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T-Mobile Begins Verifying Calls To Protect Against Spam (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.

T-Mobile is beginning to roll out support for call verification technology, which will confirm that a phone call is actually coming from the number listed on caller ID. From a report: Now, if one T-Mobile subscriber calls another T-Mobile subscriber, the person receiving the call will see a message saying "Caller Verified" if they have a supported phone. Unfortunately, there's only one supported phone -- Samsung Galaxy Note 9 -- for the time being. Call verification won't put a stop to spammy phone calls, but it will start to help people identify which calls are actually coming from real people. As anyone with a phone knows, spammers have relentlessly spoofed local phone numbers in recent years, making it appear that you're getting an incoming call from someone you may know. Call verification is meant to combat that.

1 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Only one phone, and only TMo to TMo? by Mousit · · Score: 5, Informative

    Really? Why bother, TMo?

    That limitation is temporary. I wish the summary had bothered to mention anything about the technical side of what T-Mobile's doing, because it's news for nerds after all.

    What T-Mobile is implementing is a technical standard known as STIR/SHAKEN which is explicitly designed to prevent spoofed calls, among other things. Even the FCC itself (PDF) back in 2015/2016 was big on this particular framework for combating robocalls. So much so that one of the very, very few things Ajit Pai managed to do right for consumers was have the FCC require (PDF) that U.S. telecoms implement STIR/SHAKEN, and do so "without delay". Oh yeah, and they're required to interoperate.

    So right now the Note9 is the first phone to support it. Others will follow. I'm sure Apple devices will get it quickly, probably with iOS 13 this year. And to respond to your specific complaint, it's "only TMo to TMo" right now because they're the first to implement the framework. Once the other telcos get their STIR/SHAKEN setups going, calls between networks should also be able to be verified.

    And just for funsies, here's a full hour-long (!) video on the framework and how it works, as well its status in various countries, not just the U.S.