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AT&T, Apple, Google To Work On 'Robocall' Crackdown (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the making-lives-peaceful dept.

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.

17 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Fuck It by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Fuck It by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      I use white-list only. If a phone number isn't in my contact list it goes straight to voicemail. There are lots of apps that you can use that will provide this service. Yeah, occasionally I miss a call from a new number that I wanted to take, but I can always call them back if they leave a message.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    2. Re:Fuck It by cob666 · · Score: 2

      I do pretty much the same thing. Any call coming in that isn't in my contact list goes directly to VM. My mobile provider has a nice VM to text service so I get to scan the text of the message and if it looks legit I'll either listen to the VM or call back. All spam numbers go into my blocked list. The number of spam or robo calls I get is pretty low now.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
  2. Is this so hard by backslashdot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Is this so hard by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

      The problem is VoIP. It is not a traditional phone system. There are hundreds of VoIP "carriers" who will eventually terminate a call in a traditional carrier's network (your cell or land line carrier).

      So, if, say AT&T, sees a high volume of short duration calls originating from carrier X... sure, they can shut down that carrier, but what if that carrier had legit customers as well? Not only that, carrier X is paying AT&T per minute rates for calls terminating on AT&T's network.

      yes, carrier X could shut down the customer... but they would only be shooting themselves in the foot because they would be giving up a good chunk of revenue. VoIP carriers are mostly small/medium sized businesses. In addition, short duration calls are more expensive than "conversational" calls (to recoup the cost) and carrier X knows that their high volume customer will just move to another VoIP carrier if they drop the customer.

      It's not like it used to be where a high volume call center would need to bring in a bunch of PRI circuits and sign a contract with that carrier. A VoIP operation can choose any carrier they want more or less on-the-fly. The only thing required is a residential-grade network connection. As a matter of fact, the high volume operator will likely have 10 or more different carriers set up with least cost routing in order to get the best rate for each call made. So if any one carrier shuts down or has a problem, the caller would not even know it unless they looked at the logs.

      Basically, the main issue is the ubiquity and low cost (almost zero, really) barrier to entry of VoIP calling. You just need to get yourself VICIdial (Linux-based, free call center software), A2Billing (Linux-based Asterisk billing/call routing software) and Zoiper (Free VoIP client software). Then buy some cheap USB headsets, low-end computers and a broadband Internet connection. Then make a couple deals with some VoIP carriers and you are in business. Total start up cost of less than a few thousand dollars (probably less). Added bonus that you can move your business anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat.

      There is a reason this hasn't been solved yet.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    2. Re:Is this so hard by amxcoder · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You don't need to prevent spoofing, and you don't even need a community black list. Implement this at the carrier and the problem will be done: 1) have service answer call, and make sure user is real and not a robocaller by asking them to press a specific (random) number key... 2) After completion of the previous step, ask the user to state their name. 3) after the completion of the previous steps, then ring the owners phone, and when they pick up, the service will tell them the phone number of the caller, along with a playback of the person's recorded name. 4) you have the option to dump/reject the caller, or allow them to connect. Once you allow the caller through, that person goes through without authentication next time they call (unless you remove them from you whitelist). Non whitelisted number can still get through if they are legit, and numbers that are spoofed still have to go through the process before they make your phone ring. This would kill almost all robocalls and still allow screening of non-robocall sales calls. Problem solved, just needs to be implemented for all phone line types.

    3. Re:Is this so hard by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      "but what if that carrier had legit customers as well"

      Fuck em. Honestly every time a VOiP provider is supplying a bulk connection for telemarketers there are almost NO "legit customers".

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Is this so hard by fuzznutz · · Score: 2

      It could also get legitimate numbers (collection agencies following the law) blacklisted wrongly because people don't like them...

      Follow the law? These parasites do NOT follow the law. I had one debt collector robocall my house every day for six months before I even knew who it was calling me. Then I spent another six months trying to convince them that the person they were looking for was not at my number. They had a SIMILAR name as my 13-year-old son. I finally had to threaten them with reporting them to the phone company for harassment and turning them into the state Attorney General's office for illegal debt collection practices to get them to quit. That finally got their attention.

      Year's later, I started getting debt collectors looking for my ex-wife that I had divorced seven years prior. I had a hard time getting them to stop too. And when I bought my son his first cell phone, for six months he was badgered by debt collectors looking for the previous owner of his number. That cost me real money as I was paying for his service by the minute at the time.

      I would be happy as a clam to see those unscrupulous cock smokers lose their ability to harass innocent people even if it meant they could no longer do their job. Debt collectors are waaaaayyy over the line separating legitimate collection and outright harassment and abuse. If they can't police themselves, I have no problem shutting them down with technology.

      /End Rant

  3. That's a load of bullshit from AT&T by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Recaptcha for Audio by xeoron · · Score: 2

    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.

  5. Spoofing should work by whitelist by El+Cubano · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Spoofing should work by whitelist by marvinglenn · · Score: 3, Informative

      The way the phone switching network works; often, the a phone company cannot tell that a call coming in on a trunk line (from another regional operator) that the caller ID data is spoofed. They need to fix that problem first.

      --
      The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
    2. Re:Spoofing should work by whitelist by El+Cubano · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Very true. However, this is one of the rare instances where there exists a solid and nearly complete technological solution (telecom is regulated and it would be entirely feasible to both fix the problem you describe and then implement the solution I described) to something that is social problem (people being deceptive and abusive over telecommunications media). If the problem doesn't get fixed then it is either because institutional inertia on the part of the telecom providers or because they think it would be more profitable to maintain the status quo.

    3. Re:Spoofing should work by whitelist by OhPlz · · Score: 2

      Poorly. Verizon used to give us pseudo-ANIs so they could bill for calls coming out of our telephony switches. They were "pseudo" in that there was no actual subscriber line that matched that ANI. Except there often was. Some poor SOB would end up with a bill for all our call traffic that used that pseudo-ANI that month, refuse to pay, then Verizon would kill the ANI and our switch would basically fall over dead since it couldn't send traffic out anymore. The best part is that we were providing carrier services for Verizon. It just kept happening over and over again. I saw variations of this with most of the major US regional-Bells. If you're running the right kind of equipment, you can supply whatever ANI you want.

    4. Re:Spoofing should work by whitelist by Ichijo · · Score: 2

      often, the a phone company cannot tell that a call coming in on a trunk line (from another regional operator) that the caller ID data is spoofed.

      That other regional operator can tell when the caller ID data is spoofed. They just need to stop allowing those calls to go through.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  6. Looks like a good start... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    ...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.

  7. Re:SIT Tones by OhPlz · · Score: 2

    No it won't, unless they're using seriously old equipment. Nobody does call-progress detection over the voice channel anymore because it's more expensive than reading the out-of-band signalling.