Almost Half of US Cellphone Calls Will Be Scams By Next Year, Says Report (cnet.com)

According to a new report from First Orion, nearly half of the mobile phone calls received in the U.S. next year will be scams. "The percentage of scam calls in U.S. mobile traffic increased from 3.7 percent last year to 29.2 percent this year, and it's predicted to rise to 44.6 percent in 2019, First Orion said in a press release Wednesday," reports CNET. From the report: The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix so people presume the calls are safe to pick up, First Onion said. Third-party call blocking apps may help protect consumers from known scam numbers, but they can't tell if a scammer hijacks someone's number and uses it for scam calls. "Scammers relentlessly inundate mobile phones with increasingly convincing and scary calls," said Gavin Macomber, senior vice president of marketing at First Orion, in an email statement. "Solving a problem of this magnitude requires a comprehensive, in-network carrier solution that dives deeper than third-party applications ever could by detecting and eliminating unwanted and malicious calls before they reach your phone."

Comments

Easy to fix

[OrangeTide]

But carriers don't feel like doing it.

Re:Easy to fix

[iggymanz]

indeed, they'd rather knowingly sell blocks of numbers to the same Indian scammers they sold another block a month before.

Yes, India. India is the major source of this problem. I'm in favor of cutting trade and business with them until they clean up their act.

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

How ?

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it would be a killer feature. "Choose Versprint&T Mobile and avoid those unwanted calls"

Re:Easy to fix

[balsy2001]

When I lived in South America (years ago), there were extra costs to call a cell phone from a land line. Not sure it would be a good idea, but the only reason telemarketing works is because the economics are there to support it. Want to stop it, change one of the inputs in the equation.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Its always a San Franciscan causing issues. The shit in their hands. Shit in their streets. They shit on the airwaves as well.

FTFY.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Whom do you think taught SFers how to act that way? You've even got that shaitstain Indofat Nirmal Mulye ripping people off

Re:Easy to fix

[ShanghaiBill]

A big part of the problem is dumb incompetent spammers. When I get a spam call, I press "1" to get a human, and then I say just enough to hook them into thinking I am a mark. They I ask them to wait on hold while I go get my credit card. After a few minutes, I check the line, and if they are still waiting, I give them fake CC numbers until they give up in frustration. It is especially gratifying when they start spewing profanity at me. I love that.

But here's the thing: THEY KEEP CALLING BACK. The SAME company will call back day after day with the same stupid line about the IRS, or Microsoft anti-virus warnings, or "Rachel at cardholder services". Why don't they flag people like me, and stop wasting their time? It makes no sense.

Re:Easy to fix

[omnichad]

They don't have to buy blocks of numbers. Just spoof caller ID. It's illegal to do with numbers you don't own, but they're not bothered by that.

Re:Easy to fix

[ShanghaiBill]

How ?

Calling party pays.

This is the way most of the world does it. Spam calls are mostly an American phenomenon.

Other countries have the "one ring scam", where the caller rings once and then hangs up, hoping a foolish person will be curious and call back. But most people do NOT call back, and the call can be traced since you have to disclose your real call back number. Also, phones in some countries have a feature where the second ring is the first audible ring.

Another reform would be to restrict spoofing. You should only be allowed to spoof if you own both numbers. This is another "American problem".

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you they are just as bad in Canada.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

More and more of the robodialers are using computers to do it all. You're not talking to a person, you're talking to an AI system that uses voice recognition to carry out a basic conversation. Make sure you're doing a Turing test. Your ability to waste a human's time is rapidly going away.

And as far as calling back multiple times: the reason is, though you didn't fall for whatever they were pitching, perhaps the next person to answer will...your wife, your elderly mother, your daughter, etc. Keep throwing it at the wall in the hopes something sticks.

Re: Easy to fix

[AntronArgaiv]

Extremely easy.
1. Set default ringtone to a single "ding" (as used to announce an SMS or email arrival)
2. Set ringtone for everyone in your contacts list to "old telephone"
3. When phone "dings", check number, answer if it looks like one you were expecting, otherwise easy to ignore
4. Folks in your contacts list will cause phone to ring normally.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm deeply offended to your suggestion that it's the women of the family who may more easily fall to such scams!

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

> Whom

Whom'st've

Re:Easy to fix

[davecb]

Canada has a (slow, but effective) do-not-call process, similar to our anti-spam law. Once the sponsor has been identified, such as a certain company selling cruises, they are charged in court, fail to successfully defend themselves, if at all, and are fined out of existence.

Re:Easy to fix

[sjames]

Disallowing caller ID spoofing would be a great start. Simply do not allow displaying any phone number not assigned to you. They DO know who is actually calling, since they wouldn't complete the call if they couldn't bill for it.

The spammers would have to get a line in every area code they call in order to pull the "local call" trick if the phone companies did that. They'd also have to get a new line every campaign since you could just block the spam numbers.

Most of the spam/scam calls count on very low costs to make it profitable. Make it more expensive without driving up costs for legitimate callers and the rate of spam goes down.

Re:Easy to fix

[Comrade Ogilvy]

I get a call twice a week circa noon in Mandarin. What I have read is it is a threat that I need to make good on a bogus debt or they will turn me in to ICE>

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

preventing local number spoofing does not require access to every other phone call on their network. prevent the call from originating and you have solved 90% of the battle.

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

Calling party pays [wikipedia.org].

This is the way most of the world does it. Spam calls are mostly an American phenomenon.

That might work, but I doubt that it would be popular. If you remember that's the way we used to do things here. Not only was it calling party pays but also LMS service.

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

Disallowing caller ID spoofing would be a great start. Simply do not allow displaying any phone number not assigned to you. They DO know who is actually calling, since they wouldn't complete the call if they couldn't bill for it.

Not so easy, especially since the network is now heterogenous. What is the phone number of someone calling from a VOIP exchange ?

Re:Easy to fix

[OrangeTide]

Mandatory death penalty if convicted of wire fraud involving a senior citizen. Including full extradition of foreign nationals who commit this crime. That will slow scamming down a whole lot, and get politicians the senior vote.

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

When I lived in South America (years ago), there were extra costs to call a cell phone from a land line. Not sure it would be a good idea, but the only reason telemarketing works is because the economics are there to support it. Want to stop it, change one of the inputs in the equation.

Interesting thought. Maybe there could be a minimal credit/cost that the target of a call would receive, that would be refunded if the call was accepted.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Extremely easy.
1. Set default ringtone to a single "ding" (as used to announce an SMS or email arrival)
2. Set ringtone for everyone in your contacts list to "old telephone"
3. When phone "dings", check number, answer if it looks like one you were expecting, otherwise easy to ignore
4. Folks in your contacts list will cause phone to ring normally.

No, set the default to not ring at all. Otherwise you're just dealing with the same issue because your phone will just ding every hour.

Seriously, I get robocalls all the fucking time and this is the only real fix.

Expecting a call from some number? Add it to your contacts.

Re:Easy to fix

[Darinbob]

So half scams and half spam then?

Re:Easy to fix

[sjames]

The number on the account that gets the bill. The one they have to authenticate in order to call out.

As long as the telcos bill for services it's not at all hard, because you can bet no call goes anywhere if they don't know who to bill for it.

Re:Easy to fix

[Darinbob]

There is a Mandarin phone scam going around where the call claims to be coming from the Chinese consulate.

Re:Easy to fix

[Darinbob]

We don't have calling party pays in the US? I know that in the past the recipient paid but that has changed because it stopped people from buying mobile phone. I know land lines are all caller-pays, and many scams come over them.

Re:Easy to fix

[Darinbob]

The VOIP eventually has to be tied to an actual phone line, and that's where the number comes from, even if it's an internal exchange number of the phone company. Caller ID should be changed so that it can directly say if this is VOIP, or from the phone company itself, and so forth. I got a advertising sales call today from my own phone company that I mistakenly though was from my dentist because of number similarity.

I'm annoyed that robocalls and the like can't be banned anymore. There was one year when this was illegal and the phone stopped ringing off the hook finally, but then it started back up. And in the last year the spam started showing up on the mobile phone too.

This is what I wish I could do to these people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Aqua Teen Hunger Force).

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

The number on the account that gets the bill. The one they have to authenticate in order to call out.

As long as the telcos bill for services it's not at all hard, because you can bet no call goes anywhere if they don't know who to bill for it.

Well that only works is if they are back matching the call metadata to an actual call.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Orangeboxing was around since before ESS5 came online.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada has a (slow, but effective) do-not-call process, similar to our anti-spam law.

You misspelled "ineffective".

Re:Easy to fix

[hawk]

tmobile has had some of this for a while, but could definitely be better.

I hadn't remembered creating a "scam likely" designation (although it's the kind of label I'd tend to create) when it first came up on our phones, and I later found out that it was tmobile doing that.

Now if they'd only scan my texts for a speciic name in the first three words, and auto-block . . . I assume they're from something the prior owner of my number fell for . . .

hawk

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

The VOIP eventually has to be tied to an actual phone line, and that's where the number comes from, even if it's an internal exchange number of the phone company. Caller ID should be changed so that it can directly say if this is VOIP, or from the phone company itself, and so forth. I got a advertising sales call today from my own phone company that I mistakenly though was from my dentist because of number similarity.

Sorry that's a no. If you have exchange level switches you can place whatever number you want on outgoing call. It's been awhile about 20 years since I was cutting edge on this so I went to the trouble of double checking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There's just virtually no validation.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they keep calling you? Because the scam callers' time is worth less than the amount they make from going through the lists of numbers of potential marks they get on the black market.

Re: Easy to fix

[Kohath]

I want automatic Do Not Disturb mode for all numbers not in my contacts list. I can turn it off if I'm expecting a call.

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

I can't even think of the last time I saw a calling plan that charged per call on either residential or business service.

The last time I did that I was leasing a channelized T1 that had a class C network block on it. Was able to pay for itself by hosting people on it.

Re:Easy to fix

[Darinbob]

Oh ya, sorry, I was mentally lumping in land lines as well.

Re:Easy to fix

[sjames]

Orange boxing requires the target to already be on the call and then you spoof a second call on call waiting, complete with caller ID tones. It doesn't work for the initial call.

