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

Re:Would love to see something done

[lawaetf1]

Several calls a week? I'm envious. I get a minimum of several a day.
 
You know, murder is a crime because you rob someone of the remaining time they might have had on this planet. Robo callers steal the equivalent of lifetimes every single day and our useless FTC seems utterly incapable of doing a damned thing about it.

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.

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.

Re:Would love to see something done

[Albanach]

I still believe that regulators should require that, if a caller ID is to be presented, it should be traceable to an individual in the originating country (with the carrier responsible if it's not). A carrier should be able to warrant this to its interconnects - if it can't, that carrier's calls will all be presented with no caller ID.

Customers can then reject calls without caller ID or from other countries if necessary.,Where caller ID is presented it is then traceable to a person, enabling existing state rules about such calls to be enforced.

There is no good reason that I should be able to buy a VOIP account for a couple of dollars a month and spoof any caller ID.