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Americans Got 26.3 Billion Robocalls Last Year, Up 46 Percent From 2017 (washingtonpost.com)
Americans are now getting so many robo-calls on a regular basis that many are simply choosing not to answer the phone altogether. From a report: That's one big takeaway from a report [PDF] released Tuesday by Hiya, a Seattle-based spam-monitoring service that analyzed activity from 450,000 users of its app to determine the scope of unwanted robo-calling -- and how phone users react when they receive an automated call. Consistent with other analyses, Hiya's report found that the number of robo-calls is on the rise. Roughly 26.3 billion robo-calls were placed to U.S. phone numbers last year, Hiya said, up from 18 billion in 2017. One report last year projected that as many as half of all cellphone calls in 2019 could be spam.
While many businesses have legitimate purposes for using robo-calls -- think package delivery services, home maintenance technicians and banks -- unwanted robo-calls represent a growing challenge for regulators and telecom companies. In its analysis of a month's worth of calling data, Hiya found that each of its app users reported an average of 10 unwanted robo-calls. Many more incoming calls, about 60 on average, were from unrecognized numbers or numbers not linked to a person in the recipient's address book.
While many businesses have legitimate purposes for using robo-calls -- think package delivery services, home maintenance technicians and banks -- unwanted robo-calls represent a growing challenge for regulators and telecom companies. In its analysis of a month's worth of calling data, Hiya found that each of its app users reported an average of 10 unwanted robo-calls. Many more incoming calls, about 60 on average, were from unrecognized numbers or numbers not linked to a person in the recipient's address book.
Run on a campaign of executing robocallers and spam mailers and you'll get a thousand times the voters.
unwanted robo-calls represent a growing challenge for regulators and telecom companies
Hardly.....isn't it fully within the capabilities of the telecom companies to stop third-party caller ID spoofing?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
You thought the Drumpf administration was going to solve a real problem like this under Ajit Pai. Now, look around the room. Those people with their hands raised are fucking morons. You may put them down now.
How does this report no that 60 calls were numbers not in my address book? How do they have access to my address book and all my inbound calls and are able to make that correlation?
Telcos have 0 incentive to resolve this issue. They get paid every time a call traverses their lines, and they desperately want the wireline phone system to die so they can get out of regulatory obligations, maintenance costs, and union obligations. The only chance they have to allow this to happen is if customers get so annoyed with the service that they cancel, and when enough people cancel they can make the case to shut it down.
a growing challenge for regulators and telecom companies
And that challenge is: How to placate the plebs without actually taking any action that would jeopardize the fortune they make off of allowing these abusive calls.
I'm sure Ajit Pai and his masters will feed us something good!
About 26.1 billion of those were Chinese embassy scam calls to my cell phone.
Oh so they can track exactly how many but can't block them using existing laws?
Yeah , I think the FBI are too fucking lazy, love too much dick in their ass, and don't give a SHIT about the average American. FBI serves faggots interests only, since the founder was a faggot.
Some of these bastards are using phone numbers in the same exchange YYY of XXX-YYY-ZZZ, so that the number looks familiar... They don't even have to buy a number, they can just spoof the caller ID.
Why, in 2019 can't I trace calls coming to me? (and have it be accurate)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
My cell phone rings constantly with every scam attempt in the world. About a year ago I just blocked all numbers not in my contacts. But now I get a ton of voicemails I have to constantly delete.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
TFA is concerned only with the US, no mention of anything else from the Americas.
Why hasn't phone company greed solved the problem by now? This seems like the perfect opportunity for the cell phone network to switch to caller pays, and bill for every single call attempt, even if it doesn't connect.
This is proof positive that phone companies aren't motivated solely by greed—they're also actively working to piss off as many people as possible.
When I lived in the US I got constant calls and sms.
Here in the netherlands I haven't had a spam call in more than 10 years.
Good thing I registered with the 'DoNotCall' registry. I cannot wait for the government to take over healthcare, something much less important :(
I get a call from a number I don't recognize then I don't answer. They get one chance to leave a message. If they fail to do that they are blocked. Life is too short for a more forgiving policy.
The entire voice telephony system is untrustworthy and ripe for disruption. The only thing tying us to that broken pile of garbage is the phone number. Let's replace phone numbers with domains and put public keys into DNS to prevent spoofing. We could use E.164 as a compatibility layer for phones that have no way of entering alphanumeric addresses, but I'd argue for a clear cut.
Americans Got 26.3 Billion Robocalls Last Year
It's has to be more than that. I feel like I had 2.6 billion myself.
In all seriousness, I get an insane number of them. My home landline typically receives 5 calls before 10am every morning lately.
But my favorites are the ones that come to my work mobile. I can't figure out why my social security number keeps getting canceled. Or the warranty, that I don't have, on my car keeps expiring. My student loans are also past due, even though I don't recall ever getting any. It's been quite a few decades since I was in school though, so maybe dementia is kicking in.
It's treason albeit without war "declared" - but Russia is absolutely not a neutral country, they are an adversary / enemy under Putin. It's treasonous.
Yes, I'm aware "treason" as a formal requires war declared, thank you pedant. Every single other aspect of that term is met. It applies just fine.
