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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.
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.
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.
>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.
"...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.
...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.
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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.
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"
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.
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.
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?
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
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