And, of course, blue boxing used to be trivially easy until they made changes to prevent it. Even before moving trunk tones out of band, they started adding filters to stop blueboxing.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Default ring tone == silence.mp3

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Tough to enforce when they are located in China, India, Russia, etc.

Re: Easy to fix

[Kohath]

It still interrupts my music or web browsing. I don't want to see them at all.

Re:Easy to fix

[Solandri]

Nope. For cell phones, most of the world uses the "both parties pay" model (the receiver pays for the convenience of getting a call via mobile). Under this model, because the recipient is paying for the spam call, they have a financial justification to complain to their carrier and require them to block the spam calls, and a legal right to sue the spammer for costing them money. The U.S. used to have this model before most cell phone plans went to an unlimited minutes model.

Calling party pays (and unlimited minutes) frees the spammer from any liability for spamming. They're paying for everything, the recipient pays nothing. So the recipient has no legal nor financial recourse to request a reduction in spam. This is why your mailbox is full of junk mail. Because the junk mail senders are paying for everything, and in fact are subsidizing first class postage.

Another reform would be to restrict spoofing. You should only be allowed to spoof if you own both numbers. This is another "American problem".

Spoofing numbers you don't own (as part of spam or a scam) is already illegal. The problem is (1) there's no way for the recipient to figure out who the actual caller from a spoofed number is, so they don't know who to sue or even complain about. And (2) as with junk mail, the spammers make up a significant fraction of phone company revenue, so the phone companies don't want to fix Caller ID to make it impossible to spoof a number they don't own.

With regards to (2), the phone companies are protected by their Common Carrier status, so it's probably going to take a change to phone protocols to prevent spoofing. e.g. Change how VoIP-to-VoIP calls are made so they also send a datagram encrypted with a private key owned by the caller. The receiving VoIP device looks up the Caller ID number in a public database to find that number's public key, and uses that key to decrypt the datagram. If the decryption fails, then it knows the caller doesn't have the proper private key for that Caller ID number, meaning the number has been spoofed, and drops the call. If the decryption is successful, then it knows the Caller ID info is accurate and allows the call to ring through.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you they are just as bad in Canada

I can assure you Canada is part of the North American number plan and all its associated problems.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

How ?

Calling party pays.

In metric countries it is always the caller that pay.
Does the receiver pay in the USA?
Oh, I see, this time there are three other countries, that do the same as the USA

Receiving party pays.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth are you on about, in Oz, calling party pays. Ive never received a spam call on my mobile. Guess it’s just another way Americans take it up the arse from corporations, they bend over and lube up at light speed.

Re:Easy to fix

[MrL0G1C]

It looks like it. This problem isn't happening in the UK, I get a scam call on my mobiles around once a year.

It only took the occasional scam calls and silent calls (failed marketing bots) to my landline for me to just unplug it. If telecoms companies want to continue to exist then they will have to block these calls because people can very easily find other ways to communicate via the internet and they will.

Re:Easy to fix

[Crashmarik]

The boiler room operations are likely operating their own PBXs spoofing the ID before it gets to the VOIP server.

Like I said though it's been a good two decades since I had a hand in this. Has anything been done to prevent that ? If so what and what impact has that had on large companies that operate their own backbones ?

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Charge a little money to call a mobile phone. Duh.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are saying is NOT true. In most of the world the calling party pays. Often calling a cell is bit more expensive. The US and Canada are the big exception.

The problem is that phone companies make a lot of money off these scams because they get money for minutes (if the user is not on an unlimited plan).

If there would be a very small surcharge to call cell phones then that would fix the problem. Unfortunately the US uses the same numbering subsets for both landlines and mobile, so differentiating is hard. Most countries use different subsets, e.g. in the Netherlands numbers starting with a 6 are mobile. All the rest are landlines, 9 is premium, 800 is free.

I've heard UK numbers have a caller shield sometimes now. It's an extra telco service that does a kind of captcha on the caller, I've been told it works pretty well.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite common in the UK too.

Re: Easy to fix

[mapkinase]

First we need to throw out Democrats and Republicans out of FCC. And by throwing out I mean out of the window on 100th floor?

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't sell blocks of numbers to anyone, the scammers just spoof them and the telcos won't do anything about it because some stupid ass corporations are whiny bitches who want to be able to "legitimately" spoof numbers.

And I disagree with the article. More than half of my calls right now are scams. 20 years ago I used to maybe get 1 scam/telemarketing call per month. Now I get at least 3 every single day on both my landline and my mobile phone.

Re:Easy to fix

[sjames]

PBX connected to a trunk works differently. Caller ID is accepted from the PBX without question by the telcos just as it has always been, but that is a CHOICE the telcos make. They CAN block it and generate a new ID from the ANI or they can use the ANI to decide if they will pass the caller ID on or not.

The reason orange boxing could only work by faking call waiting is that they DO block residential lines from sending out Caller ID information when you make a call.

Note that Caller ID information is only FSK for the final hop from the CO that completes the call and a POTS line. Otherwise it's just more digital metadata and easily manipulated by the Telco as needed. It is only done that way because POTS lines have no ability to receive information out of band.

Re: Easy to fix

[sound vision]

Do you have any statistics to back this up? The US is becoming more of a safe harbor for scammers and spammers by the month, with the FCC and other regulatory apparatuses having been decapitated. Why the dramatic rise in the past couple years? I don't think it's gotten any easier to scam on the Indian side, they remain at the Rock bottom levels of accountability they've always had.

The telecoms (and thusly the FCC, due to the cronyism of Ajit & others) profit marginally from fake calls by charging customers for them. But it wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that there's payola going on beyond that, direct between the scammer and the boardroom.

To counter the typical Slashdot anecdote, in the absence of good stats, I will provide my own experience: Of the scammer calls I receive almost daily, none of the recent ones have been related to IT, and none of them had Indian accents.
I'm sure there are still Indians hard at work with Remote Desktop, but the bulk of the *new* volume would seem to be Americans trying desperately to catch up with India.

Re:Easy to fix

[mr.dreadful]

I stopped answering calls from unknown numbers and you know what? It's not a problem at all. If I know you, I have your number, and if I don't, leave a message and I call you back. Otherwise piss off.

Re:Easy to fix

[Jaime2]

Even easier - carriers shouldn't accept a call from outside their network if the caller id is for a number that's inside the network. That would stop 95% of the spam calls I get.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two issues with calling-party pays. One, the caller has no control over the price charged by the callee's carrier because they're not a customer, and the callee has no incentive to get an inexpensive plan because somebody else is paying for it. The net result was that carriers price-gouged callers with long-distance-level rates because they could get away with it, and people are at the mercy of whether their friend has a landline or cell phone. The "both parties pay" model prevents this. The caller always pays long-distance charges: it's only the local connection at the far end that the callee pays, so they have an incentive to get a large block of discount minutes.

The other problem with caller pays is that it essentially requires moving cell numbers to a separate area code so that callers know they'll get extra charges. The US was unwilling to put cell users at a disadvantage that way, and there was strong demand for portable phone numbers which eventually occurred (you can move your phone number to any carrier or to/from a landine, although landlines have area-code limitations).

Re: Easy to fix

[Wycliffe]

I've heard UK numbers have a caller shield sometimes now. It's an extra telco service that does a kind of captcha on the caller, I've been told it works pretty well.

I would love this kind of service. Unfortunately, a large percentage of my legitimate calls are things like verifying your account where they give you a 6 digit number. These automated systems would never make it thru.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Good in theory, but not good in practice.

I have kids. They sometimes forget their phones or forget to charge them. It's a new world. They need to contact me from time to time. They sometimes call from a school phone, a teacher's phone, a friends phone, etc... Also, what if there's a problem and the police need to call me? (Anyone who has kids in a public school, especially inner-city, should understand this very real possibility)

Consequently, I answer every single phone call with an area code the same as mine. And of course, 95% of the time it's a goddamn scammer. The few times it isn't a scammer confirm the necessity to answer every call.

This problem needs to be fixed. Take the call, waste their time. That's the only way to make it more expensive for them. At the same time, call your congressperson. If they get a call every single time you get one, they'll get the message.

We can fix this. The technology exists. All we need is the political will.

 

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a different tactic. When I get a spam call, after the human answers, I mash the phone buttons until they hang up. Hopefully they are wearing headsets. Either way, they don't get an opportunity to swear at me. This happens about once per week.

Re:Easy to fix

[davecb]

Worked in Bulgaria, which used to be owned by Russia. Basically, anywhere that possess the rule of law. Russia no, but most other countries, even the U.S.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

My tactic has evolved, or perhaps de-evolved, to keeping them on the line long enough for me to go to pornhub and find a video with plenty of sex noise going on. If they haven't caught on by then I'll tell them, "I just wanted you to hear what it sounds like to get screwed over the phone." One of them tried to argue with me about how it isn't a scam, then quickly realized the sound in the background of a woman sucking dick and getting fucked and hung up.

My thought is if I can piss them off enough then they'll put me on their actual internal black list and stop calling.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm deeply offended that you are an effete little bitch. Life ain't always fair, cupcake. Grow some skin, grow a pair and grow the fuck up.

Re:Easy to fix

[bn-7bc]

Calling party pays does nor work in NAN countries as cell phones (as far as I know) just gets assigned the nex free number in a local prefix, so the caller has no idea (without additional information) if the number beeing dialed is a land lane Oe a cell phone charging more for calls to cellphones would thus just confuse people. Now lokk st Norway ( I picked norway pecsuse I live here and know how to recognise a cell number here) If the the number starts it 4 or 9 followed by 7 digits it is a cell number and is charged accordingly.Come to think of it we have another way of identifying how the number is terminated and thus charged,but this requires the person writing the number down/ outing it in lrintined material to actually follow a standard so it is unreliable, a cellphone nomen is printed as NNN NN NNN and land line numers are printed 2 did gets at a time

Re:Easy to fix

[bn-7bc]

That of course depends on regulation, love it or hate it, I’ll take norway as an example, we have caps on how much carriers are alowed to charge other carriers for terminating calls in their networks.andbeond that any land line callers are not alowed to be charged at a different rate (at same time of day etc) unless ofc they are premium rate services continently grouped under the 82n nn nnn series of numbers or are 5 dodger numbers starting with 0 (In Norway we dial the full number regardless of whether it’s a local or long dustance call so the 0 has no adittional function unless you are behind a PABX). I don’t know if I’m biased but As a consumer I find this system both convenient and fair. Ps within the 82 series of numbers there are further sub divisions according to price tiers, but this details or grneraly not remembered by anyone unless they have been burned in the past and ar allso of rather less interest in the context of this discussion. Thank you for taking the time to read my comment, have a nice day

Re:Easy to fix

[tendrousbeastie]

The problem very much is happening in the UK.

