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Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer (wsj.com)
Sarah Krouse, reporting for WSJ: Caller ID is feeding one of the very problems it was developed to stop: junk calls. Illegitimate robocallers, or outfits that flood American landlines with marketing calls, use the decades-old identification system to make money, even when no one picks up. While scammers' biggest paydays come from tricking victims into handing over credit card or bank account information, many robocallers make incremental cash along the way, thanks to little-known databases that try to identify who is calling.
Each time a caller's name is displayed, phone companies pay small fees -- typically fractions of pennies -- to databases that store such records. Some of these fees are handed back to the caller. With millions of automated calls a day, the amounts can add up. "It's slow nickels, not fast dimes" for scammers, but it helps offset the costs of making the calls, said Aaron Woolfson, president of TelSwitch, a company that licenses out telecommunications-billing software.
Each time a caller's name is displayed, phone companies pay small fees -- typically fractions of pennies -- to databases that store such records. Some of these fees are handed back to the caller. With millions of automated calls a day, the amounts can add up. "It's slow nickels, not fast dimes" for scammers, but it helps offset the costs of making the calls, said Aaron Woolfson, president of TelSwitch, a company that licenses out telecommunications-billing software.
Except it won't work. One reason for spoofing the number is simple - many PBX systems at an office have lines that are dynamically assigned - if you call out, the PBX picks a free line and connects your call to it. Those lines will have numbers associated with them, but you can't call them because they're not valid DID or hunting line numbers. So the PBX tells the phone company to spoof either the DID number or the main phone number. (Likewise, when a DID or main line call comes in, the phone company picks a line and tells the PBX which number it's for).
No, what you REALLY want is phone companies to do the same thing most ISPs do now - source IP verification. As in the spoofed number they get must be associated with the group of phone lines it's coming from - so an office can hand out spoofed numbers properly, but they can only hand out numbers they actually own.
The only problem now is VoIP providers who rightfully have to spoof numbers to indicate who is really calling - again, they buy a huge clump of lines and those numbers are inappropriate for the calling party. And the problem is the database of valid phone numbers from those VoIP providers can be rather big to do a number verification. (Plus, it's just as easy for robocallers to sign up, wear out the number, abandon the account and sign up again). What may help is if the phone company could put like a "VoIP: Provider: Name" to the caller ID, so you'd get "VoIP: Vonage: John Smith"
I can't read the article because of the paywall. But I can say I don't even see any caller ID information for 99% of the spam calls I get. All I see is a phone number. It's usually a fake phone number (I assume because it's my area code and prefix plus a random 4), but there's no name associated with it. If my phone company is paying anyone money for the "service" of displaying a fake phone number to me when I get a call, then maybe they should rethink that.
The headline says "Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer". Summary says "it helps offset the costs of making the calls". So if you don't answer (and therefore the scammer doesn't get any money from you) the scammer makes a loss on the call, they don't "Win".
It's too costly and slows down business transactions to do a full background check and audit trail to vet out all the spammers. Imagine it takes a month to get residential telephone or cell phone. Plus the total number of spammers is a really really small number compared to the legitimate customers signing up. This small percentage makes all those calls.
It might be a small percentage making the calls but it's approaching 85% of the calls I receive and most of my friends receive. I would be willing to pay the $25 and wait the 30 days to get a phone if it meant that it reduced the number of phone calls I received by 85%.
Another possible option if the phone company is just too archaic is to implement 2FA. If I could sign up for a service where everyone who calls me has to type a code received by text, I would sign up tomorrow. You have a spoofed number, you don't receive the text and you can't get thru. Calling from a landline or voip that can't receive texts, too bad, call me from your verified cell phone or contact me in another way. Most legitimate businesses don't actually call you anymore anyways. Most of my legitimate calls are from other cell phones.
You guys aren't understanding what is happening. The person who was called isn't paying anything. That hasn't been true in decades in America (landline or mobile). What they are saying is the CALLER gets money from the phone company when their number appears on a caller id. Personally I doubt this is true but I didn't read the article. The reason you don't get called as much as America is because America is highly targetted due to the high number of English speakers and the relative wealth of the residents. Scammers don't speak German or Polish or whatever. They speak English.