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T-Mobile Begins Verifying Calls To Protect Against Spam (theverge.com)
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.
so it will block spammers spoofing T-Mobile's numbers to call other T-Mobile's customers. But won't block all other spoofers. As much as I'd like this to be a good start, I can't see how it can be useful.
Seems like a feature that is all about unauthorized spam and not spam in general.
I think excessive spam is existential crisis for voice calling. I no longer answer any calls from unknown numbers as chances of spam are near-certain. This has been going on for couple years, to the point that I permanently silenced voice call notifications on my phone - no vibrations, no ringing. Consequently, now it is much harder for legitimate callers to get through.
AT&T and Verizon have provided services like this for over 2 years (Sprint may also). AT&T Call Protect is an app you can download to do so and it's free.
I would prefer to just whitelist my contacts at this point. If I don't know you, I don't want to take a phone call from a seemingly random number. With all of the problems around strangers and kids, I can't believe that the industry is so pigheaded on making this a standard feature.
I use T-Mobile and recently they have been marking some incoming calls as "Scam Likely"
It's disgusting that in this day and age we have to put up with spam calls that appear to be coming from the SAME bloody phone number as our phones!
I guess the telcos are more interested in money then respecting customer's time.
What can customers do to change the situation since the FCC appears to be doing fuck all about it ?
They need to just block anything that they can determine is spam. To start with, if the number is registered with the same carrier, it should be trivial to verify that the call is genuine, and drop it otherwise. Then they add something where they pass this verification on when sending calls outside the network, so if the call is from a number registered to Verizon, but Verizon hasn't verified it, it gets dropped, regardless of the carrier.
The lack of any system like this indicates that the phone companies don't want to solve the problem. I believe they make some small amount of money on putting calls through, and they don't want the volume of calls to drop.
Update the phone software system to get with the 21st century. A simple change, where the caller's provider takes a signed and registered cryptologic hash of the callers information and the receivers information and presents that during the call initiation, The receivers provider checks the certificate and verifies that the same provided information hashes to the exact same value, and that the certificate used matches the registered callers provider certificate, which is signed by a central governing authority in that country. At that point, the provider is verifying and attesting to the fact that the caller is who they say they are, and the provider is on the hook if the call was somehow spoofed within their own network.
Then add the feature where you push an extra button to encrypt the session
Which is why this is meaningless.
Corporatism != Free Market
Really? Why bother, TMo?
I really could use something similar on my landline. The technical prerequisites for detecting and preventing caller ID spoofing are there, but where I live (Germany) CLIRO is sadly only available for special called parties like police and emergency services. CLIRO stands for Calling Line Identification Restriction Override and means that the real caller ID is always transferred.
But perhaps something like CLIRO Light could be introduced, where spoofed calls are automatically rejected at the telephone exchange, without or without notifying the called party. I would happily activate something like that. It would kill 90% of all spam calls because the spammers would run a much larger risk of being identified and fined.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Is it just the United States that suffers from a non-functioning phone system?
Seriously, the US phone system is so over run with SPAM phone calls that land lines are useless and the problem is now destroying the cell system.
Do people in other countries suffer from the problem?
Anecdotally, I get very few spam / scam calls. I do get solicitations but those are from organizations where I regularly donate and thus do not mind them. Most of the spam I get is political calls during election season; and the occasional tech support / credit card rate scams.I work is slow I'll often play with the scammers for a while out of boredom. There's nothing like getting one to start screaming at you and laughing back at them.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"Authorized by who? For adjudicating spam, the receiver's authorization is what matters."
That is begging the question.
"In your first example, the T-Mobile authorized the business to send the messages, but their authorization doesn't play a role in whether it's spam or not."
Says you, and obviously me since that is the stance I took in the post you are agreeing with and repeating points from while taking a tone that suggests you are arguing. T-Mobile on the other hand would argue that they own the network and that mass and commercial messages THEY don't authorize constitute abusive and possibly a form of unauthorized systems access. T-Mobile could argue that even messages the user does want can be spamming their network.
""Authorized spam" doesn't really make much sense."
It does if other parties can and do have other ideas of spam and "authorized" than you, even if yours is the "right one." The post you originally argued with was using the term to point out and highlight what may well be shady practice by T-Mobile... if you are taking offense to it I'd have to question your motive because not having such a term makes it hard to distinguish between say a person sending a flyer with a roll of stamps and a business paying the USPS to drop everyone in a zip code with a mailer. As a user I want neither of them, the USPS might not want to call the zip code mailer spam.
"the user signed up for messages (he authorized the vendor to send text), so it's not spam"
Disagree, if I don't want to see it, it's spam whether I signed up for it or not. If you make me sign up for your mailing list to get a coupon, still spam. Everyone is trying to strongarm you into signing up for their crap or trick you into doing it accidentally or failing to provide a fine grain option allowing you to refuse advertising from them while still being signed up for business communication. Just because you authorize it, doesn't mean it isn't spam and your provider selling or endorsing it certainly doesn't mean it isn't spam.
In Europe, Calling Party Pays, is the rule, so spammers don't like to make spam calls to cell phones because it costs them money over POTS calls.
