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AT&T, Apple, Google To Work On 'Robocall' Crackdown (reuters.com)
Last month the FCC had pressed major U.S. phone companies to take immediate steps to develop technology that blocks unwanted automated calls available to consumers at no charge. It had demanded the concerned companies to come up with a "concrete, actionable" plan within 30 days. Well, the companies have complied. On Friday, 30 major technology companies announced they are joining the U.S. government to crack down on automated, pre-recorded telephone calls that regulators have labeled as "scourge." Reuters adds: AT&T, Alphabet, Apple, Verizon Communications and Comcast are among the members of the "Robocall Strike Force," which will work with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The strike force will report to the commission by Oct. 19 on "concrete plans to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions," said AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson, who is chairing the group. The group hopes to put in place Caller ID verification standards that would help block calls from spoofed phone numbers and to consider a "Do Not Originate" list that would block spoofers from impersonating specific phone numbers from governments, banks or others.
I just don't answer my phone when it does that noisy thing. It happens about once a month. It's never good news anyway, and if it's important I get a followup text or email anyway.
So the "concrete, actionable plan" delivered TODAY within the 30 day timeframe of the request 30 days ago is that in another 60 days a plan will be delivered?
Encouraging that all these big names are helping in this, but I'll believe it when I see/hear it.
Seriously, they will only prevent spoofing from "important" numbers? That's open to all kinds of abuse. How many people know their bank's number? This plan will make the problem even worse and eventually they will ask for federal funds to "manage" the problem.
Is it difficult to come up with a better plan? Actually yes. Yes when you don't care about helping people. This can be ended quite easily, blacklist numbers that receive a large ratio of complaints to calls. Make it possible to rate received calls. Also, prevent spoofing from all numbers, not just specific ones. Wow this plan didn't take me 30 days to come up with, it took me 30 seconds.
They've been working with us to expand our robocalling since it is so profitable for them. We just added two new PRI lines and budgeted over six figures more per month for long distance calling with them. They love robocallers and are working hard to sell them services.
If a number is not in the list contact list, have the caller answer a question before they can have it ring the phone. Maybe it is a personal question or access code, or maybe it is a basic question. For instance what color is grass when it is dead? 1 green, 2 blue, 3 yellow, 4 brown.
There are some good call blockers on the market. Use one that allows you to route incoming calls to different pre-recorded messages and especially those without caller id.
Gee, I wonder if political robocalls will continue to be exempt like they are now. Funny how that works, huh?
The group hopes to put in place Caller ID verification standards that would help block calls from spoofed phone numbers and to consider a "Do Not Originate" list that would block spoofers from impersonating specific phone numbers from governments, banks or others.
This is totally the wrong approach. It is why, for example, antivirus products tend to not work all that well. Instead, the phone company should not be able to legally allow phone number spoofing unless and until the entity that wants to spoof proves to the phone company that they or another legal entity they control is the legal owner of the number which will be displayed. I'm sure it will still be abused because people are sort of relentless in their desire to game the system, but it would be orders of magnitude better than what we have now.
Instead of wasting all sorts of money and time fighting terrorists, we convince the terrorists that the robocallers are out to destroy Islam.
Then we had all the robocallers the Islamic phone numbers.
Eventually the problem will settle itself.
>Random phonecall/email/etc... arrives >Whitelist says "You're not on the list. Credentials?" >Tries to bypass whitelist with phoney password. Every attempt gets a delayed response for security. Gets booted , nulled, or honey-potted after a few tries. >Recipient remains undisturbed. Nothing of value lost. But of course they would NEVER do this since they make money for looking the other way as this problem persists. Therefore it must be implemented at the enduser level. That way, it'd make no difference what the "service" providers do or don't do.
I get a multitude of calls from supposed charities, etc., all with a live person there to beg for my money.
"...joining the U.S. government". That's a hoot..
Most of these bulk calls this time of year of from my local Congress-critter. Making sure I know to vote for his/her team. Politicians have a way of putting blinders on when it comes to there own bulls**t.
No, can't have those political calls blocked - them's important.
Or any of the other ILEC and CLEC telecoms for that matter...
IMO, they know their cash cows are about to get shot, so they don't want to be near them when it does.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
For the first offense, shoot the person responsible for the call.
For the second offense, use a silver bullet.
...The group hopes to put in place Caller ID verification standards that would help block calls from spoofed phone numbers and to consider a "Do Not Originate" list that would block spoofers from impersonating specific phone numbers from governments, banks or others....
