Slashdot Mirror
Robocalling Scourge May Not Be Unstoppable After All (arstechnica.com)
Dan Goodin, writing for Ars Technica: New data shows that the majority of robot-enabled scam phone calls came from fewer than 40 call centers, a finding that offers hope the growing menace of robocalls can be stopped. The calls use computers and the Internet to dial thousands of phone numbers every minute and promote fraudulent schemes that promise to lower credit card interest rates, offer loans, and sell home security products, to name just a few of the scams. Over the past decade, robocall complaints have mushroomed, with the Federal Trade Commission often receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints each month. In 2013, the consumer watchdog agency awarded $50,000 to three groups who devised blocking systems that had the potential to help end the scourge. Three years later, however, the robocall problem seems as intractable as ever. On Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a researcher said that slightly more than half of more than 1 million robocalls tracked were sent by just 38 telephony infrastructures. The relatively small number of actors offers hope that the phenomenon can be rooted out, by either automatically blocking the call centers or finding ways for law enforcement groups to identify and prosecute the operators. "We know that the majority of robocalls only come from 38 different infrastructures," Aude Marzuoli, research scientist at a company called Pindrop Labs, told Ars. "It's not as if there are thousands of people out there doing this. If you can catch this small number of bad actors we can" stop the problem."
I've had to cancel a phone number over the sheer number of robocalls it got, rendering it useless. Even on my main personal cell phone I'll go through periods of several calls a week. I liked it better when there were real people on the other end you could fuck with rather than just robots.
...but where is the number or signal for Anonymous? I think I have a small job for them. See article. :)
and let them know.
The cost of setting up a line and the equipment is extremely low now. I think that more will mushroom up when others are culled. Hail hydra.
Silence is a state of mime.
For years they have basically thrown their hands in the air and declared the robo-calling problem unsolvable. They even pathetically tried to crowd-source a solution. And here we learn that there are a small number of perpetrators behind the majority of the calls. No doubt the FTC will do nothing with this information.
I get as many as six robo calls a day. When I used to answer the calls just to waste their time the majority of the operators spoke American english so were clearly operating in the jurisdiction of US law.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Do people actually do this? Pick up the phone if they don't know who is calling them?
Also, nice subtle astroturf for Blackhat hipsterism.
We have the technology. Predator drones, heavily armed.
Take out the call centers and more importantly, take out the people who are behind these operations.
I have stated this before... this would be a far more useful application of the technology than how it is currently used.
Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.
Rachel from Cardholder Services advertises on Craigslist in Orlando. How difficult is it to just use their services (I know they're calling people at the FTC) and track them down? Use existing laws to put them out of business. There are plenty of options for those willing to do the minimal amount of work.
Do you have ESP?
I suppose making a law against it, and arresting them isn't a solution?
If the RICO Act applied to robocallers then there wouldn't be any of this shit.
It should be illegal to robocall anyone unless they've paid for an unbundled service from the company that is paying for the robocalling.
No more calls from Free Windows Rewards iPhone Vacation Loans.
Use any fines collected to create public service announcements and ads that state that all those calls are scams. And when asked by my senior members of my family, I state that all telemarketing calls are scams - I don't care who they say they are. If they have something important and worth saying, they can send you a letter.
The telemarketing industry just needs to die.
Headline is silly. Of course it is stoppable, we just aren't willing to do what it takes.
Robocallers always want something which means that the source is traceable. Just go there and destroy everything/kill everyone. (That is, not only the robocall center but the one who hired them.) After a while robocalling stops.
Or if that feels a bit excessive, find some middle ground that is sufficient to stop robocallers.
People seem to not realize how far you can go if you really want something done.
It's a bit like the whole ISIS situation. If EU really want them stopped they have the capacity for a standing army of 20 million (4% of the population is historically the size of standing army of a country at war.)
The problem is that just moving an army of that size to Syria will lead to more deaths than terrorism causes so it's not really worth it. It is a lot cheaper and costs less lives to just let ISIS fool around at their current pace and hope that they turn on themselves in a couple of decades.
Why can not the Goverments of this world act in a way to stop this calling once and for all.
It's a simple process of making it illegal to cold call anyone and any company get caught will have the following punishmnets.
1) The actual caller is imprisoned for 1 year
2) All the directors of the cold calling firm are imprisoned for 3 years and finned $1,000,000 each
3) All the directors of the origitaing company (ie those who instructed the cold calling company) are imprisoned for 5 years and finned $1,000,000 each
4) After all the directors come to the end of their jail term they then have to pay the fine fully else they stay in prison until the fine is paid in full.