I have a mobile phone and a tablet with EE (a major UK mobile network provider). Both receive upwards of 3 spam calls a day, every day. Almost none of them are using the local area code spoof, they are all from unique and fairly random seeming numbers with area codes all over the country.

In particular, for the tablet I cannot have given the phone number to any third parties, since I do not know and have never known what the tablet's phone number is. I can only assume that EE have sold or given the phone number to spammers.

Re:Easy to fix

[MrL0G1C]

No need to assume EE gave the numbers, all the spammers have to do is take a bunch of already known numbers and program a bot to call the rest of the numbers (last six digits) and keep the ones that don't say invalid number with a handy multiple-beep-tone before the verbal message.

Funny though that you get 3 calls a day and I get next to none, maybe giff-gaff / O2 have spam blocking in place and EE doesn't.

Re:Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Queue the leftists with their fake and oh-so-predictable racism complaints in 3..2..1...

On slashdot? You must be new here.

Re: Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

They have that, just set it to regular Do Not Disturb mode. Let calls and texts come from your contacts. Set the schedule to the maximum duration (mine has a 2 minute gap at 3:30 in the morning). A friend uses Android, which lets you set Do Not Disturb mode until you turn it off and he just never turned it off.

Re:Easy to fix

[dave420]

I've never had a scam phone call in my life. Clearly something is amiss over there...

Re:Easy to fix

[sydbarrett74]

Yes, India. India is the major source of this problem. I'm in favor of cutting trade and business with them until they clean up their act.

Agreed. If Trump wants to impose tariffs where it'll actually do some good, he should start with India, the Philippines, and various Caribbean islands (the latter two also being hotbeds of illicit call-centre activity). Maybe if they're faced with high tariffs they'll start policing this growing problem more seriously.

Re:Easy to fix

[sydbarrett74]

With regards to (2), the phone companies are protected by their Common Carrier status, so it's probably going to take a change to phone protocols to prevent spoofing. e.g. Change how VoIP-to-VoIP calls are made so they also send a datagram encrypted with a private key owned by the caller.

That's what the STIR and its sister protocol SHAKEN hope to implement. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, telcos are dragging their feet to roll the technologies out because they like the revenue that spammers pay (a dollar is a dollar is a dollar) and would rather save on the implementation costs.

It's not that hard

[ahodgson]

Just fucking block calls coming out of Pakistan and Eastern Europe that don't have regionally appropriate phone numbers on them.

Re:It's not that hard

[AlanBDee]

it's not that simple, they spoof their number so that it looks like it came from your region. For example, if my number was 1-555-444-3333 they'll spoof the incoming number as 1-555-444-2324 because people are more likely to assume it's a local number.

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

You're have no idea how this works lol

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

> they spoof their number

Who do you think allows that on their own network? Let it sink in.

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

they use voip relays so the carrier sbc sees call coming from local servers, not so easy to block at first but yes, if there was a central black list for all SBC's to subscribe to you could address this.

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Just fucking block calls coming out of Pakistan and Eastern Europe that don't have regionally appropriate phone numbers on them.

How can you be this dumb?

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not that simple, they spoof their number so that it looks like it came from your region. For example, if my number was 1-555-444-3333 they'll spoof the incoming number as 1-555-444-2324 because people are more likely to assume it's a local number.

They spoof caller ID, but not ANI. ANI is used for billing.

Re:It's not that hard

[omnichad]

The calls are terminating via US carriers. It's just a VoIP trunk going overseas from there and there's no way to know where the actual microphone and speaker are.

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but the VOIP trunk doesn't own the numbers they are using. If the phone companies were smart enough to figure out number portability (once the FCC made them do it) they are smart enough to not let companies spoof numbers they don't own.

Re:It's not that hard

[omnichad]

The VoIP trunk doesn't own the numbers, but they don't have to. I can own a number on one service and legally spoof it on another.

Re:It's not that hard

[sjames]

And they get blocked because the country code doesn't match.

Re:It's not that hard

[sjames]

We don't have to allow that, at least not without a document signed in blood.

When the scammers spoof, they spoof other people's numbers, who I doubt would be willing to sign a document permitting it.

In at least one case, apple scammers spoofed the number of an actual Apple Store to sell their fraud. Surely that shouldn't be permitted.

Re:It's not that hard

[hawk]

often, though, they're so sloppy that they get the number of digits wrong . . . I laugh, but am occasionally tempted to answer those.

hawk

Re: It's not that hard

[Nidi62]

I love that local spoof. Makes it incredibly easy to id scam calls. Literally the only other person I have ever spoken to over the phone with my same first 3 numbers is my sister. So unless it is her number I know it is a scam and immediately reject the call and block the number

Re:It's not that hard

[ahodgson]

I saw one the other day where they were spoofing the numbers of local doctors and then calling with some medical scam.

Re:It's not that hard

[ahodgson]

Telcos all cooperate in order to know who to charge for calls. Surely it can't be that hard to add an authentication layer to control who gets to source calls with particular phone numbers, or at least particular country and area codes. I get fake calls from Prince George, BC, all the time. There are literally less than 10 companies who could legitimately originate traffic with those numbers. Why is my carrier accepting calls from Pakistan with those numbers on them? It makes no sense.

Revenge of The Penis Bird (+5 Insightful)

[Anonymous Coward]

i love it

Nice link

[RickyShade]

source=reddit.com :'D

Good

[AlanBDee]

I'm glad, it hope it gets worst. I'd say 90% of incoming phone calls I get are scams or telemarketing calls. The worst it gets the more likely the carriers will do something about it. Until then, I'll continue to set my blocking app automatically hang up if they're not in my contact list. I'd be even happier if i could send them to the Jolly Roger phone company with a simple button press.

Re:Good

[markdavis]

>"Until then, I'll continue to set my blocking app automatically hang up if they're not in my contact list."

Care to share the love with info on what you did/use? First, I didn't think any app could have that permission, so I think it would require root, which rules out use by most people.

But it sounds like you have something similar to what I want (which is doable on a land line, but apparently not on cellular). I don't want a "service" from some third party. Ideally I would like something, non-root, that would silently answer calls from anyone NOT in my contact list and challenge the caller with a simple math problem or something like that. If they fail, it hangs up WITH NO VOICEMAIL OPTION, perhaps with a warning to remove my number from their list. But it still logs the call event WITH NO NOTIFICATION. If they pass, it rings through as normal.

The problem right now is that stock Android is EXTREMELY weak when it comes to anti-call-spam. And almost any option you try, still gives them freaking voicemail options, which are just as annoying as a call, if not more-so, because you still get annoyed by a notification, have to go find the stupid voicemail app, wait for it to load and download the audio, listen to it, then delete it, every time.

I would even be partially happy if I could just have the option to not allow voicemail for dismissed calls. So frustrating.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, unless you happen to have a business. One of my customers is a womens crisis center so I even have to answer the blocked ones :(

Just stop with the fake numbers. You can use any of YOUR numbers so businesses can show the switchboard.
Next phone system will have voice prompts that everyone hates because I can't afford the receptionist.Landline is no better. Too bad I love my antique (1980's) PBX

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

My strategy is to answer and try my best to mess with the caller. I'd prefer to waste their time as much as possible.

Re:Good

[AlanBDee]

I use an app called "Should I Answer". In there it has an option to block any caller not in my contact list. If it's a known scammer it does nothing. If it's not sure then it will forward to voicemail. For voicemail I've got it set to forward to my google voice number. I then get a notification from the google voice app that I have a voicemail which was kindly transcribed and probably sold to marketers or used in AI training.

Before that I used an app called Mr. Number but they removed that feature so I removed their app.

Re:Good

[Greyfox]

I use Advanced Call Blocker. It has a number of handy options it can block on, including not accepting calls that aren't in your contacts. You can also blacklist entire area codes, calls without caller ID and bunches of other stuff. I set incoming calls to go to my voicemail unless they're in my contacts list. It's also easy to disable if you order out for pizza or something.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I use RoboKiller on my iPhone. It silently answers suspect calls with a different voicemail message than the default, and optionally sends you a notification that the call was blocked. You can listen to any voicemails left in their app. Iâ(TM)m quite impressed with its filteringâ"particularly neighbor spoofing. It is a service, however. It plugs in to the iOS call blocking APIs and requires you to set up conditional call forwarding.

It looks like they have an app for Android too.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Advanced Call Blocker. It has a number of handy options it can block on, including not accepting calls that aren't in your contacts. You can also blacklist entire area codes, calls without caller ID and bunches of other stuff. I set incoming calls to go to my voicemail unless they're in my contacts list. It's also easy to disable if you order out for pizza or something.

None of the fucking apps work because the numbers are random.

Random.

What DOES work, is blocking everything by default, and only allowing known contacts to ring your phone.

Nothing else works.

Yes, I know that sort of sucks, but that's where we are.

Re:Good

[markdavis]

>"I use Advanced Call Blocker."

Unfortunately, I can't find that in Play Store :(

Re: Good

[markdavis]

>"It looks like they have an app for Android too."

They do, but it is rated 2 stars with endless complaints and issues. Plus it is a paid "service" (which I would never do). But thanks for sharing the info.

Re:Good

[markdavis]

Reply to self. I did some more research and decided to at least try SOMETHING. After reading and reading, I ended up installing this:

https://play.google.com/store/...