I'm happy that the original focus is more on the source than the destination.
.
What I would also like to see is something along the lines of... tracking the robocalls back to their origination networks and creating a blacklist of the resulting bad actor networks.
Some entity is allowing these calls into the public telephone network.
The entryways to our public phone networks obviously need to be more secure than they currently appear to be.
I equate telemarketing to spam. I also equate door-to-door salesman as spam. They disrupt whatever I'm doing to focus my time and attention on them (usually scams) instead of something more important in my daily routine. Until telephony receives the same user controls that email has then we'll continue to receive verbal spam through the phone. I like the idea of giving your friends and family access codes. Perhaps a pin that can be pre-programmed in their phone (new compatible home phones and cellular phones required). An access pin would do a world of good. You should also be able to change your mind and reject pin access to a specific phone number easily (drama, ex-lovers, companies you no longer have products for, etc..). That way you don't have to change your pin whenever one person gets through that you do not want to. A web interface on your phone company website would be nice but it should be something that can be done only from the phone itself without needing a masters in information technology. It should be easy enough for grandma to do. Something with yes/no prompts.
Currently if someone calls me from a number I don't recognize I let it go to voicemail. If it's something important from someone I know they will leave me a voicemail. This has a poor side effect of filling my voicemail with things that waste my time. Basically we're all just tired of having our time wasted when we could be doing something more productive... such as ANYTHING else.
With modern phones, you can identify who is calling - unless they explicitly refuse to identify themselves, in which case there is no reason to pick it up. In fact, I have very few reasons to pick up any calls at home - I just let them go to my voicemail, to deal with them at my own leisure later on. I do not need Apple, Google and AT&T for this.
Why doesn't the FCC just go after Rachel? It cannot be that difficult to track down who's behind it (hint: they advertise on craigslist in Orlando) and sue them into oblivion. I cannot fathom why this hasn't happened yet.
Do you have ESP?
If you get one of these calls, just have a system where you dial a * code (e.g. *66) and it gets flagged. More than 100 (or larger number), per day flagged from your billing info and the callers line is blocked at the source and you have to explain why it should ever be re-enabled. This would include the business and bank/payment method so these callers would have to keep creating and opening billing accounts which is not trivial.
Simple, easy and most people can easily understand a simple add or flyer with "if you receive an unwanted call, just hit *66 after you hang up"
The PLAN A they are trying sounds hopeful.
If this does not work out, then here's a PLAN B which will likely work better.
Make the fee for mass/robocalling a do not call number $500.
Whenever you get a robocall provide a code to key into your phone.
Doing so gives the called party $500 from your phone company.
If the phone company wishes, they can collect the money from the robocaller or maybe his service provider, or just decide to not forward the calls.
Put this sequence of tones at the start of your voicemail.
The automatic dialing hardware will mark your number as out of service in their database.
>AT&T, Alphabet, Apple, Verizon Communications and Comcast are among the members of the "Robocall Strike Force,"
You are so fucking gay FBI. Alphabet too eh? Really took over the alphabet now spies.
wiretapper, google spies, fbi homo spy route into china, and asshole monopoly that cooperate with anything fed...
are a fucking "robocall strike force" now.
I don't wanna grow up, I'm a toys'r'us kid. [singing]
This plan is obviously the least effective plan the telcos could present yet still have words on a page. The obvious need is to have the telcos identify the billed parties that produce these calls and with government oversight remove access to the phone system. It would be nice to think that the FCC would reject this plan and ask for something substantive. The FFC does not really enforce the existing laws so they will likely parade this window dressing as evidence that they are doing something rather than just parasitizing society by enjoying a corrupt position. I'm still going with a PBX at home as I have no confidence in this plan and no confidence in the actors involved.
Stop accepting any calls routed from unknown phone companies. It will stop 99% of them that are simply a freaking PC that is making VOIP calls via a scumbag VOIP service provider that will let them send whatever CID information they want.
Call coming into AT&T from a unknown and untrusted call routing? Refuse it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Google is trying to crack down, seriously. They are one of the number one robocalls I get. I am constantly getting robocalls from Google about updating my business profile. If Google wants to help with the crackdown, maybe they could just quit with all the BS calls themselves.
Too bad it won't apply to political action calls.
I guess I misunderstood TFA. Didn't FTC hold a $50,000 challenge in 2013 and award a prize?
I immediately attempted to set this up at my house but of course ATT didn't implement the third party ring feature which is the central requirement. Funny thing...