This will stop 99% of all calls, there will be some who will try it though, then I suggest 50 years of prison. Lets see them smile now
Freeze their assets until they release the billing information to the state AGs. That'll untie their hands really quick.
https://www.nomorobo.com// I've used it for a year or two and almost never get spam calls. It's free.
No, the government should not interfere in the telemarketing industry.
Free market theory tells us that bad actors will go out of business on their own because people will refuse to purchase the services they are selling.
So there is no need for the government to interfere. The problem will solve itself.
Anything can be stopped with enough effort. This includes online piracy, pornography, etc as well. With enough will, there are technological solutions. People think that the Internet and voip will stay the way it is now. It won't: eventually there will be full control over what you can transmit and receive over the Internet. People will scoff and say "this will never happen", but they are shortsighted. It will. There is enough money at stake.
The fact that the Internet was the "Wild West" is just because the Internet was ignored for a long time by the powers-that-be. My feeling is eventually you won't be able to connect to the Internet without an "approved" network connection device/router and that device will be monitored and encrypted traffic will be either disallowed or the router will do MITM to allow the monitoring to take place. This is all technologically possible today. Secure boot, locked down devices are just the start.
"Surely you can't be serious!", Slashdotters will say! Well I say "Stop calling me Shirley!"
The FCC and FTC need to be going after the telecoms selling the phone numbers and trunks to them instead. I know CenturyLink is infamous for that, leasing numbers and trunks to them up in Portland with little or no regard for national security or respect for the law. Only then being an accessory to the crime by shielding their identity information from the law.
Yeah, the ILEC's and CLEC's need to be held accountable for that.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
We have a robust technical solution coming. The standards for this solution are nearly done, and some implementations are doing early testing. The fix involves digitally signing the signaling with a credential issued when a telephone number is delegated. The service provider can sign, or the enterprise/device can sign but the signature will only be valid if the calling party number is in the scope of the credential. The signature can be checked anywhere along the call path. The standards work started in the IETF (google ietf stir), and further work will be completed in ATIS and other organizations. The major carriers are on board, as everyone agrees that if deployed, this will stop spoofing of telephone numbers and lead the authorities to any illegal robocaller, "swatting" (spoofed emergency call intended to fool the police into a major response), and other nasties.
I've had to cancel a phone number over the sheer number of robocalls it got, rendering it useless.
I don't get a lot of calls but I do get some and my basic policy is that if the number isn't in my address book or I'm not expecting a call from a particular party it goes straight to voicemail because I won't pick up. I have a voicemail service that lets me block callers (they get a number not in service message), require them to enter a phone number if they block the caller id, and the service also helps flag robocalls, spammers, etc. It also transcribes the voicemails so I don't actually have to listen to them unless I want to.
One other thing I do is I have a forwarding number (like Google Voice) that I give to people instead of my direct cell number. That accomplishes two things. 1) I can weed out calls easier and 2) If I ever need to change cell phones or can't be reached on my cell phone for some reason I can redirect it to a different phone very easily or even have it ring several of them at once.
Of course it is stoppable. I mean, how are these companies getting their phone numbers from which they operate? Why are companies like AT&T selling blocks of phone numbers to people for next to nothing? The phone companies are responsible for this mess and nobody is taking them to task for it.
Proverbs 21:19
The NSA can tap every phone in the country, but they can't find Rachel from cardholder services. The sad truth is these creatures prey on the elderly, and people who may not have the sophistication to deal with these solicitors. So it is far from harmless or victimless, and sometimes with little recourse. Now that may sound like small potatoes. But thousands of calls are placed, and they only have to be right a small percentage of this to make money and to ruin lives. The common carriers like them because of the revenue stream. I'm sure they have the capability to stop them, but that is not in there best interest to do so as they are making money as well. The FTC provides lip service they are out to get them, but I'm sure the lobbying efforts keep them from doing anything. So you can bet the carriers and the telemarketing industry are lobbying hard to keep the status quo. I think to myself that I'm to smart to fall for these scams, but now that I'm older I keep thinking someday I might not have as good of faculties and fall for something that could wipe me out financially. It does happen.
You fucking ignorant neckbeards
Fix it yourself. You can use this:
sed 's/actors/actresses/g'
Use existing laws to put them out of business
Can't we break out the pitchforks and torches for this? Literally?