Calls Blacklist - Call Blocker by Vlad Lee

10,000,000+ installs, very high rating, lots of positive reviews and articles. But it has some annoyances, like asking to be the default dialer/phone app EVERY TIME you look in the log (since I don't want it to have that ability). But the powerful feature is there is a single click in settings that blocks all calls EXCEPT those in your contacts and whitelist. And it does seem to work (I have been testing it). There are some issues and limitations:

1) Sometimes one ring will go through
2) It can't prevent voicemail options
3) It seems to want to leave a persistent notification else it is "slow to react"
4) Has ads on the log page, but that isn't bad, plus there is a "pro" (paid) version if that annoys or you want to reward them.
5) It will block your own landline, even if you the number listed in the Android hard-coded "Me" contact. So you will have to add yourself again, as another contact and list your home or other "own" numbers there (I tested that it works).

The important thing is that you really have to remember to add anyone you want to allow calls, and any number they might use, to your contacts OR the whitelist. That won't work well for people who give out their number to businesses or for casual use. But since I don't do that, and rarely give out my cell number, I should be OK, as long as I remember for those few exceptions. Of course, at least voicemail will work in those cases.

Re:Good

[siamesevodka]

I just use the phrases that the young girl in the Exorcist used on the Priests. When I tell them what their mother does in hell it is particular warming for me. Racheal from cardholder services evidently likes me telling her this as she calls often to hear it.

Re:Good

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

Not really random. The neighborhood spoofing seems to be a good 90% of the calls I get. Thing is, I don't know anyone else with my area code and prefix, so they are easy to ignore. An app that blocks numbers from that pattern (i.e. (123)456-xxxx) would be great.

lazy telcos

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem would be considerably easier to solve if the telcos would force people making calls to provide accurate caller-ID.

Today they can set their caller-id to anything they want. The telcos have accurate call information, so they can bill the right people, but there's profit in not validating caller-ID, so the telcos don't do it. They don't lack the knowledge of how to solve the problem, they just lack the will.

Re:lazy telcos

[Lou57]

Here's the will.

The "feature" of changing the CallerID must become illegal. Telcos should have until Jan 1, 2019 to get this into play. After that, if it can be proven that the technology still exists, it is a $1,000 dollar fine per call.

And this DOES NOT have to be pushed through our inept congress. I won't live that long. However, the FTC can implement this overnight. As a citizen, I need to be protected from the unfair tactics of these scammers. CallerID spoofing is not a feature, it is a deceptive practice that harms people. It is a lie, plain and simple.

Here's where to let them know. www.ftc.gov Under the "Take Action" section, file a complaint.

No More CallerID spoofing.

Re:lazy telcos

[omnichad]

It's more than profit. Let's say you're a major corporation calling someone about an overdue mortgage payment. Do you really want the outgoing caller ID to be a random line in their phone bank or their toll-free number? That random line might be busy when you call back, but the main number will find an open line.

I use caller ID spoofing when I see my VoIP provider's outgoing caller ID to match my Google Voice number - it ensures that a returned call gets me anywhere.

Re:lazy telcos

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, the telcos will be glad to implement this. However, please note that compliance with this new regulation -- just like number portability -- will result in a $1.14 charge every month on every line you own, in perpetuity.

The telcos LOVE to comply with new laws! It's amazingly profitable.

Re:lazy telcos

[sjames]

$1.14 would be worth it to not get all the scam calls.

Re:lazy telcos

[sjames]

That can be permitted since they own both the outgoing line and the incoming toll free line.

Re:lazy telcos

[Anonymous Coward]

You are authorized to make calls to/from you GV number, anyone with a call center is authorized to make and receive calls from any number assigned to them.
It's not that hard, except it requires the telcos to invest in their infrastructure, since the current system of caller ID has no way to implement this sort of protection.

Heck, another way would be to add a "feature" that allows you to accept or not accept "anonymous" calls. If the caller ID is properly validated, then accept the call, if the caller ID doesn't match the billing info, refuse the call. Let people keep spoofing numbers, but give me an accurate indication that the number is spoofed so I can block/ignore the call. I'm not obligated to take a call from someone just to find out if they're lying about their caller-ID.

Re:lazy telcos

[omnichad]

And this right now has no method to authenticate. Unless you're saying every business should buy all phone service through a single provider.

Re:lazy telcos

[sjames]

It would just take a record in a database. The only reason it's not there now if that the telcos don't care. If they did care, it would be just a matter of filling out a form (at most) and a quick check from one telco to another.

At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones

[Applehu Akbar]

On our landline, we get an average of one non-spam call per week.

Re:At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones

[markdavis]

>"At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones"

Except it is apparently civil and not criminal. So nobody cares and they go right ahead and spam. Same thing with junk faxes- which are also illegal, and yet only civil. As if someone is going to find and pay a private detective to find out who REALLY faxed, then find and pay a lawyer to maybe find and sue that party, then have to take time off work to do all that and to go to court, to MAYBE get a few dollars or something. It is a total joke.

Unless it is criminal and actually enforced, nothing will change. We need a system where if you get a spam call on ANY line, you hang up, then dial a simple code, and it automatically reports them to the FCC/FTC/whatever, real-time, and they actually DO something about it when it is confirmed by a second report from someone else. But don't hold your breath, that will never happen.

The best we can ACTUALLY hope for, MAYBE, is to close ALL the loopholes that allow people to fake or hide their actual phone numbers and where calls are coming from. At least then, some filtering and blocking techniques might have a chance.

Re:At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones

[Darinbob]

I've got one too. I've been on the fence about canceling, but I got an advertising call from my phone company today so I will cancel this weekend and give a good reason when they ask why I'm leaving.

Re:At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah since its illegal no one does it, right?

All of 'em

[fyngyrz]

All of my cellphone calls are unsolicited and unwanted.

Because anyone who actually knows me knows I don't answer phone calls. My default ringtone is silence. I have actual make-a-noise ringtones for a couple of family members in case of emergency, but (thankfully) no one's tried to call me for an emergency in the last ten years or so. And the fam+friends know better than to make that thing ring for anything else; I'll just bite their head off. :)

AFAIC, The phone system's been outright ruined by spammers. And so far, unlike email, there's no phone call spam filter worth the name.

Text me or email me, otherwise, you go your way, I'll go mine.

It's not a phone — it's a pocket computer

Re:All of 'em

[rmdingler]

All of my cellphone calls are unsolicited and unwanted.

Lucky you. I run a service company that's dependent on customer calls to my cellphone, and I have a landline that's often forwarded to my cellie 'cause I like to talk to the customers my own damn self... control issues acknowledged.

All my regular customers are saved in the phone and their calls come in immediately identified. Local number scam spoofers suck, but operating as essentially a closed practice requiring referral, if you ain't in the phone already, you're going to have to leave a convincing message. Customers who pay the bills year round are not affected negatively.

Re:All of 'em

[Darinbob]

I will use the phone for actual voice conversations. However the amount of robocalls and advertising has trained me to not accept any call if I don't know the number. I have refused to answer the phone for someone who turned out to be a coworker for intance. My reasoning is that if the call is important they will leave a voice mail. But then most of the voice mail is just too, but at least I can filter it out at a preferred time instead of on demand. Not everyone I want to contact me can text me.

I'm really surprised that in the US we've gone from a society that used phone calls regularly to one that shuns them almost completely in less than a decade.

Re:All of 'em

[Attila Dimedici]

The spammers count on that sort of behavior by people who are not likely to fall for their scam. When their robocall gets no answer, it moves on to the next and costs them essentially nothing. When I get those calls I spend as much time as I can spare (usually when I am doing something else that does not require verbal interaction from me) keeping a human on the line as long as I can. That costs the spammers money. It doesn't really cost me anything because they are following a script that does not actually require me to pay attention to what they say and just provide an affirmative noise at the appropriate points, right up until they ask for a credit card, at which point I tell them "No". At which point they usually put on another person who goes through the script again. And if I finish whatever I am working on before they are done, I hang up.

Re: All of 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

This BS problem can't be solved by the market. Duh! See: tragedy of the commons

Re:All of 'em

[antdude]

Can I have your phone number so you can bite my head off? ;)

NoMoRobo (http://nomorobo.com/ ) is decent. Try that? Basically, one ring if spammer calls when the service detects its huge blacklist and then blocked.

Re: All of 'em

[Wycliffe]

AFAIC, The phone system's been outright ruined by spammers. And so far, unlike email, there's no phone call spam filter worth the name.
Text me or email me, otherwise, you go your way, I'll go mine.

The same system that prevents scammers from flooding text messaging could be used to stop scam phone calls.

Re: All of 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an iPhone, call blocking is a built in feature. Only had to use it once. Unsolicited calls are easy. Just wait for them to stop talking and hold the * button it's loud. Screw their ears. If everyone did this they might quit that fake job.

Re:All of 'em

[dryeo]

You're obviously not on a per minute plan. I am and even checking the voicemail costs money, though when I hear Chinese, I can hang up pretty quick.
I use the phone so little that pay as you go is the cheapest for me.

Re:All of 'em

[dargaud]

Do 'per minute' plans still exist ? I have a 50 hours per month + 150Gb per month for 18€ plan which also works in 80% of the countries in the world at no extra charge. I certainly don't care about counting the minutes.

Re:All of 'em

[dryeo]

I'm in Canada, one of the most expensive places in the world for mobile, and yes per minute plans exist. I even have to pay 20 cents per message for sending text messages, which is better then phone calls which are 20 cents a minute whether calling or receiving. Data costs a fortune too, I keep being offered a deal of 4GB for $45 with unlimited calling to Canada and the USA and it is actually a good deal here. They also charge 10 cents a MB for overages.
All prices are in Canadian $ and my plan is a pay as you go, rather then a monthly bill.

Re:All of 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have a shit phone then. The stock call blocking functionality in my phone is awesome. I can add blocked numbers with wildcards (block numbers, prefixes or entire area codes) or just block everything that isn't in my contact list.

This way I can still use my phone and the scammer don't get shit.

Re: All of 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story. Call blocking is a built in feature for Android too.

Also they can and probably do filter out DTMF. It's trivial.

Re:All of 'em

[clovis]

What you say is true, "The phone system's been outright ruined by spammers".

Not answering is my default mode as well as turning the phone off.
But not everyone has the option of not answering, especially small business owners.

