FCC Calls On Phone Companies To Offer Free Robocall Blocking (fastcompany.com)

The FCC chairman on Friday pressed major U.S. phone companies to take immediate steps to develop technology that blocks unwanted automated calls available to consumers at no charge. Chairman Tom Wheeler, in letters to CEOs of Verizon Communications, AT&T, Sprint, US Cellular, Level 3 Communications, Frontier Communications, Bandwidth.com, and T-Mobile, said that so-called robocalls, automated pre-recorded telephone calls often from telemarketers or scam artists continue because the industry isn't taking any action. Wheeler demands answers with "concrete, actionable solutions to address these issues" within 30 days. A report on FastCompany adds: Wheeler also urged carriers to create a list of institutions like government agencies and banks that are commonly impersonated by scammers and filter out overseas callers impersonating them through falsified caller ID data

Comments

I'm sure they will fully comply

[Anonymous Coward]

They will offer free robocall blocking and the sudden and completely unrelated rate hike will be completely unrelated.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[gweilo8888]

Or more likely, they'll do nothing at all because they profit every time a robocall hits one of our phones.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[hawguy]

Or more likely, they'll do nothing at all because they profit every time a robocall hits one of our phones.

Not really, I have unlimited (or nearly unlimited, 1000 minutes) calling, I only use a fraction of that allowance, sending more calls to me doesn't earn AT&T any money, and causes additional load on their network.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[hawguy]

They will offer free robocall blocking and the sudden and completely unrelated rate hike will be completely unrelated.

It doesn't matter, the rate hike is coming whether they implement this or not -- they charge based on what the market will bear, not on their cost of delivering service.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[gweilo8888]

And they still profit. Why? Because robocalls like this help push people into deciding they need unlimited calling in the first place, thereby spurring them to spend more. And because not everybody has unlimited calling, and a large portion of their userbase has their minutes eaten up by this. Whether you personally spend more because of it changes that not one lick.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[jonsmirl]

Nomorobo actually works pretty well and it is already free on land lines. It has totally stopped Cardholder Services from call me. That spammer was driving me crazy having called me over 300 times. After about a hundred calls I started answering some of them and telling the operators what a disgusting company they work working for. Or I'd hit '1' and set the phone next to my radio. I heard that other people give them made up credit card info just to make them waste time. Even after paying a $1M FCC fine Cardholder Services is still calling my land line. https://www.nomorobo.com/

Of now they have started calling my cell phone four or five times a week. And there is no free blocking.

Apparently Nomorobo works by using the billing information in the call to block the call. The billing information can't be spoofed like the caller ID can be. End phones can't access the billing info so the call have to be blocked inside the network.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[hawguy]

And they still profit. Why? Because robocalls like this help push people into deciding they need unlimited calling in the first place, thereby spurring them to spend more. And because not everybody has unlimited calling, and a large portion of their userbase has their minutes eaten up by this. Whether you personally spend more because of it changes that not one lick.

Really? It's hard to find a plan from a major carrier that does't have unlimited (or near unlimited) calling, some MVNO's offer them, but the carriers make so little money off of minutes, I'd be surprised if robocalls would earn any significant revenue for the carriers.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[amRadioHed]

Even if almost everyone didn't already have unlimited calls, how many robocalls would you need to get before it would make any impact on your minuts. It takes a few seconds to figure out it's a robocall and hangup.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[Richard_at_work]

It does earn AT&T money because they charge the originating telecoms network a termination fee for handling the call, regardless of your inbound minutes limit (which is a terrible US thing, we dont have that here in the UK, its outbound charges only for us).

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[gweilo8888]

Reporting the calls to the FCC is a complete waste of time. I've done it myself at least five or six times, and it's a long and tedious process which is followed by precisely zero action whatsoever.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[jonsmirl]

There is a web page at the FTC dedicated to dealing with them -- What’s the deal with “Rachel from Card Services”? Your top 3 questions answered.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[ShaunC]

I can confirm this.

