that the FTC is merrily holding a little contest to attempt to detect robocallers based on the (relatively sparse) information available to the system at the far end of the phone line when it's a matter of public knowledge that somewhere between 'a strikingly large percentage' and 'All' calls connected are logged and potentially retained for quite some time.

    Surely the network level is where robocallers stand out most dramatically, unless the caller has spoofing good enough to disguise the origin and frequency of their calls from the telco carrying them (which would also likely allow theft of service and thus be the sort of thing that would actually get fixed, unlike the pitiful state of caller ID), and we know that those logs exist.

    Is it just considered polite to pretend that the telephone system can't be so scrutinized, or are robocallers customers who are just too reliable to hunt down and exterminate?

  4. Was anyone sent to prison? by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    Sure, the "Rachel" didn't kill anyone. Probably. But with the number of calls placed, the overall damage — even if spread among millions of people — certainly exceeded that of a serious bodily injury or even death of one person.

    Was any of the scammers sent to prison? I mean, I'd recommend impalement, but prison would've been good enough. Did it happen?

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:Was anyone sent to prison? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It seems a waste to imprison or impale them when they are likely still full of usable organs that could be reassigned to somebody who isn't an abhuman sleazeweasel...

    2. Re:Was anyone sent to prison? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      How horrifying it would be to wake in the hospital, and find out that you survived a terrible car crash, but they had to patch you up with a new liver, and now you are (scare chord) 10% TELEMARKETER!