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Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging (nytimes.com)
The volume of pesky robocalls -- and their scams -- have skyrocketed in recent years, reaching an estimated 3.4 billion in April. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.] From a report: In an age when cellphones have become extensions of our bodies, robocallers now follow people wherever they go, disrupting business meetings, church services and bedtime stories with their children. Though automated calls have long plagued consumers, the volume has skyrocketed in recent years, reaching an estimated 3.4 billion in April, according to YouMail, which collects and analyzes calls through its robocall blocking service. That's an increase of almost 900 million a month compared with a year ago. Federal lawmakers have noticed the surge. Both the House and Senate held hearings on the issue within the last two weeks, and each chamber has either passed or introduced legislation aimed at curbing abuses.
Federal regulators have also noticed, issuing new rules in November that give phone companies the authority to block certain robocalls. Law enforcement authorities have noticed, too. Just the other week, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, warned consumers about a scheme targeting people with Chinese last names, in which the caller purports to be from the Chinese Consulate and demands money. Since December, the New York Police Department said, 21 Chinese immigrants had lost a total of $2.5 million.
Federal regulators have also noticed, issuing new rules in November that give phone companies the authority to block certain robocalls. Law enforcement authorities have noticed, too. Just the other week, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, warned consumers about a scheme targeting people with Chinese last names, in which the caller purports to be from the Chinese Consulate and demands money. Since December, the New York Police Department said, 21 Chinese immigrants had lost a total of $2.5 million.
Telephone companies have the ability to track every call as to send them the phone bill. But they cannot block calls with fake caller IDs?
Either the Telephone companies just don't care their services are being actively used to scam people with a difficult to track back to them and lock them up and/or their infrastructure is grossly out of date.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The telephone industry has always been highly regulated, starting from the government-forced monopoly of AT&T, followed by the government-forced breakup of AT&T, and continuing with a large amount of regulations, including the Do Not Call Registry, which was more of my tax dollars well spent obviously.
Meanwhile, Google has effectively stopped SPAM email, at no cost to me.
The best way to deal with them it to cost them money. And the best way to do that is to keep them on the line as long as possible. Not only is that keeping them from moving on and scamming the next person but that's also time they're paying that person to talk to you. You should look into http://www.jollyrogertelco.com... They provide bots that will talk to the telemarketers for you and it can get pretty hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yes, the scams are surging. Some scammers are even calling in the middle of the night. But if you're waiting for the telcos (or the government) to fix this, you'll be waiting for a very, very long time. Caller ID is completely broken, and it will clearly never be fixed.
But robocalling can be tackled on the user end. Robocalling requires a delay of several seconds between you answering the phone and the call being routed to a live human at a call center. I've got an Obi110 on my home telephone, configured with a "Press 1 to continue" screening message. By the time the robocaller switches the call over, the scammer hears nothing but silence. And unless the "1" is pressed, the Obi110 will not ring my home phone. In three years, not one robocaller has made it past the Obi110.
Obviously you can't put an Obi110 on a cell phone. However, Apple and Google could build a call screening function into iOS and Android. Give users the ability to activate a "challenge before ringing" function, give them the ability to customize the challenge and the response (with whitelisting of numbers in the phone directory), and you'd seriously cripple the robocalling industry. With every phone having different challenges / responses, the only solution for the scammers will be for a human being to listen to every call, at least until someone comes up with an AI smart enough to answer any challenge.
It's not a perfect solution, but it's better to fight back than do nothing.
Here's a solution:
In order to transmit a caller id # which is different than the originating number, you must own that caller id number you are transmitting, or else have a signed delegation from the owner which you provide the phone company with.
Otherwise, if ANI number doesn't equal caller ID number, ANI number is substituted for caller ID number so that it's visible to recipients. Later, once the kinks of that are worked out, start outright blocking the call if ownership doesn't provably match.
Voip or other phone companies which violate the rules lose the ability to interconnect with those who enforce them.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Anyone else here old enough to remember this template? :-)
-=-=-
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ...
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
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