Come on, don't let Trump use his deep pockets to corner the angry mob market!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The robocall problem will never be addressed until there is bulletproof traceback for all calls. Anyone with the know-how can falsify caller-id and even ANI. Even phone carriers can't identify the actual source of many robocalls coming into their network; all they know is the upstream hop. The national phone system trust system is broken and it is going to have to be updated so the carriers can ID the source of any call they carry. Then, and only then, you can blackhole them.
It's amazing the terrorists haven't adopted some of the tricks the telemarketers use to mask the source of their calls.
Just do this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Seems like requiring that the number advertized is traceable to a responsible party would be an obvious solution.
Or provide an ability to trace to last call back as far as you can.
The end of the chain is responsible for the call violating the do not call list.
If a service provider does not wish to provide next hop tracing to get closer to the originating party, they are left holding the bag for the violation.
.
Currently, we cannot find the robo-callers because we allow them to hide. Why is that so? Why do we make it easy for them to hide?
GREAT - now how can I stop all the "I'm calling from Microsoft about some errors on your computer" scammer calls? I want to reach through the phone and strangle them all....
AT&T makes me pay for a phone line to my home that I don't use. It gets tons of political calls, I plan on forwarding that number to the FTCs main switchboard and see if they notice. If that doesn't work I'm going to start forwarding it to some other politician until they get the point. If I wanted to hear from Trump or Clinton or any other robocaller, I would call them. They don't need to call me. Robocalling is pointless and just makes me hate them both even more.
1) require the telecom infrastructure to flag calls
a) has no call back number
b) has incorrect call back number
c) has correct call back number
2) configure phones to treat calls differently depending on their category.
IE. a) no call back number goes to voice mail
b) incorrect call back number, drop the call
c) has correct call back number and is recognized, let it ring, else send it to voice mail
If we've narrowed it down to 40 call centers it'd be child's play to put a stop to this. When you cut all that "Bureaucratic Waste" you've got no money for enforcement. The Drug War gets a pass because private prisons lobby for dollars since locking up non-violent offenders is the only way they're profitable.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I see comments RE the FTC. There is a good chance the call centers are not in the US, and therefor NOT subject to US law. Ah the fun of the borderless internet
Of course, the US really could solve it, and 100 years ago, countries that had citizens of other countries violating their wars did regularly
38 JDAMs would solve the problem, and send a warning at the same time
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys...
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
If a customer is found to be robocalling simply cut their phone lines, if a phone company won't cut the lines of a customer engaged in robocalling then cut the phone companies main lines. Scams, deceptive business practices and robocalling cost the economy hundreds of millions of dollars per year. We will knock websites off the internet for hosting a few movies/songs because otherwise a few executives can't buy their diamond encrusted cell phones but we won't knock robocall "businesses" off the phone system for daily harassment of tens of millions of people?
They don't want to fix the problem as that would remove paying customers (the premium paying scammers).
Phone companies could implement a number to call each time you get a scam call.
When a number gets a certain percentage of these complaints, it is cut off until the owner proves he is not a scammer.
This would cost the phone companies approximately zero other than the lost profits from the scammers.
One answer for now is to NEVER answer your phone (until you hear someone leaving you a message). These scammers NEVER leave a call back message because that is a number that can be complained about.
Literally somebody asked me to help "his guy" set up his robocalling for his company. "his guy" called me and it was a tweak-a-thon. He said he hadn't slept in like 4 days.
Anybody using robocalling should be boycotted. They have bad judgement.
sometimes violence is the answer. Find out who is responsible. kill them. make it known to the world what happened. robo calls will stop.
Instead of standing straight like the oak and breaking. Don't try to block these calls, deflect them past yourself. i.e. Instead of blocking calls from known-robocall caller ID numbers, everyone just needs to set up a filter which automatically forwards them to the number for your Congressman or Senator.
The telcos in this issue remind me of Bofors, whose 40mm AA gun was nearly ubiquitous, used by both sides in WWII.
You can still count money over noise, no matter it be ack-ack or robodialers.
I was once in states and had a company given US phone. I got a robocall, but i just couldn't understand much, because the machine lady kept yapping like there's no tomorrow. All i can remember about it was "final notice". No idea what the "final notice" was related to. Atleast the phone worked while i was there. It was a very useless call.
Simply finding the call centers and shutting them down won't be enough because the people behind them will open a new center in a short time.
Once these people are found they need to be put up against the wall and shot, like Sanford Wallace should have had done him.
Once you make it known this criminal activity will be dealt with in such a manner others will take pause to reconsider. If not, they'll follow in the footsteps of those before them.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The phone companies are complicit because they allow untraceable calls and caller ID spoofing from arbitrary users with no registration scheme.