About 10 years ago when I switched phone carriers (didn't port my number, not sure if that was even a thing yet), I got assigned a phone number that had previously belonged to someone who may have had debt. I was getting calls morning noon and night from a collection agency named Luebke Baker, looking for the guy who had the number before me. No amount of "you've got the wrong fucking number" made any difference, they kept on calling, always spoofing different numbers from different area codes, sometimes a dozen calls a day.

I got fed up and went through the FCC complaint process. I don't know how it works now, but at the time, they had a web form that required an intense level of detail and took a long time to fill out. I submitted it. About a month later, I got an envelope in the mail from the FCC. It contained a printed copy of my complaint form, about 15 sheets of paper worth, with a letter saying they found no violation of anything and I was welcome to submit another complaint if I wanted.

Thanks and no thanks, I had Sprint change my phone number. Luebke Baker eventually got fined by the FTC instead of the FCC, I guess I should have sent my complaint there instead.

Re:I'm sure they will fully comply

[Stan92057]

I don't think its a waste i mean they have fined Cardholder according to the number of reports against them. Which imo is the problem, instead of taking action fast they allow the complaints to build up so they can fine them more. Great for them but pisses those of us who report and keep getting called. its the same thing the cia,fbi,nas,reg cops do instead of arresting the guy they know they can put in prison they wait and try to get as many as they can in one scoop. Great for news headlines not so great for those the criminals take advantage of.

they need to work the other end

[laurencetux]

if legit companies were required to prove that their contractors followed ALL laws (with epic fines for violations) then these boiler room companies would go "POOF".

Re:they need to work the other end

[hawguy]

if legit companies were required to prove that their contractors followed ALL laws (with epic fines for violations) then these boiler room companies would go "POOF".

None of the robocalls I receive (at least the ones I've listened to) are legit companies, they are all "You won a trip to the Caribbean", "Listen for special offer to lower your interest rate", etc. They are fly-by-night companies that are hard to track down, and will just pop up again under another name if they face any punishment for the robocalls.

Robocalls have gotten so bad that I stopped answering the phone for cals from numbers I don't recognize, I just let them go to voicemail and wait for the Google Voice transcript to see if I want to call them back.

Re:they need to work the other end

[Obfuscant]

if legit companies were required to prove that their contractors followed ALL laws (with epic fines for violations) then these boiler room companies would go "POOF".

How would they prove that? You can only prove when they DON'T. And most of the time, you can't prove they are breaking the law because you can't identify who it is that is breaking the law. Either the predictive dialer dumps the call after you've answered and you have no information about the call (other than the faked called ID), or you get a recorded message with no information about the caller, or you "press 3" to talk to someone who refuses to identify who they actually work for.

For those who think it's huge amounts of fun to waste the time of the scammer by talking to him, just remember that when he finally disconnects he's pressing the "contact failed" button that puts your number back into the system for another call and you get to talk to him again. He gets paid, you don't, you lose.

Yes, there are a few morons who use such tactics as part of their real marketing operations, but by doing so they leave the realm of "legit". The number of truly legit operations is already very small, so making every one of the legit ones go "poof" will do nothing to solve the problem. And that ignores the issue of the loopholes that still allow robocalling for some users.

It's kinda like putting more gun control laws in place. The law abiding gun owners are already obeying the law and the criminals just ignore them. "One more law" isn't a solution there, and it won't be a solution to robocalling.

Re: they need to work the other end

[BarbaraHudson]

Won't do any good until they also ban number spoofing and throttle the number of calls per hour from any one overseas source. Ditto for VoIP packets. Let them post a bond for more access, and if there are too many complaints, the complainers get the money. Too many complaints coming from a single carrier - block all calls from that carrier's network. Gives them motivation to not just sell the $-%%)#@ boiler rooms another block of numbers to call from.

REAL caller ID

[Mister Transistor]

Just a non-fucking-spoofable caller ID would go a long way to fixing this, the assholes couldn't hide behind spoofed numbers and would be thus made easily reportable to authorities.