I recently hired a local guy who does remodeling and home repair to do some work for me. I asked him about getting scam calls on his phone seeing how the number was published, and he has to take every call if he wants any business. His phone rang often, and often while he was on the ladder, or the roof, or while running the saw, or while just standing there.
He said "Yeah, it's a problem". The look on his face made me wonder if his head was about to explode.

His solution seems to be to let unknown calls go to voicemail, and if it turned out to be a prospective customer, add the number to his contacts. He still has to stop and look at the phone because if it is an existing customer, giving good service to customers requires that he answer those calls right then, which in an ideal world would be fine. And he still has to wade through the bogus voicemail messages spammers often leave.

Also, this guy and his workers were large. I'd pay for their airline tickets if they ever wanted to go over there and visit one of those call centers with some baseball bats. I bet people would pay to see a video of that in movie theaters.

Re:All of 'em

[dargaud]

I'd say you'd be better off purchasing a plane ticket to Europe, getting a phone and a plan here and going back home, except for the fact that those plans are free to use outside the country of origin for only about a month a year. Supposedly. Never mind the fact that I used mine outside for 3 months last year without paying an extra cent. Go figure... (and there's another advantage, it's that in the home country they'll only use your provider, but in foreign country they'll roam on any available tower, so they have much better coverage outside than inside the country of origin !)

Re:All of 'em

[kaatochacha]

Even the spammers spam doesn't work anymore.
Their spam system, oh, 80% doesn't even put me on with a real human when I press "1" to speak to a rep. It does a pause meaning there's no available rep, then hangs up.

New tactic

[SuperKendall]

I pick up the phone and say I'll call them right back...

You can't generally call back scammers, the numbers are pretty much always forged.

That's of course the calls that make it past the robocall blocker...

Re:New tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

I pick up the phone and say I'll call them right back...

You can't generally call back scammers, the numbers are pretty much always forged.

That's of course the calls that make it past the robocall blocker...

Better tactic: Never answer calls from unknown numbers. This is made easier by having your phone only ring for known numbers.

The phone network is completely broken.

Comment Subject:

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer muted.

Human callers will await your greeting. Met with silence, they will call out into the void, confused, outing themselves as genuine people. Robots either speak outright or, more likely, wait until they hear sound (ie greeting) from the other end.

Don't hang up early. Early termination of a call signifies a valid number, valued as their own info or given to others. Set the phone down and let the bot expire naturally.

Re:Comment Subject:

[omnichad]

Or whistle the SIT tone to convince their system that you're number is no longer in service.

Re:Comment Subject:

[Darinbob]

"Press one for our legal department. Press two for our enforcement division. Press three for the anti-fraud division. Press four if you're not paying attention. Press five to hear these choices again in a random language."

Re:Comment Subject:

[kaatochacha]

You could alwasy use the taken speech.
"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[Rick Schumann]

I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize. If it's important they'll leave a voicemail. Back in the days of still having POTS landline, I had an answering machine like everyone else, and I'd screen calls. In this day and age why do otherwise?

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[markdavis]

>"I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize. If it's important they'll leave a voicemail. "

Not a solution at all.

Spammers leave voicemail all the time, either intentionally or not... especially when it is those damn robocalls.

And then you have an annoying notification.
Then you have to open and wait for the voicemail app.
Then find the message and select it.
Then wait for it to download the audio.
Then listen to it, yep, F'ing spam.
Then you have to delete it.
Then you might want to delete it from your log or manually add it to the useless "blocklist" which STILL allows those calls to leave F'ing voicemail all over again.
And they will just call back later, ANYWAY.

I don't find that useful at all.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great for you. Now imagine you are a doctor on call, and you have to answer every unknown call in case it is a patient.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[Darinbob]

Spammers leave voice mail, but not very often in my experience. I may get 5 to 10 calls a day that I don't answer but I haven't gotten a voice mail in at least a month.

I have however gotten a call from an unknown number that was actually very important. It did have the twon prefix for my mother so I did answer instead of ignoring it. I have also needed to use someone else's phone for an emergency call so I was glad that the other end answered.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[Rick Schumann]

..voicemail app..

I don't have (or want) a smartphone, so none of those steps apply to me.
Also I don't believe you. I get non-recognized calls all the time and they NEVER leave voicemail. I think you're making that up.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[Rick Schumann]

But I'm not a doctor so your point is invalid. Also it's stupid.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[markdavis]

>"Also I don't believe you. I get non-recognized calls all the time and they NEVER leave voicemail. I think you're making that up."

Believe what you like. Sometimes they are just a 1 second click. Other times they are just part of some stupid pre-recorded message they blast through.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need visual voice mail plus AI spam voice mail detection.

Re:Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number?

[reboot246]

The day is nearly over now so these numbers are accurate for today. I've received 3 calls today on my cell phone - 1 from my office (I answered it), 1 from my girlfriend (I answered it), and 1 from a telemarketer that AT&T warned me about (I didn't answer it of course).

AT&T has gotten pretty good at detecting calls from telemarketers and giving me a warning. If they miss one, that's fine - I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize anyway. I also use an online service (youmail) for voicemail and have an option to ditch numbers. If a telemarketer leaves a message, they get ditched. Ditched numbers hear an outgoing message saying they've reached a number no longer in service and then they aren't allowed to leave a message.

Jolly Roger Telephone Company

[Anonymous Coward]

Scamming telemarketers? Great! Talk to my bots...

https://jollyrogertelephone.com/

Last 10 callers, 8 were telemarketing

[Anonymous Coward]

It sucks. I put the phone on do not disturb most of the time.

Thats Funny...

[balsy2001]

You still have a land line.

Re:Thats Funny...

[markdavis]

>"You still have a land line."

I do too. During the last hurricane, all the cell towers failed, but land lines were fine. And I have land phones throughout the house that just work, and with good clarity. And I have a system that is wireless and also links to my cell phone, too. Panasonic I know I always have a reliable way to call 911- either land or cell. I would much rather "talk" on my wireless land line with HUGE battery life and easy to hold handset... often with a wired headset plugged into it.

The problem is that F'ing Verizon keeps raising the rate so it is crazy expensive now. I have NO optional services, limited dialout (something like 60 calls max per month), and my bill is still something like $38/mo!

Re:Thats Funny...

[fahrbot-bot]

You still have a land line.

I do -- 911 is faster and way more accurate over a landline (cell phones use GPS, which I have switched off by default to save battery power).

In addition, if you have (young) children, you should have a landline at your home - for the above reason and so *they* can easily call 911 in an emergency.

Re: Thats Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look into ObiHai or some cheaper voip setup. Youâ(TM)re probably using voip with a box in the house for Verizon anyway

Re:Thats Funny...

[balsy2001]

I do have young kids and they know how to use the mobile phones in the house.

Re:Thats Funny...

[balsy2001]

I dont live where I have to worry about those kind of storms.

Serious question. How often do poeple call 911? Or is it just a fear of needing it? I am 40 and have never called 911 for an emergency at my house as an adult or child. Am I just an outlier?

I just dont feel like it is warranted for almost 500/year.

Re:Thats Funny...

[Cmdln Daco]

Be thankful you don't have CenturyLink, where you can request a limited low-cost Landline plan, but they plain ignore your order change and just continue on with the high cost plan you wanted out of.

I don't owe money to CenturyLink any longer for service I didn't use at all for several months before they finally stopped pretending I had ordered it. I 'owe' money to some collection agency they sold my
'debt' to.

Re:Thats Funny...

[fahrbot-bot]

I do have young kids and they know how to use the mobile phones in the house.

Which is great as long as there's a mobile phone in the house ... Just sayin'.

Re:Thats Funny...

[Applehu Akbar]

You still have a land line.

It's not a traditional landline, but the kind served through our cable modem, that we get included in our cable package. I have always wanted to just unplug the damn thing, but my wife is reluctant to use her cell for incoming calls because she doesn't like carrying it close to her all the time (If only women had pockets!)

Re:Thats Funny...

[Darinbob]

Agreed, 911 calls need to know where you are if you can't easily communicate for some reason (having a heart attack). With all the tracking and advertising going on I am not going to leave GPS on and invite trouble.

Re:Thats Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a fallacious way of thinking about it. The issue isn't that you have to call it frequently, it's that if you want to call it, you really, really want it to work. It's like having a fire-brigade, most of the time your house isn't on fire, but boy are you glad they exist when lightning strikes or whatever.

Let me also point out that while you're 40 now, and apparently in good health, this will not be the case for all eternity. That's overlooking the fact that you might still slip in the bathroom or whatever at any point in time.

Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[klubar]

Three alternatives (lacking a deep technical knowledge of the implementation issues)

--Calls from carriers that are only willing to pass authenticated caller id could be flagged as "authenticated". Calls passed thru carriers who don't authenticated would show up as "possible scam". This would make the calls more obvious.

--Along with caller ID pass along the originating carrier (or perhaps the last identified carrier). I'd be a lot less likely to answer a call for a carrier I didn't recognize than one I did. (On the other hand, I almost never answer calls unless I recognize the number.)

--It seems that on-net calls (e.g., Verizon to Verizon, or AT&T to AT&T) would be easy to authenticate and the calls could be flagged as "not spam".

The mobile carriers (and legacy landline) are doing everything possible to kill voice as an option. How long before there is a mobile without any voice option (other than over data).

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[omnichad]

The ANI number is the billing number for the originating carrier. The ANI number might match the caller ID, but not for most scammers. There are a lot of ways to spoof caller ID (it's about like "from" email addresses before DKIM/SPF) and still a lot of legitimate reasons to allow it.

Authenticating caller ID would require cooperation between every carrier and CLEC in existence but could probably happen. Unauthenticated callers could come in with no caller ID or just be flagged as potential junk. It's having no way to establish a good central authority without infighting that's the practical issue.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

Carriers in the U.S. could be forced to cooperate by the FCC. For calls from countries that don't play ball, force the caller ID to display the country of origin.

There are few if any reasons to allow a caller to spoof a number that they don't actually own. Those few could be handled by a call relay or at least a signed legal document accepting responsibility for the spoofed calls.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[omnichad]

Google Voice is one.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[swb]

There are few if any reasons to allow a caller to spoof a number that they don't actually own.