Make all calls traceable (not necessarily by the public).
Find out where the robocalls are coming from and send in the fucking guns!
After receiving a call from someone impersonating an IRS agent, I went to the FCC web site. There was a feature to chat with a live person (I think that feature is gone now).
I reported all the information about this caller, and stated that I wanted to press charges against him for falsely representing himself as an IRS agent (over what was likely a phone call that crossed state lines). The FCC employee was taken aback. Press charges? We don't do that.
I said, I thought the FCC is responsible for enforcing certain laws, and aren't you obligated to take some sort of action when a victim wishes to press charges?
They didn't know, and they took no such action.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If it were a national security issue, no one would be allowed to spoof a return number of have an anonymous number. Look how the Feds want to make sure everyone uses their real identity on the internet, but they don't seem to give a damn about the telephone network.
And the RIAA and MPAA want to be able to trace and sue every john doe by the IP#, but they also don't give a damn about the telephone network.
So it seems that, in a world of TCP/IP, dial-up is the frontier of the hacking world because companies and governments don't care about it. Hrrrrmmmm.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Just count the responses right here that already spelled out the solution by blocking and white listing. Why is anybody even discussing this anymore??
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Just count the responses right here that already spelled out the solution by blocking and white listing. Why is anybody even discussing this anymore??
Because white listing doesn't work when you don't know the number from which someone is calling you, even if it a legitimate call.
Because black listing doesn't work because the spammers are spoofing their CallerID to be any number they want.
Can't Big Blue, Amazon Alexa, Siri, or others provide a service that can be configured to answer your phone, detect a robo call, and keep the caller engaged in conversation as long as possible? We need a Liza upgrade.
Because white listing doesn't work when you don't know the number from which someone is calling you...
Well, previous arrangements just need to be made then. But yes, caller ID spoofing is a problem that shouldn't exist, so focus on that instead of all the bullshit punitive laws that aren't working and never will.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This. Why/how the phone companies continue to get away with allowing callers to do this boggles my mind.
>> I thought the FCC is responsible for enforcing certain laws, and aren't you obligated to take some sort of action when a victim wishes to press charges?
Government services (including the Police) are there to protect the government and their interests, not the people.
My pipe dream, assuming I ever get around to doing it:
Open-source PBX software running on an AWS or Azure instance, or some such.
Calls from my extensive whitelist, which automatically includes every number I call, ring straight through.
Most others go to a message like this: "Hello?" repeated a few times until voice is heard. When the voice stops, "Who may I say is calling?" Wait until voice stops, then "This is an answering service, do you wish to leave any other message?" The point of all this being to try to get an agent to the phone for the usual predictive dialing, or at least get some information about the caller, without being too grossly annoying to legitimate callers that don't happen to be on the whitelist yet.
The special list. The very special list. This one, as much AI as can be cheaply (i.e. free as in beer) brought to bear on the problem of sounding just like a real person, maybe a bit gullible, and interested in the product, but just ... not ... quite ... convinced to say "Yes". Try to get robots to alert human agents "We've got a live one!" and waste the absolute maximum possible amount of their time that technology can accomplish.
I thought that would be obvious. It's because we reelect their puppets that *bring home the bacon* time after time.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... that you're not helping? The phone company in the mean time is laughing all the way to the bank.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
https://www.nomorobo.com/ I'm a satisfied user. There's no charge for landlines. Yes I have a landline. It's worked great for me. Even some charities I do actually contribute to can't get through to me because of it. I get multiple robocalls a day and this gets them all. It's been months since the last one got through. Note that they don't support all carriers, but if you have VOIP through somebody (I have AT&T's Uverse) there's a good chance they can fix your problem. As I don't pay for their non-free mobile service I can't comment on that, but the free service on landlines is great.
It won't stop for the same reason the USPS insists on delivering gargantuan quantities of junk mail: As a much needed service to its customers. LOL jk it's money.
Press charges? You've been watching too many movies.
The FTC isn't the correct agency to contact about people impersonating IRS agents. Try the IRS. And, no, they aren't required to take some sort of action either when "a victim wishes to press charges".
So there is a practical application for nuclear weapons after all!
I can guarantee you that 90% of those fewer than 40 call centers are owned by Level 3 or a subsidiary of Level 3. Every number I've traced (I love the ones that start with my area code then the first digit is a 1) has come from Level 3 or a Level 3 subsidiary. I've notified them multiple times of this shit, and they refuse to do nothing.
