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.

Comments

for every crime there is a law

[mapkinase]

One just need to apply it. Make a poster boy from one of the robocallers. Feed him to alligators, hang him on a Time Square, do something memorable with these invasive pests.

Humanity and dignity cannot be achieved without dehumanizing and removing any shred of dignity from the worst.

Weed out the weaklings, clean up the city

Put on your black shirts.

Re: for every crime there is a law

[Anonymous Coward]

we will start with you and your lawless lynch mentality of Backwardness.

Re:for every crime there is a law

[sjames]

Require real caller ID. It's not like the phone company doesn't know who to bill. Set up *?? to report a do-not-call violation. If a particular number racks up enough of those, launch a full investigation. If the phone company lets a spoofed caller id get through and it is reported to do-not-call, they either figure out who really called or pay the fine themselves.

Before someone complains, allow any extension to report the main number as a caller ID. Allow 3rd parties to use a company's name and number IFF the company signs in blood that the 3rd party is a duly contracted representative and takes responsibility for any violations. Or they can use a reflector to make the calls actually originate from them.

If a foreign phone company won't comply, reject all of it's caller id info and change the id to "caller from [country]" OR just stop accepting calls from that carrier until they change their ways.

We're already to the point that many people don't even bother to answer their phones anymore. If this isn't brought under control soon we'll start seeing cellphones that do internet ONLY. and the telephone will be dead.

Re:for every crime there is a law

[sjames]

Actually, there is. The PSTN isn't magic, it has switches, and ports just like the internet. While a call could be routed through another country or telco, those can be handled by the same rules. Do not route telco A to us OR ELSE.

Do you really think an American telco will accept a call without knowing who to bill?

Re:for every crime there is a law

[green1]

complete BS.

Almost all of these calls come from overseas call centers, and yet every single one is spoofing my own local area code and even local exchange prefix (they hope you'll think it's someone nearby calling and actually pick up). It's pretty obvious that not only is this outside the realm of "number portability", I can also guarantee that they are spoofing numbers that are from a completely different telco than they are calling from, probably even numbers from the telco they are calling in to.

I can't even imagine how much incompetence would be required not to be able to filter out CID coming from outside your network that claims to be coming from inside it. This has absolutely nothing to do with "can't" it's entirely "won't". The sad truth of the matter is that telephone companies are paid to process phone calls. They have no financial incentive to reduce the number of calls on their network.

Re: for every crime there is a law

[reanjr]

I blame the shitty /. UI. You go to reply and when you get to the reply screen you can no longer see the original comment, nor can you use the back button (which takes you to the top of page). It's exceedingly frustrating, and I know at times I end up making assumptions about what I thought I read by the time I'm done writing and proofreading my response.

Re:for every crime there is a law

[swb]

Number portability means there is a database made available to telcos so they know where to route calls. "It's hard" was their principal objection to number portability, they wanted the simpler and less intensive route maps where telcos owned entire exchanges and could route calls with less effort and maintenance.

But now that we have number portability, telcos should be able to use that same database to determine if calling party identification actually matches the origin of the call. Businesses with PBXs and DID blocks should already be in this, as should the numbers associated with their trunks.

Bottom line is that they just don't want to, probably because of money changing hands someplace.

Either they don't want to annoy a service provider client with a huge set of trunks who could pretty easily find some other carrier to provide them with trunks or they're getting per-termination fees from the inbound source and don't want to disrupt them.

Is this a paid promotion for WSJ?

[alzoron]

The article is apparently submitted by: "Sarah Krouse, reporting for WSJ:" and there's no link to a non-paywalled source. At least have the decency to mark this as a paid promotion if that's what it is.

Simple answer

[imidan]

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.

Knowing nothing else about the problem, I suggest that phone companies stop contracting with databases that hand fees back to the caller, or else make it hurt. If AT&T and Verizon declare a new policy to pay their fee less an amount equivalent to whatever the database hands back to the caller, the practice will end double quick. The database suddenly gets a big incentive to stop those kickbacks, and the profit motive for the scammers dries up. This, without any loss of income on the part of the phone company. The databases can't exist without the patronage of the phone company, so the phone company has a lot of power.

Re:Stupid America

[ledow]

America have always had it backward.

I pay NOTHING for any unsolicited call that makes it to my phone. There's no way to make a call to me that doesn't cost some amount of money to someone somewhere. But it's certainly not me paying.

The only way to get me to pay is to try and trick me into dialling a number for whatever reason. Which ain't gonna happen unless it's a 0800 (free) or 0845 (local rate).

Why on earth would you charge someone - who's already paying monthly fees or whatever to keep the line active - for daring to use your service to receive a call, especially if anyone in the world can cause that charge to the end-user without their consent? Ridiculous.

As such, my phone stays silent of any unsolicited calls through the vast, vast majority of the year. I just received 2 texts from a credit card company to tell me their systems were down and I'm annoyed at it and looking up how to make them stop. It's really that abnormal.

My phone number is unchanged for 15+ years and been transferred through several phone companies in that time (so prime opportunity for it to "leak"). It's the number for my bank, etc. so it's in a lot of databases, but I don't get spam calls or texts.

If I ever do (rare), then it's always from a withheld number or a number that - when I Google - pops up on all the anti-spam sites detailing others experience when answering those calls. "Oh, yes, this is actually British Gas, it's genuine", or whatever. Guess whether I answer that or not, or whether I then just it to a "spam" contact with silent ringtone and auto-refuse the call.

I stopped using landlines many years ago, but pretty much it's the same there. Register for the proper services, tell people to bugger off, never tick the "you may contact me by phone" box. If it annoys, literally it costs pence to change your number.

I manage the switchboard in work too... where the phone number is 20+ years old and has gone from analog, to ISDN, to SIP over the years. The number of duff calls is really, really low and usually just companies who found the phone number online and are touting for business. GDPR is going to cut that in half, at least. We don't actually have to block any numbers that come in, because it's just not big enough a problem. And it costs a pittance to run a SIP trunk capable of supporting a huge number of lines, when you're not paying for every incoming inquiry.

I have actually reported, to police, more cyber-fraud attempts - including chatting on the phone to the finance department trying to get them to authorise a phony payment sent by email - in the last year than I've received unsolicited calls.

Because, when the spammers have to pay, it's not as easy to talk people into quickly buying some junk. We don't have (or even allow) political robocalls without explicit consent, and never have. What kind of nonsense is that?

Honestly... my last unsolicited call on my mobile was... hold on... scrolling... scrolling... September? And that's because THEY have to pay for them, not me.

America really needs to wake up about the "everything is about money" thing, and the "my data needs to be respected".

Making money?

[tomservo84]

So, can I just call one of my cell phones from my landline millions of times and start making money? WTF is this? Why does the caller make anything?