Oh well. We have an answering machine, anyone who calls is welcome to use it. All the phones have their ringers off. We get about 20 calls a day, and about 2 messages a week. I wonder who all the other calls are from?
...Make this a societal norm:
8 Simple Rules For NOT Dialing My Number:
1. If you're selling something, don't call me. Period. If I want something, I'll call you.
2. If you're a politician or a pollster, don't call me. Period. We know why politicians carved out a specific loophole for themselves and we're not happy about it. This is our response to their self-serving shenanigans.
3. If I don't recognize your number you're going to voice mail. Get over it and leave a message.
4. If Caller ID is blocked, missing, or obviously spoofed you're going to voice mail. Get over that, too, and leave a message.
5. Every carrier should have the ability and facility in this day and age to "Back Bill" any call, anywhere. If a "boiler room," or even my own mother, calls me I should be able to dial "*BACB" (or something similar) and charge them some nominal amount (say 35 cents) for the call to the device that I'm paying the bill for if I don't want them contacting me. This system is difficult to abuse and terrifying to call center operators.
6. Spoofing Caller ID information should be considered Wire Fraud and therefore illegal.
7. I'm paying for my air time on my cellular phone even when you call me, that makes it trespassing if I don't want you there and I should be able to prosecute you if you become a nuisance.
8. Unsolicited Text Messages are no different from Unsolicited Voice Calls and therefore no exception to the above rules.
9. Bonus Rule: Wireless carriers should enact voluntary number blocking/filtering systems with no arbitrary limits (like, say, MORE than 5 numbers, Verizon Wireless) with Opt-IN policies (NOT Opt-OUT) for scam services like Premium Text Messages.
Since the government and business sectors seem to have decided that the rights of marketers (and marketing, in general) trump all other rights in our daily lives the Public Switched Telephone Network has become a cesspool of scams, shams, and bogus contacts. If the general public would curb its curiosity and *not* answer random phone calls, instead making them go to voice mail, we could cut the problem down drastically. Trust your personal list of contacts and nothing else. Vet new contacts by making them leave voicemail. If they can't leave voicemail then it must not have been very important. Use WhatsApp, Signal, or Wire for private conversations where you can.
In Aus we were getting regular robo calls at election time,
disregarding the do not call register which is a government body,
Australian Media and Communications Authority (the ACMA)
https://www.donotcall.gov.au/
Go well
Robocalling scum do not deserve the legal system where they can use their ill gotten gains to lawyer a settlement. Fuck these people who think it's ok to harass tens of thousands of others, some of whom have to answer their phones, just to sell their illegal bullshit products. I would gladly bear witness (and pack a picnic lunch) to a public hanging of the masterminds behind some of these operations. Though, truthfully, hanging is too good for them.
Why can't we just put these guys in the slammer? With the amount of robo-shit I've gotten over the years, I'd love to see these assholes get 10 years in the can.
The most simple solution to the problem. At the carrier level, do not allow calls where the caller ID does not match the ANI of the originating call. ANI is different from caller ID and is what 911 uses to know your location, even if you block your caller ID. This will outright stop many of them, but some will persist with a much more limited scope of numbers they can spoof. Currently, they can spoof any number on the caller ID. If it must match ANI then it limits them severely and makes it much easier to establish a working blacklist. You cannot have a working blacklist if any phone number can be used in spoofing. Finally, there are legitimate reasons why caller ID might need to be different from ANI. One reason would be if you have a main ring down telephone number for your company and you want your outbound caller ID to point to that number even though the call is coming from a different ANI. Put in a process that allows this, but must be verified pretty extensively much like what goes into getting a decent security certificate.
Problem solved.
My iPhone recently started getting annoying telemarketing calls from random fake phone numbers, so call blocking wasn't a solution. Some of the fake numbers were missing the last digit so they couldn't even be blocked.
My two part solution was to enable do no disturb, allowing only contacts to ring through. Then I subscribed to YouMail (free service) to handle the voicemail. YM allows blacklisting with custom messages. I blacklisted a couple of the numbers that called every day and set the message to a fake 3 tone "this number is out of service" message followed by a hang-up. The calls started getting less frequent and after a couple of weeks, all of the calls stopped. I was able to take the phone off of DND.
Neither one have a very high adoption rate among people younger than 30.
I use call and text whitelisting on my mobile, works pretty well. If I don't have business with a person or entity, I don't want them calling me - period. I want that person or entity to suffer legal consequences for calling me about timeshares horseshit or to tell me about politician shitbag #54025825 or beg me to donate money to a police charity.