The phone system in the US suffers from being "first" and needing to provide backwards compatibility. We also have "called party pays" for cell phones, which means the spammers are free to call any phone number without any added cost.
So I'm not so quick to disparage the US's system, but obviously there are technologic solutions we need to apply here. I'm for requiring the verification and registration of all spoofed numbers, if it's not in the list and doesn't belong to you and you attempt to spoof a number, it gets routed to the great bit bucket and you get the "I'm sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed..." intercept.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That is begging the question.
No, it was precisely the point. Spam is UNAUTHORIZED, always. As soon as you authorize the contact, it is no longer spam BY DEFINITION. It may be commercial, it may be bulk, but it not unsolicited.
T-Mobile on the other hand would argue that they own the network and that mass and commercial messages THEY don't authorize constitute abusive and possibly a form of unauthorized systems access.
Oh for Christ's sake. There is nothing about them authorizing the messages, it has everything to do with the claimed SOURCE of the message (the caller ID data) matching the SOURCE of the message (the actual calling number as they know it from their own system information.) They can't authorize unsolicited junk messages to you, they don't have the authority, and THEY AREN'T CLAIMING THEY DO.
Disagree, if I don't want to see it, it's spam whether I signed up for it or not.
You are schizophrenic. If you signed up for the contact, then you authorized it and it is not spam. By definition. You may not want to see that specific message, but you did solicit it.
while taking a tone that suggests you are arguing.
Both of us are telling you that there is no such thing as "the authorized sort" of spam. Calling any spam "unauthorized spam" and then referring to "spam in general" means you think there is, indeed, authorized spam. This is IMPOSSIBLE. It does not exist.
And what T-Mobile is doing is not blocking spam -- of any kind. They make no such distinction. They are labeling some calls as likely scams because the caller ID data doesn't match their own verifiable caller source data. That's all. If you want to answer such calls, you are free to do so. If you don't want to, don't. Just don't fuck around with the definition of spam and try to argue that some spam is authorized and some is not.
Now that almost nobody accepts calls and relies on texts and messaging, it's a bit late for that.
Maybe it's just me, but if I see a call come from a number I don't know, I don't answer the phone.
Does this mean people have become Pavlovian to answering their phone regardless of anything else? Wouldn't it be easier to simply not answer the phone every time it rings? Or is that too simplistic?
I am worried that in the hurry to curb inappropriate number spoofing, we'll lose the ability to legitimately use such a service. They should have a system to check if the user is AUTHORIZED to use a number.
For example, as a physician I use a dialing service to be able to place calls from my cell phone to my patients, which identify as coming from my office.
It's for the same reason that TCP/IP networks and most of the associated protocols (SMTP, telnet, etc.) originally did not have any security designed in. During the design phase, the assumption was made that only trusted entities were going to be connecting to the network. Turned out in both cases that that was a bad assumption, unfortunately.
I wish AT&T would do this, as I get shitloads of calls on my AT&T service.
I've resorted to wildcard blocking certain partial numbers to help stifle it, but this is really something they could do on their end.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"And what T-Mobile is doing is not blocking spam -- of any kind. They make no such distinction. They are labeling some calls as likely scams because the caller ID data doesn't match their own verifiable caller source data. That's all."
For now in order to get better identification and exploit the new commercial opportunities afforded by net neutrality and if not T-mobile which admittedly is far from the worst along those lines it will be another carrier soon enough.
As for what is spam BY DEFINITION, there is no official and universal definition of this slang term and no amount of foaming at the mouth and asserting otherwise will make it so. I don't own one, you don't own one, and neither does anyone else. Opt-in, out-opt, at what point have you authorized it? Hell, messages from a script you yourself wrote blasting to your screen at annoying frequency is generally referred to as "spam." Pretty much any annoying and unwanted or bulk communication is considered spam. Why do you think everyone typically gets their own individual tagging capabilities for spam and not spam? We have some loose agreement on spam but individually do not agree on the details.
But using my definition available tools will work just fine targeting yours, targeting your definition I will still ultimately end up with a bunch of unwanted spam. Everything under the promotion tab in gmail is authorized spam.
For now in order to get better identification and exploit the new commercial opportunities afforded by net neutrality
This has nothing at all to do with net neutrality.
As for what is spam BY DEFINITION, there is no official and universal definition of this slang term
I'm sorry you came late to the party. Unsolicited commercial email. UCE. Unsolicited.
and no amount of foaming at the mouth and asserting otherwise will make it so.
That's right. Your foaming at the mouth about how you get spam after you signed up for a mailing list in exchange for a coupon for something doesn't make the email spam. It make it solicited.
Opt-in, out-opt, at what point have you authorized it?
I'm sorry that English is not your first language. At the point you authorized the email or contact. That is opting-in. When you sign up for it.
Hell, messages from a script you yourself wrote blasting to your screen at annoying frequency is generally referred to as "spam."
Only by morons who want to get worked up into a lather about all the spam they get.
Pretty much any annoying and unwanted or bulk communication is considered spam.
I emphasized the important bit. So you agree, if you have authorized it, thus saying you want it, it isn't spam. Good. Good bye.