This is the real problem, carriers willingly accept forged calling party information without verifying if the originating ANI owns the number block.

My less cynical rationale is that there is so much outsourcing in the call center business, and these places sell their service of looking and sounding as if the outsourced entity actually was the parent business, including sending caller ID for numbers actually owned by their client. Validating calling party information against inbound trunks makes this much more complicated -- if you outsource call center services, you basically have to supply outgoing telecom circuits to your vendor.

My cynical rationale is that the telecom business knows that telephone fraud is good business and if they did something that made it harder, there would be less of it overall business would go down.

And I'm sure the VoIP business is also built around a million and one "carriers" that have no direct access to actual telecom carriers, like the early days if ISPs when anyone with a T1 to someone could setup a modem bank and be an ISP even though the data had to go through 3 tiers of other ISPs just to actually get close to the actual Internet.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

I can see no reason why Google would need to spoof a caller ID. You're going to have to be more specific.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

The first case could be handled either through call relays or legal documents permitting the call center to ID itself with a company's name and inbound number. The second case should result in criminal charges for fraud (since that would make the telcos willing accomplices).

In the 3rd scenario, even a VOIP line has a phone number assigned. No matter how many steps removed they are from the PSTN, at some point they are a customer of a provider that is VOIP on one side and PSTN on the other that gets them assigned a block of numbers. Portability means they can get that block re-routed to another provider if they switch, but they have to actually fill out forms that can be fact checked to make that happen. Each and every hop is authenticatd.

The fact that a voip user can spoof the caller ID of a cell user at random shows the telcos aren't even trying.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[Jaime2]

That's making the problem too difficult. Just have carriers not accept inbound calls when the caller id indicates a number owned by the receiving carrier. This requires no cooperation and could be implemented tomorrow by any carrier.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[omnichad]

And that won't work with Google Voice or any service like it.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[omnichad]

Incoming calls show up with the caller ID of the original caller. But really, Google received the call and they are placing an outgoing call to your numbers and spoof the original caller's caller ID.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

No, Google is acting as a carrier and relaying the correct caller ID to you. That is distinct from spoofing.

Consider, if someone on Verizon network calls you on your ATT network, would it be correct for ATT to send you their 800 number in the caller ID? Would it be correct for Verizon to send their 800 number with the call? Of course not.

If I call you, my carrier should send my number along to Google and Google should send my number along to you when it relays the call. What should not happen is that I send Apple's number to my carrier and they send that along to Goggle.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[omnichad]

Google operates by call forwarding when you link it to your landline or cell number. They are not your cell carrier. You're thinking of when you use the Hangouts client to answer, and you'd be right about that case.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

No, I am thinking of them as an intermediary in the call, that is, a carrier. The call passes through their equipment but neither originates or terminates there.

Just like XO is not your ISP but your packets may pass through XO even if they're going to someone who also doesn't have XO as their ISP.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[Jaime2]

That's a reasonable tradeoff. Maybe work could be done for whitelisting specific scenarios - like a CallerID/ANI combination. That also could be kept within the carrier since the only problems the original solution would introduce is calling someone on the same carrier via one of these services.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[Megane]

There are few if any reasons to allow a caller to spoof a number that they don't actually own.

...and even fewer reasons to spoof a different number in every call. They should be required to register the numbers that they will be calling from, at least down to the exchange level (for business PBX systems). Any calls originating with CNID not matching that list should be blocked. The FTC and FCC should also be able to search the lists of registered numbers in response to complaints.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[Anonymous Coward]

Carriers in the U.S. could be forced to cooperate by the FCC. For calls from countries that don't play ball, force the caller ID to display the country of origin.

Oh yes, the U.S. is such a victim. Not.

Meanwhile, here in Australia, we were recently getting inundated with robocalls calling for action on the recent net neutrality bill in California - all the while impersonating local telephone numbers.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[omnichad]

That's a fine metaphor, but I don't think that's how they are actually set up when it comes to routing calls to your non-GV numbers.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

You should take that up with your government and telecom. They should have blocked those calls per my suggestions.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[swb]

In the 3rd scenario, even a VOIP line has a phone number assigned. No matter how many steps removed they are from the PSTN, at some point they are a customer of a provider that is VOIP on one side and PSTN on the other that gets them assigned a block of numbers.

What I'm thinking is that this is true for inbound routing, but as most call billing in the US is done in a calling-party basis I guess I could see where a VoIP provider may be using some kind of dynamic outbound call routing system that routes outbound calls to the cheapest provider at the time.

Binding low-cost VoIP providers to the same carrier that they use for inbound routing I'd wager would make them howl as I'm sure dumping outbound calls on the cheapest PSTN they get access to is all about profit and making sure "unlimited" calling doesn't run them out of business.

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[sjames]

It doesn't matter how they route the outbound call, they are still routing a call from a device that has a unique number assigned to it and is paid for by a specific person or organization. Caller ID should identify that entity as the originator of the call. PERIOD. No excuses, no moaning, no whining. Do it or be disconnected.

It doesn't matter if there are 10 possible providers that might route the outbound call, all 10 will have the same information available about what caller id could plausibly be entering their system through that connection.

Is that REALLY so hard to grok?

Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag

[swb]

I agree with you, I guess my comment was more directed at how the entrenched financial interests make it hard to create such a regulation.

It seems like if that had been a telcom regulation in the 1980s, none of the carriers would have complained because it would have been easy to implement and seen as a barrier to competition.

Solution: fix caller id

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix caller id...by throwing it out. Replace it with the *authoritative* origination number that the system already carries for billing purposes (like when you call a 900 number).

Re:Solution: fix caller id

[omnichad]

My Google Voice number requires caller ID spoofing and I'm not ready to give it up yet. Otherwise incoming calls to my cell will show my own GV number instead of spoofed to match the original caller's number.

Re:Solution: fix caller id

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically caller ID won't work for any trunked numbers anymore. Got it. Any more great ideas?

Re:Solution: fix caller id

[kaatochacha]

So google voice adapts to the change or disappears. If I have to choose between spam and google voice disappearing, guess which one I'll choose?

Re:Solution: fix caller id

[omnichad]

Guess which one I'll choose?

Solution: fix caller id

[djshaffer]

Fix caller id...by throwing it out. Replace it with the *authoritative* origination number that the system already carries for billing purposes (like when you call a 900 number).

All your cash is belong to Telco protection sales

[WillAffleckUW]

We can fix this by making you pay more for what we should have been required to do in the first place.

What? You thought we were in business to sell telephone calls? Young people don't call their parents anymore, even when we push weepy ads they block that show happy families calling grandma.

Oh, and your landline prices will go up too.

You could build a blacklist.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why phone OSes don't have a builtin report feature to report spam calls. You could easily check calls against a server based blacklist/whitelist, and notify the user or alternatively automatically block calls from numbers with a certain amount of flags. Obviously you'd need the ability to enable/disable, and it'd have to be well implemented, but it really wouldn't be that hard, and I don't understand why this isn't already a feature.

Re:You could build a blacklist.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why phone OSes don't have a builtin report feature to report spam calls. You could easily check calls against a server based blacklist/whitelis

No you fucking couldn't you dumbass. These are spoofed numbers. You're going to blacklist a bunch of fake numbers? Yeah, that will help a lot.

A whitelist is already possible by using your contact list, which is what I do. Any unknown number doesn't make a sound.

Re:You could build a blacklist.

[Anonymous Coward]

>You're going to blacklist a bunch of fake numbers?
Do you genuinely have no idea how crowdsourcing would work or are you just pretending?

What scam?

[manu0601]

Sorry for the question from someone that did not experience it, but what kind of scam is it about? In the Internet world, I know about technical support scam, Nigerian prince scam or fake drug scam, but here?

Re: What scam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually I get some credit card consolidation scheme. Just need some information first...

Re:What scam?

[sjames]

Let's see, there's the lower your credit card interest, student loan forgiveness, the "IRS" pay or be arrested, the "Attorney General" calling about a video tape you didn't return, pay or be arrested (no, I'm NOT kidding, I have gotten that one several times), a bazillion "charities" that sound close to ones you've actually heard of. Then there's "Microsoft" calling because they detected a virus on your computer, "Apple" calling for the same reason, etc.

Even fake collection agencies (or perhaps real ones using fake caller ID) who won't take "there is no Anthony at this number" for an answer).

Re:What scam?

[Darinbob]

Microsoft support scam is common. You get that just after your computer pops up a virus warning. Then the call says "Hello, we're from Microsoft and just detected a virus on your computer." And the scam actually works.

Re: What scam?

[Megane]

...like which card you have. They say they're calling "about your credit card", expecting (correctly) that most people are idiots and assume that they actually know.

Following the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

If phone numbers are basically IP addresses now, why are there no phone firewalls?

I get them almost daily

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly now I get spoofed local numbers so I know not to answer those. Sometimes I am in the mood to just mess with the callers. Like the fake PC repair people, I typically lead them on and then tell them I have a desktop Linux OS not Windows. They just swear and hang up. Yeah might as well have some fun with the annoying bastards.

Time for PKI in Caller ID and network connections

[StandardCell]

The remnants of AT&T's ancient SS7 are still infecting voice calls today. Back then, it made sense to not authenticate caller ID information because the threat model required physical access to phone company switches and a lot of equipment to implement. It wasn't feasible.

Now that VoIP and packet-switched networks have replaced circuit-switch voice band twisted pair landlines, we still lack a way to enable secure authentication to a trusted root of who is actually calling. The FCC is supposedly looking into solutions, but implementing PKI in the network can prevent these calls from ever getting to people. Many of these scams are on VoIP gateways that have default passwords.

Normally I'm against a lot of government involvement in people's lives, but this is one place where it's required. If Congress could pass the CALM act to end annoying loudness changes in broadcast TV, the passing of which had little economic consequence, then Congress can definitely get their act together and pass a law to do the same for authenticating phone calls using PKI and removing security holes. Inaction in this area already has a tremendous negative economic consequences, particularly for the elderly and other vulnerable individuals who are defrauded systematically and who are typically more reliant on phone services due to their ease of use and familiarity.

