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Phone Companies Get New Tools To Block Spam Calls (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Phone companies will have greater authority to block questionable calls from reaching customers as regulators adopted new rules to combat automated messages known as robocalls. Rules adopted Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission represent the latest tools against "robocalls," which pester consumers, sometimes multiple times each day, and often push scams. Phone companies can already block some calls that trick consumers by showing up on Caller ID with fake numbers. The new rules make clear that they can block additional calls that are likely scams, such as numbers that start with a 911 area code, or one that isn't currently assigned to anyone.
I get many of those, and I know not to answer them because I don't know anyone who has the same area code and prefix as my cell phone number.
Except that's not a political call, that's just fraud. Better news reports said the contact information was invalid, and there's no such person working for the claimed newspaper. It was simply someone trying to stir up opposition to the newspaper.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for this functionality. If you're using a thirdparty service to deliver messages for you and want the outbound callerid to show your customer service number instead of a random thirdparty number this functionality needs to exist. Similar if you are using a thirdparty service to host conference bridges but need it to appear as if it is an internal service to your business. Ultimately it is a feature that exists for legitimate businesses but can be abused by scammers.
I used to get these all the time, until I decided to play along once. I told the guy that I no longer owned the car in question, but if he would be interested in selling me warranty for my new car....a Bugatti Veyron SuperSport. He said "I can't find that in my system, is it Italian". I directed him to check it out on Google, and he hung up and never called back. Shame too, because I was hoping the extended warranty would cover the $30,000 tires.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
That's fine. The telephone company that bridges those calls to the public phone network should have a whitelist of allowed caller IDs, and if you need to add numbers specific to your business to that whitelist, you should have to provide a very narrow list of allowed numbers to that upstream provider, and a real, live person should have to verify that those numbers really are yours before they allow them through. And it should cost $ to get each new number whitelisted.
Allowing anyone to provide any arbitrary number is complete and utter incompetence, and everyone scammed by these people probably have a legal right to file a very $$$$$$ contributory negligence suit against the scammer's upstream telecom provider for not blocking the fake caller IDs.
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I also Google all numbers not in my list. Never answer robocalls. That encourages them.
It's good to see the U.S. government acting as it should. About 15 years late, but better than never.
The article linked in the Slashdot summary has little information.
The FCC meets today to discuss the new rules: FCC Commission Meets Tomorrow; Will Address Robocall Blocking (Nov. 15, yesterday)
I found a PDF of the FCC's ideas about helping prevent robocalls at the November 2017 Open Commission Meeting -- Blocking Unlawful Robocalls (PDF).
The summary? Nothing has been done yet.