As soon as I heard that caller ID was FUCKING USER MODIFIABLE, I realized it was an absolutely worthless "feature".

Re:I've thought about this

[Pascoea]

Or just flat out eliminate the ability to spoof caller ID...

nomorobo.com

[CorbaTheGeek]

There's already a free solution for land lines: nomorobo.com. Been using it for about 6 months. Works great!!!

step by step

[Macdude]

1. Secure the caller ID system to prevent faking caller IDs.
2. Implement the *666 calling feature -- if you get a robo-call you hang up, then pick up and dial *666. The phone company then blocks all calls from that number after receiving some number of *666 complaints.

While you're at it...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Put some teeth into the do-not-call list:

Upgrade callerID to use ANI or some other tech to prevent it from being spoofed or blocked; so we can find the bastards. Remove the exemption for charity and political fundraisers and pollsters. Remove the "existing relationship" loophole so that when you add your number the calls STOP unless you explicitly exempt them (And that exemption should be revocable.). Remove the 31-day wait when a number is added (Seriously, WTF? I'm not buying a gun here. I don't need a cooling-off period.) And crank up the penalties for violations such that it will hurt even a SuperPAC... maybe add in some criminal penalties too.

Re:While you're at it...

[Obfuscant]

Remove the 31-day wait when a number is added (Seriously, WTF? I'm not buying a gun here. I don't need a cooling-off period.)

The 30 day wait is not for you. It's to keep the system from being overly onerous for legitimate users. You can't make the addition effective immediately because that forces the people you WANT to use the list to look at it every five minutes or so. There has to be some time delay between being added to the list the government manages and it being used by the callers to filter their lists. You can argue that 31 days is too long and that ten days is better, but you can't call for the removal of any wait.

And crank up the penalties for violations such that it will hurt even a SuperPAC... maybe add in some criminal penalties too.

Robocallers are ignoring laws against credit card fraud, unauthorized computer access ("your computer has a virus, type the following command..."), and other federal crimes. They're already ignoring laws regarding the DNC list. What new law would they suddenly decide to honor when their entire operation is a violation of many other laws already?

Re:Caller id spoofing already broke that.

[anegg]

How about some variation on holding the telephone company responsible for the falsified CallerID information? The false information gets there in the first place because the phone companies let anyone with a digital interface supply their own CallerID information. Perhaps the phone companies should develop a screening process whereby they don't accept CallerID information from a subscriber if it doesn't match a previously agreed-upon pattern (for the text, and for the number). Legitimate uses of injected CallerID information are for things like Direct Inward Dial trunks handing out the internal PBX routing number; this would fit the pattern for the number, and the names could be prefaced by some kind of approved organizational identifier.

If the CallerID information could be guaranteed to lead back to the real call initiator, then the Federal reporting forums for illegal and harassing phone calls could have real data to work on. As it stands now, I can report the illegal robocall, or the call even though I'm on the "Do Not Call" list, but even as I report it I'm pretty sure nothing will happen because the CallerID information I'm using to identify the actual caller is falsified. And... good luck getting an actual organization name out of an individual should you choose to speak to one on a robocall. They know better than to give you an actionable name.

Priorities (KAT)

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll spend months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to nab a guy halfway around the world for sharing music, but won't lift a fucking finger to hunt down real, actual scammers causing real, actual harm.

Personal premium numbers

[Nkwe]

Make it so that the person placing the call potentially pays to call me. I get to set the price. I agree to split that price with the phone company. The phone company agrees to play an automated message to the original caller informing them of the price and giving the caller the option to to complete the call or not. When my phone actually rings I get the option to press a key to waive the charge. Fun and entertainment ensue.

Shut down Level 3 and ban VoIP Telephony

[Khyber]

Almost all spam calls, robocalls, and illegal calls to cell phones that I receive are traced to VoIP services offered by Level 3 subsidiaries or Level 3 themselves. They do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to fix any of this.

Shut down Level 3 and ban the easy scam-hiding that is VoIP telephony, I can guarantee you the majority of this bullshit will stop immediately.