I don't even want entities I have business with to be allowed to call me for bullshit reasons. My ISP liked to do this to tell me about new packages or other shit - call whitelisting put a stop to this really fast.
Simply make the penalty for robocalling people on the Do Not Call list the following:
1) Arrest the person(s) responsible. Include the business owners, people operating the equipment, people making calls. Everyone involved.
2) Every one of those people get drawn and quartered on live television.
3) After the act is performed, set the remains alight.
4) Pour acid on the remains.
5) Flush it all down the sewer.
Wanna bet that after you do this the first time, you don't have anyone considering it as a valid way to make money any longer?
Tell all the fools that whine about it being barbaric that they're not getting any telemarketing calls 16x a day from some fake number, and I bet they stop whining pretty fast.
See https://www.niksun.com/product... with their "Phone Sweep". The device is the best war dialer in the business, "designed for security audits!!", and it collects lists of real voice lines on ranges of phone numbers faster than any other tool in the business. It's main purchasers are, of course, sphone spammers, though the original developers at Sandstorm Enterprises refused to admit that war dialing for spammers was their primary market.
Sandstorm was a fascinating company. Their other big product was "NetIntercept", which Niksun also sells, and its main use is unweaving all simultaneous TCP connections in a network and writing them *all* to disk. It's also *really good* doing SSL, and SSH, man-in-the-middle attacks. Guess who buys those through shell companies and gets them shipped overseas for the Great Firewall of China?
I've read that robocalls cannot be made explicitly illegal because they are protected as free speech, like junk mail.
But that's a bad comparison. Here are some details that might have been overlooked.
1. Fee speech is protected in public spaces and forums like newspapers, etc. and the government operated postal service (you don't get junk mail from UPS or Fedex). My phone is not a public space. A better analogy than a mailbox would be to treat my phone like the front door to my house. It is the front door to my life actually.
2. Door-to-door sales people and church solicitors often knock on my door. I have a nifty tool called a peephole that allows me to determine whether I want to open the door or not.
3. If I put up a fence around my property, they cannot get to my front door without committing the crime of trespassing. Free speech does not protect someone in putting up a loudspeaker in front of my house to broadcast a recorded sales pitch. My phone should fall into that same category. It is harassment, not free speech to have these robots call me day after day after day.
Now, consider this. In a world where automated robots cruise the streets knocking on people's doors and offering to sell them things, as often as two or three times per day, each and every day, (as often as I get calls from robo-callers), how long would this stand before it becomes regulated? How long before enterprising entrepreneurs start offering home defense tools to make the robots go away? How long before we all start putting up fences? I want a fence around my phone.
What we need is not a disingenuous technological solution from a phone company with a conflicted interest. Simply make it illegal to make pre-recorded phone calls that are not pre-approved by the recipient. Make it illegal to obfuscate the caller-ID system and make text-based caller ID mandatory for anything commercial. The technology is already there and this serves the same purpose as the peep hole on my front door. Notice I didn't use the word "spoof". We don't care what the method is, we care what the intention is. If they intend to confuse or deceive us into thinking it's not a pre-recorded call, that's illegal, regardless of the technicalities.
Free speech is still intact because a human can still make the call, just as a human can knock on my door to try and sell me pest control services or soul-saving sermons. But humans are expensive and this will be self limiting. Pre-approved messages, such as appointment reminders for existing appointments (as with a doctor) are exempted from the ban.
With caller-ID and unapproved prerecorded messages laws on the books, with hefty fines for each infraction, the calls will stop. Cell phone and other telephone system call logs are all that's needed to prove the crime. Phone companies already have these records, in abundance. Phone calls are easily traced, even after the fact.
Just make them illegal. There are already limitations to free speech. Extending your commercial messages into my private space should be one of them. Just imagine how you'd feel if every window in your house became a TV commercial, because you know, it's not impossible to project an image from across town onto your windows. Is that free speech? Perhaps, but it's also an intrusion into my personal, private space. A phone is my personal, private space. Free speech does not apply there.
Didn't Nomorobo already solve most of this problem?
I use it for free on my residential numbers.
There is a charge for non-residential phones.
Stops 98%of all robocalls, even the ones with spoofed IDs.
ANI is expensive for a regular residential line. If it was made free, people would know the real number calling them. Give phones the option that if caller ID doesn't match ANI, the call goes to voicemail.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user