The real tell in all of this will be what the carriers do when this is enacted. I suspect there will be tremendous resistance spearheaded by the argument that it will require equipment replacement. I'm not sure that's the case given that the magic is in firmware, but more on the system engineering side. In that case, let them put a deadline down to get their act together. Where there's a will (and a law), there's a way.

Google Voice

[Dan East]

Google Voice is one of the main gateways being abused. They use Google Voice to get a number in a specific region, then robocall people in that area from that number.
Also, for me, at least 95% of calls to my cell are telemarketers. They are using some middleman robocalling system that initiates the call via Google Voice then does some filtering, requiring the person being called to interact in some way and confirm. Then that middleman service calls the actual telemarketer. The telemarketer, legally speaking, is in the clear because they did not initiate the call - they were called. The middleman is probably not in the US and is a fly by night operation that is receiving kickbacks from the telemarketers in some way.

spoofing is a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

I know if the number is my area code + prefix it will be spam. I don't answer.

Re:spoofing is a clue

[Megane]

It depends on where you live. I was born in a small town that got its second exchange in the 1970s. For the past 10 years or so, I've been living in cities that have had a second area code as an overlay, with 10-digit dialing required. The only other number I know of with my current exchange was printed on the side of a work truck I saw one day while I was driving around. My number has been with this house since the mid '90s, and is one of the old wireline exchanges for this part of town from the days before number portability.

Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[fyngyrz]

Within my remarks is a potential 0-spam, 0-coldcall, 0-dunning, 0-buttdialer, 0-random-idiot solution for those adept enough to grasp it.

It's quite possible that group may not include you.

I'm okay with that. In fact, your "who cares" is exactly how I feel you. Isn't that curious?

Cheers. :)

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[reiterate]

You're providing a solution for you. Other people can't choose to not answer phone calls.

Re:Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[Z00L00K]

At least buttdials can be amusing. But otherwise I agree - all the junk calls made have effectively killed the telephone system. Long gone are the days when a phone call was usually a positive experience.

The phone companies are part of the problem regarding this when they allow fake caller IDs and junk calls. Short term profit provided by allowing a call to be established no matter what is turning into the long time loss of subscribers and people changing to secret numbers so that they aren't listed in the phone directories.

Email is damaged by spammers. Slashdot is also suffering from spammers, especially the APK spammer. It used to be goatse links as well, but it seems like they have diminished.

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[Anonymous Coward]

Still on point!

Let me play the world's tiniest violin for you.

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[reiterate]

Ah I see your confusion. Clarification: I'm cool with it because when I receive phone calls they aren't from my kids that don't appreciate my myopic and uninterested navel gazing as much as they should. Plus who needs voices, you can always bray about yourself on here, free from the constraints of "having something to say" or "understanding the topic" that plague human dialogue.

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[Anonymous Coward]

Your kids are probably creeped out that you keep staring at their navels...

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[reiterate]

Gross I don't have kids. You're more than enough cute retard for me.

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[Anonymous Coward]

Eww so you stare at imaginary kids then? That's fucked up, why did you even bring up your imaginary kids you freak?

Re: Oh hey, look, it's you, AC

[reiterate]

"Haha lol guys did you hear me? I said he LOOKS AT KIDS. Pretty great right? LOOKS AT KIDS!" Keep em comin' zing master, but do be careful. You're replying to the wrong comments, I'm worried that all this pedophilia talk is spiking your heart rate. Would hate for you to have to you-know-what 911.

This boggles my mind

[JustNiz]

> The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix

The originating phone company must by definition know what line or cellphone the call is actually being made from. It boggles my mind why phone companies even (continue to) provide this functionality in the first place. I very much hope that it becomes illegal soon.

Re:This boggles my mind

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much hope that it becomes illegal soon.

How can you be this retarded? This shit is obviously already illegal.

Maybe you think we should pass a new law that makes breaking the law illegal?

Re:This boggles my mind

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly love when they do this---I kept the same phone number when I moved out of state, so when I do see a number that pops up with that area code/prefix, I know I can safely ignore it.

Chinese

[gurps_npc]

My landlord and some database has connected my phone number with my address so about once a month I get a chinese recording. Makes it easier to hang up on them.

Also, I love the "Car insurance renewal" scam calls I get. I always feel tempted to ask what kind of car they want to give me before I buy insurance on it.

Already there, at least for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the plural of Anecdote is not Data but I'd say we're already there. At least for me.

I carry two phones: one for work (iPhone), and my own phone (Android). I have to answer the work phone no matter who calls, so I get a lot of spam calls there. Almost every call there is spam. Work calls are rare, but in my position I need to carry the phone anyway (and prefer not to mix personal and work devices - also makes it easy to leave the work phone at the office when I go on vacations.)

On my personal phone, if I don't recognize the caller (if it doesn't show a name from my contact list) then I just don't answer it. That makes it really easy to filter phone calls. And I've set the "Do not disturb" to not even ring after 10pm until 6am, it's just not worth it.

These days, my personal phone isn't really a "phone" anymore. It's rare that I call someone anyway. I text instead. Or I email. Otherwise, I use my phone for navigation and podcasts/audiobooks. I don't even put Facebook or Twitter on it.

Simple solution, the Purge

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it legal to kill spammers. Their family. Their friends. Neighbors. Associates. Business partners.

Problem will fix itself.

Why? Because it works.

[dark.nebulae]

We all get these stupid calls. Indian-based Microsoft support proactively finding a problem on your computer and they have the solution. We heard you suffer from chronic pain, we have things that will help. You've been selected for a free trip to Disneyworld. There's a solution for your creditcard debt. Refinance your student loans to get a lock-in before DeVoss ends the program.

It is all bullshit. We know that.

So why do they keep coming?

Because they freaking work. You get one moron that only goes online once a week on their 56k dialup line at home to check the facebook, they're more than willing to whip out their credit card to take advantage of such a limited time, exclusive offer.

It's that one moron that ruins it for us all. The scammers then make money, the carriers make money, etc., so they are incentivized to call the rest of us looking for more idiots.

Re:Why? Because it works.

[mark_reh]

There's obviously no shortage of idiots out there... look who's in the white house.

Re:Why? Because it works.

[Darinbob]

My mother is not a moron. However she is ignorant of many of these scams and technology in general. She also does not have the ingrained sense of paranoia that I have. She also wants to be independent, she doesn't want to call me and say she got yet another virus, and maybe my fault for not appearing happy every time it happens. So she's glad when the nice gentleman from from Microsoft affiliated tech support calls her up and offers to fix things.

Elderly people aren't stupid because they grew up in a different time and culture. It's a bit like the cargo cults in the south Pacific.

Re:Why? Because it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be a few idiots out there who will fall for scams, but it is our own fault that we all get these calls every day. When you block calls, don't answer, or otherwise ignore these calls you are making it cheap for the scammers to find the gullible ones. Even if only one in a thousand will fall for the scam, if you make it cheap to eliminate the 999 who won't, then the scammers will stay in business. Every time one of them calls you, pick up. Pretend to listen. Pretend to go look for your credit card. Keep them on the line for a few minutes while you watch tv. Make it super expensive for them to find that one in a thousand idiot. If everyone did this, scammers would stop calling all of us. Period.

Re:Why? Because it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been selected for a free trip to Disneyworld

I WORK AT DISNEY WORLD and I get these calls. On my office phone!

Or they'll call me with an offer for a free home security system, and I offer to transfer them to Disney Global Security, and at that point they hang up on me.

Re:Why? Because it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see another idiot, too, every morning when you look in the mirror. Can't you and your kind just shut the fuck up about Trump or put forth real evidence? Two years into the presidency and we still haven't seen any evidence of him being a Russian agent. Where is the evidence? These allegations were made by people like you before Trump even took office so you must have seen the evidence. Why is the FBI, a professional organization whose specialty is finding evidence in crimes, having such a difficult time finding evidence that you and your ilk found over two years ago?

For all the bitching and moaning bozos like you do about Trump's lies, you lie every bit as much as he does if not more so. Let me give you a hint: Solid evidence that Trump is a Manchurian candidate can be found in the exact same place where they stored the solid evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Re: Why? Because it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one suggested heâ(TM)s a Manchurian Candidate, heâ(TM)s clearly not clever enough to be pulling off some scam.

Heâ(TM)s just a racist senile slimy con man grandpa. Thatâ(TM)s plenty enough to want him out of a position of leadership.

Robos

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Unless I am expecting a call from a mechanic or something, I haven't picked up a phone number that doesn't give caller ID in a year (to say nothing of "unknown" numbers.)

Re:Robos

[Anonymous Coward]

You're that guy. There's at least one of you in every single robocall telemarketing scam thread. But you offer nothing to the discussion. EVERYBODY ALREADY KNOWS THEY DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER BS PHONE NUMBERS. THIS IS NOT INSIGHTFUL. YOU HAVE NO NEW DISCOVERIES TO ANNOUNCE.

Fight Fire with Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to get a lot of calls from India. At first I just told them to fuck off but the calls kept coming. Then I tried spending time winding them up but that always seemed like a waste of my own time. The thing is, I spent more than a decade studying psychology so it eventually occurred to me to use that. The question was not how to tell them to fuck off but how to get them to decide to fuck off for themselves. India is heavily honour and family oriented. This is a rough transcript of the last call that I answered, now many years ago:
Me: Hello?
Scammer: This is John from Microsoft, you computer has a virus.
Me: Have you told your parents that your job is trying to steal money from people like them in another country?
Scammer: [5 seconds of silence] ... [strangled voice] ...no... [line disconnects]

The number of scam calls dropped hugely. I like to hope that at least one Indian decided to move on to an honest job instead.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[fido_dogstoyevsky]

Me: Hello? Scammer: This is John from Microsoft, you computer has a virus. Me: Have you told your parents that your job is trying to steal money from people like them in another country? Scammer: [5 seconds of silence] ... [strangled voice] ...no... [line disconnects]

I tried that the last* time I got a similar call - with exactly the same result.

*Dumped the landline just after, haven't had any since.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[Darinbob]

My mother has fallen for these scams 4 times. I feel that if I ever intercept such a call that I will be too furious to do more than shout rather than being logical about it.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

... spending time winding them up

I tried that too but they're obviously thinking they've got you on the hook, try a little harder and they'll land your e-wallet.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

Caller (recording): This is Rachel from cardholder services.
Me: Rachel! You are a fucking slut!
[hangs up]
Never called by Rachel again.

