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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.
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.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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.
It should be legal to hunt them...no season, no limit. In fact, there should be a bounty.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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.
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.
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".
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".
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.
This used to work, but not any more for the egregious offenders. It only hurts the "legitimate" call centers trying to renew your paper subscription or some other menial task.
The robocallers have bots on the other end, and drop most of the calls they make anyway.
It sounds like that is exactly what is happening though. I only get numbered spam. Also, I seem to get less than my friends and family. I think it is because my number lists as a landline instead of a cell. But that is just speculation. I don't get spam texts either, or is that still a thing?
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
There is a website like that (Youtube). There are entire channels devoted to that. Search for "lenny robocall" for some hilarious ones.
Firefox has add ons to get around pay walls
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?
Agile Spaceport - You will never find a more wretched hive of scrum and villainy. We must be cautious.
Great idea, all that's missing is any incentive whatsoever for the telecommunication industry to care. They make money from phone calls. They don't exactly have any incentive to reduce the number of calls on their network, and they don't care whether or not they're legitimate.
I'm afraid I don't see any of that changing without regulatory requirements. All of the technical solutions I've seen are dead easy to implement (compared to the scope of their business). What's missing isn't the means to make a change, it's the desire to do so.