Shut Level 3 down and hit them with criminal charges, and I guarantee you most of this will stop immediately.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I still don't see why the FTC or FCC couldn't just require phone companies to verify traceable caller id.
Let's say I'm connected to "Joe's cut rate phone company and linoleum outlet". Joe will either override my outgoing caller id or not let me connect unless I send the correct one. Since all Joe's customers are the same, I know they are who they say they are and I can implement a block list. Whatever other phone companies route calls into Joe will need to assume liability for the accuracy of those caller ifs or Joe won't accept them. Eventually well have a web of caller id liability such that everyone is who they say they are and I can create a meaningful block list.
If the statement,
-- "It's not as if there are thousands of people out there doing this. If you can catch this small number of bad actors we can stop the problem" --
is correct, then the simplest solution would be to track them down and kill them.
Yes, it's harsh, but it's also a perfect warning to the next generation of "bad actors". Do it now while their numbers are small. You robocall, you die.
I bought a box off Amazon for $25. It goes between the phone line and the phone. I can whitelist and blacklist numbers. When a number that isn't on the whitelist calls, they get a message saying to remove me from their telemarketer list or if they're someone I know to press '2' to put their call through. I can then whitelist anyone who asked to bypass. After 2 weeks, pretty much everyone I knew was whitelisted.
Kills robocallers dead, as they don't have ears and can't press 2.
Kills most telemarketers who are live calling. I've had two try to ring through. I just press the blacklist button, it hangs up for them and if they call again they get hung up on immediately. They get one ring and then click -dialtone-.
Other than those 2, my phone hasn't rung once from someone I don't know. Only the guy repairing my vacuum cleaner got confused about 'press 2', but he's not the brightest bulb in the factory.
> Aude Marzuoli, research scientist at a company called Pindrop Labs, told Ars. "It's not as if there are thousands of people out there doing this. If you can catch this small number of bad actors we can" stop the problem."
In other news, the FBI has announced the end of organized crime by finally capturing Whitey Bulger.
Hint: spam doesn't have to be profitable, or effective. It only has to *appear* so, to people willing to invest in the business, to continue. Arresting the kingpins does not help when the spammers, themselves, are offshore or cleverly concealed by the complete incompetence of law enforcement and the unwillingness of Congress to risk their contributions form businesses that spam for non-obviously-fraudulent purposes, like their advertising campaigns, charities, and their campaign contributors.
FWIW, we bought a device for $57 which requires callers to press 0 to be connected (at which point you can accept or reject) and have received only ONE telemarketing call in two weeks. That jerk wanted to remind me that we'd been discussing gold purchases a few months ago and just wanted to check back. Our friends and legit callers are accepted and don't have to press 0 any more and robocallers are stopped immediately. We used to get ~6 telemarketing calls/day. Money well spent.
I have a way to stop all robocallers and scammers. Not one single Robocaller can get through my phone. I use Magicjack and Magicfeatures plugin and use priority callers only. If them callers are not in my contact list then they don't get to even ring my phone. It automatically hangs them up. I add necessary phone numbers into the contact list priority call list if I know they need to call me like a Pharmacy or Doctors office or friends and family. I notice on my computer screen many many scammers trying to call but cannot ever get through since they are not in my contact list. Its easy to get doctors to give you the number they use to call you so you can add them in the priority call list so they can get through. This way Robocallers are stopped in their tracks. Magicfeatures plugin cost me 19.95. It just works.
"The FCC employee was taken aback. Press charges? We don't do that."
They don't have the power to do that.
The IRS does - and they will. Your call after notifying the FCC/FTC should have been to the local branch.
https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsro...
https://www.treasury.gov/tigta...
Whitelisting is the logical endgame. Except it doesn't work.
Scammers have been grabbing phone addressbooks for a long time and sending messages/making calls to those addressbooks using the number of the victim phone (or simply hijacking the phone to send messages/calls without the owner knowing)
It's the same problem as spoofed email, where spammers have been pulling the same trick for over a decade.
Yeah, and then what happens to their kids? Are YOU going to take care of them? didn't think so. Great plan.
Wow. I honestly can't tell if this is intended to be irony or serious.
Nobody thinks about the kids, do they? No. they just want to slam the parents into the jail cells. Nice. Real nice.
So, that answers the question: you actually were serious.
What you just said is that we shouldn't put criminals in jail because they might have children.
OK. Having children ought to be a get-out-of-jail-free card. Got it.