True story.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[swb]

Even better, just be downright insulting of their class and ethnicity.

If you're just kind of insulting, they hang up on you. If you say something like "why do you filthy wogs live in cardboard boxes" or "that dot on your mom's forehead is so where I know to pee" they will stick around and engage you.

I've had these morons practically trying to keep me on the phone so they can keep raging at me. Once they start threatening you it's even more fun because you can just poke fun at how utterly powerless they are, which riles them even more.

I'd feel bad about all this, but these are people who are purposefully trying to steal from me. I have no sympathy for them.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[dargaud]

I was really proud one day that I managed to get a scammer to cry in the phone with this exact same line.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[Megane]

I saw another post here today where someone mentioned invoking the scammers' parents. I like that better than my current line, "Why are one billion people unable to eat with their left hand?" That one disconnected just as I finished saying it. The response you got seems much more satisfying.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes that results in the asshole placing a swatting call to your address.This happens with the scammers that call from US prisons.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[kaatochacha]

This doesn't work. In fact, when my dad tried something similar, the guy on the other end went into a weird spiel about how they crashed planes into our towers and we deserved it.

Enforce Do Not Call

[BrendaEM]

It's time to end this. People need to find other work.

Happens multiple times a day

[whoozwah]

I live in a different area code than I did when I got my phone number. I use Hiya to block all calls from the old area code and whitelisted all the numbers that are in my contacts with that same area code.Sent out a mass text letting everyone know to email me if they ever change their phone number so I can update my records.

Simple fix for that

[erp_consultant]

I've got an App called Call Blocker on my phone (android). If anyone calls me and they are not in my address book it goes straight to voicemail. Most of the time, of course, there is no voicemail because the robocall hangs up. If it does happen to be something important the person can leave a message and I'll call them back. The beauty of it is that the phone doesn't even ring.

I gave up on trying to block numbers because it just seemed like a game of whack-a-mole. The scammers would call from a different number next time.

Works for me and it's free.

NO caller ID spofing

[clovis]

Force the telcos to not allow callerID spoofing of any kind. It's gooten out of hand
In theory, it allows a company to have a representative call you, but their phone number is spoofed to give the general contact number instead of that person's desk. It made sense back then, but almost every single callerID spoofed number is a scam.
Just stop allowing callerID spoofing. We don't need it as much as we need relief.

The law requires that people be able to use callerID blocking,
So businesses that do not want you to call back on the number that called you can block it, and they can say in the conversation, or voice mail, what number to call them back on.

Re:NO caller ID spofing

[Anonymous Coward]

Thought you were missing an 'o'.

It's gooten out of hand

Found it.

Re:NO caller ID spofing

[clovis]

Thought you were missing an 'o'.

It's gooten out of hand

Found it.

Thanks!
I owe you one now.

Credit card scams

[PPH]

... actually spoof the customer service number. But I've never seen an instance where my bank will call me from that number. So I don't answer. If it's actually my bank, they can leave voice mail. And then I'll call back. Spoofing does nothing for outgoing calls.

Re:Credit card scams

[hawk]

I've received calls from security sections of a couple of different credit card companies.

In one case, their data had been compromised and they were overnighting me a replacement card with a new number, and a couple questioning the transaction of the moment to confirm.

hawk

Orange Tide had it right in the FP

[Snotnose]

Put the onus on the phone companies. They're the only ones that can detect, and block these. Let me charge my carrier $10 for every fake phone call I get, and I promise within a month the problem will go away.

My crazy solution

[asackett]

I have a Googod Voice number in an area code where I know no one. All calls from that area code are junk.

Opportunity to learn how to program robot dialers

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, wrong site, it's SlashDuh again, where all the weeping an wailing about phone dialers occurs. Where's the site where the programmers trade default
and discovered passwords for the programmable robot dialers? Anyone making an illegal call to me, providing a programmable machine for me to play
with... fair game.
Here's a Google search for the interested:
programming the hot dialer (dtmf)

Re:Opportunity to learn how to program robot diale

[Anonymous Coward]

You are bragging about feats you could never perform in the vain hope of impressing strangers.

half?????

[Anonymous Coward]

almost all of mine are scams/spams. I get maybe one legitimate call a month. if that. but the thing rings several times a day and it's all scammers.

I doubt if the Feds will do anything about it. they're all "big business" types and don't care about the rest of us.

RE: Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I decided to chew up a bunch of their time once when i was bored. He got mad at me of course. I am pretty sure they then decided to use my number as the spoofed from number for a while because I received a whole bunch of people calling me back saying, hey your number just called and I missed it what do you want.

They do have a revenge option.

Whitelist??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there not an option to whitelist numbers like a firewall rule? You could direct all calls not in your whitelist to go straight to VM, otherwise they ring through. You can already block numbers but spammers use blocks of numbers, and a lot of times they are local to my exact citty, causing me to think it may be someone I know.

Re:Whitelist??

[Algorithmnast]

Simple - the phone companies make profit from the fact of the robocallers making calls. That's why they don't offer a WhilteList. However, one of the earliest replies offers a solution: Set your default ringtone to Silence and then add an actual ringtone to everyone in your Contacts list ... at least the ones from whom you'd want a phone call.

Re: Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

also we should start recording their voices and build a database so when skynet takes hold we can root them all out and and identify them.

i may have also gotten removed from their list once, all calls stopped for several months when i clicked through to a human and then just sat there and listened. he repeted hello several times and then i was clear for a good long while until i recently posted my number on craigslist when trying to sell something.

Our gov't is FAILING at its first duty

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who's played Civilization knows the Code of Hammurabi, written in 1700 B.C. But Civ never tells us this is written in the code:

"The first duty of government is to protect the powerless against the powerful."

Nor does your typical high school civics class tell us that Thomas Jefferson said the purpose of representative government was "to curb the excesses of the monied interests."

Our government and both of its 2 ruling parties are simply failing the American people.

Let the caler pay, like in the rest of the world.

[blind biker]

hello USA, rest of the world here: we don't have this massive scam call problem, because here it is always the caller to pay.

Frankly, this is a Planet USA peculiarity. I am sure you guys can't, for the most part, imagine how it could even be possible to be otherwise than in the USA, but it can.

I wonder if there's a free market solution...

[mark_reh]

C'mon, the "free market" fixes all problems, answers all needs, satisfies all hungers...

Imagine how subscription rates would soar if one of the cell carriers advertised that automated crap-call blocking is part of their normal service. Pretty soon all the carriers would be blocking these calls.

Super Easy Solution

[WindowsStar]

Let callers that receive these call press #99 or something and that would send a report back to the cell company and flag it. Then on the back end they can trace it if it if fake block system making the calls. The tech is already in place.

Simple solution

[nehumanuscrede]

Don't answer your damn phone if you don't recognize the number.

They'll leave a message if it's important.

Problem solved.

Even when you send them to voicemail

[Anonymous Coward]

they are a problem as they fill up your mailbox... Wish I had way to have the user authenticate before leaving a message like " enter this users favorite number "

Re: Opportunity to learn how to program robot dial

[reiterate]

Just like the good ol days

USA had a weird model

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be free to receive calls. The caller should pay all charges.

That make spam callers less profitable and removes any cost to the victim

Trivial to fix

[TiggertheMad]

These are fine ways to fix the problem, but completely unnecessary. The phone company could fix this problem if they wanted to, but they make money from letting it persist. The one way to fix the problem once and for all, is to make it unprofitable for the phone company to facilitate this behavior. Just slap a 10 million a day fine on the phone company for each day there is a complaint registered, and the problem will 'fix' itself inside a week.

Its the fuckers running things. They don't give a shit about customers if it means they make a few million more each year.

Get a foreign pre-paid cell number

[Anonymous Coward]

E.g. CitySim.net:
* Works on the AT&T network (but will connect to some others too, I believe)
* Gives _free_ incoming calls (i.e. no "airtime")
* Never expires
* fairly good data rates (for 1euro per year one gets 1.5 eurocent/MB rates)
* I suspect no spammer will call, as it is expensive to call (and what spammer tries to call a foreign number anyway?)
* Anyone who calls you will _really_ think about it (i.e. no chit-chat, only when it is important, including work)

Who is this Likely guy?

[Registered Coward v2]

I get one or two calls a week from him despite repeatedly telling him I use Linux.

SS7 was designed for fixing stuff like this

[Anonymous Coward]

SS7 was designed for this. Someone could hack together a db and code for the major modern switches in a week. FCC could force telephone companies to populate the db with ANI of the customer and their numbers. Or just what numbers the

Parking scam

[Spamalope]

A local city started requiring parking meter payments be made by phone app. I started getting scam calls the day I parked and every day after. Yay, full 'monetization'... - made mandatory :/ (all the non-metered roadway had new no parking signs - can't have that cash slip away...)

Easy fix - kill them

[nessman]

Once we start killing these people, the problem will start to go away. Own a robocall server? .45ACP to the head. Sit in a boiler room making calls? Off with your head! Just start killing them. All of them. I'd love to see some robocall center owner take a few rounds of 00 buck to the chest at close range. These people don't deserve to breathe. Fuck them.

Only half?

[walterbyrd]

I'm already ahead of the curve.

voicemail

[ole_timer]

if they aren't one of calls from someone I expect, and don't leave a vm for a call back, they get blocked

They get bold

[ebvwfbw]

I've seen numbers on my phone that were from Federal Agencies. They own certain blocks of numbers. When I picked up, it was obvious that was a spoofed number and another bullshit call.

So true

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife has a photography business, so her voice mail has her name and a full greeting on her cell number. She got an irate call the other day, and it was someone looking for my wife. Her number had evidently been spoofed, but the people who spoofed her number also harvested her voice from the greeting as the recorded voice people heard when the spoofed number called. PITA

Please don't let them fix neighborhood spoofing!

[kaatochacha]

None of my friends have the first digits of my phone. When I see that, I KNOW it's some loser and don't answer. It actually tells me they're a scam.