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."

Comments

Low cost

[wbr1]

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.

Of course it's not unstoppable

[Theaetetus]

Sure, they use caller ID spoofing so that we, the recipients, can't block the number, but you know who knows exactly who the spammers are? The phone company, for two reasons: first, they're routing the calls from end to end, so they know the real source rather than the spoofed one. Second, and more importantly, they're billing them for the calls. They're not sending out bills for thousands of calls to the spoofed IDs, but the real ones. And while individually, those calls are cheap, the tens of thousands a day add up and the phone company makes a lot of money from the spammers, all while telling the FCC and consumers that their hands are tied.

Freeze their assets until they release the billing information to the state AGs. That'll untie their hands really quick.

Re:Of course it's not unstoppable

[110010001000]

It isn't hard at all. You are missing the point. These voip calls aren't free. They are paying someone to make them, they are being billed by the phone companies. The phone companies know exactly who these people are.

Cut'em off at the root.

[TheHawke]

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.

The common carriers

[siamesevodka]

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.

There must be bulletproof source ID for calls

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Drones.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I say we dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:The problem is easy to fix

[Tailhook]

Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

They're underfunded. Just ask them. By the time our Federal LE's have analyzed all the consent decree paper work from racist police departments and processed all the refugee cases and sued enough states for voter ID laws and attended enough white privilege awareness seminars there is precious little time or budget left to pursue these criminals. Congress can outlaw whatever it wants but if the Republicans won't supply the billions upon billions needed to employ enough departments full of lawyers to pursue the robocall menace then what is the point?