Might this solve the problem?
I get massive amounts of spam and yes, robocalls.
Corporatism != Free Market
I guess you're butthurt about having to share Putin, demoKKKrat communist loving dirtbag. You've been fellating him all along. You want to make the US just like the USSR.
Robocalls make them money in talk time they can charge customers. Telecom's spend a lot of money in technology that can throttle connections. They could invest in tech to limit or eliminate robo calls, but there is no money in it for them, (even though they got a big tax break) so they just don't do it, and they don't care. As consumers our choices are limited, and as far as I know none of the carriers deal with robo calls in any real way.
Seems about right to me.
Actually got a scam call while typing this...
Just give the FTC drone strike authority and problem solved.
1. They're flat-out scams. All of them.
2. They don't identify themselves, instead using some generic name like "Card Services".
3. They robocall all phone numbers, including mobile phones, in violation of the Do Not Call List, as well as the Telecommunications Act.
4. They fraudulently fake caller ID. And randomize it so it's never the same number twice. And use related prefixes to trick you into thinking it's a local call.
5. They start with a pre-recorded message intended to mimic a live caller, to trick you into thinking you're talking to a person. "Now, are you the homeowner?"
6. etc
Everyday I am getting a robo call, allegedly from Philly. I say "allegedly", because it could be coming from anywhere in the world, and thanks to the criminal incompetence when Caller ID was designed and introduced decades ago, anybody can very easily spoof whatever number they choose. Only now are we starting to see some half assed non-universal security measures being introduced to try to combat this.
I rarely answer the phone these days. At home I've turned off the ringer on the land line. On my cell I look to see if it is a known number or not.
Last week I had a repairman coming to the house, and I missed several calls that I should have taken. My insurance company called me with an important announcement - I let it go to voice-mail.
Why? Because 99.999% of all calls are spam/scam calls. That is my new conditioned mindset. If I'm not answering the phone, legit companies need to find a way to get a hold of me. The phone isn't the reliable method.
Therefore, the phone will become obsolete.
I've lived in two different OECD countries and have had ZERO unwanted robo calls. In fact I can't remember having more than a handful of warranted robo calls.
Is my new best friend, judging by number of calls I receive.
Let the number I am really from be X, a number that I want to claim to be from be Y, calling number Z. Let us first assume that there can be a legitimate reason to spoof a number, and X and Y may be different (in normal cases, they will not be, but let's allow for the case where spoofing is permitted). You will see in a moment how this won't inherently be a problem.
If X and Y are different, X first tells Y that it is making a call to Z. If the number at Y recognizes X as authorized to make calls on its behalf, it adds a reference to Z in its cache and can be looked up later. Entries in the cache only stay active for about a minute or two, or until they are queried, and then they are purged. Single number residential lines have no such cache, the line must be awake and in use for a specific call for it to be queried.
When Z receives its call, showing up as coming from Y, it asks Y if it is currently making a call to Z. If the response is affirmative, then the number can be considered verified by a number reachable from Z. If the number Y is not reachable from Z, or Y otherwise does not answer (because it never got a request from an authorized X that it was calling Z) then the number will not ever be verified.
Until there is a response, the call display device can show the number claimed as unverified. Note that if a person answers the phone too quickly, the number may not be verified before they pick up, but should be shortly afterward.
If X conspires with some number Y which is reachable from Z, the recipient can still block calls from Y. It is not feasible for X to keep arranging for many different Y's which are all reachable from Z to be able to respond to these queries on its behalf.
This entire system allows call centres which may have direct lines to make outgoing calls and still use a main office number as the one to show on call display, and does not completely break compatibility with existing phone technology with unverified calls where the relevant exchanges have not yet upgraded to that technology.
My 2c.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
ORANGE MAN BAD! Arglbrglaglbrgl!!!Eleventy!!!
Show me on the doll where the orange man grabbed you.
My solution (and that of many of my friends) to robot calls is to simply not answer any calls from numbers I do not recognize. I expect people who wish to contact me to leave a voice mail message from which I can call them back. Yes, some robot calls leave voice mail, but it is much less annoying (and takes fewer minutes) to delete them as soon as they start their playback..
You'd have to do this through legislation, since the telcos are never going to cannibalize that sweet, sweet robocall revenue stream, but if you implemented a small fee from the caller to the recipient - say, a nickel - this problem would dry up. Friends and families that call each other would essentially keep trading that nickel back and forth, so there'd be little to no real net cost. Same for legitimate businesses that both receive and make calls. It only becomes costly when you start calling millions of people, and a few dollars back on your phone bill each month would at least make you feel a bit better.
That volume of calls coming into the wireless carrier must leave a huge footprint.
Either they're getting a cut, or they're willfully ignoring it.
If a caller wants to spoof their number, charge them a dime. If there were 23B calls spoofed, that is 2.3B cost for them. Me thinks it would stop immediately. Any valid caller like your bank or whatnot can absorb the extra dime. They hopefully are not calling customers that often, or let them call with the manager's direct number instead of a spoof line.
Legislate a new law that sets a minimum bounty reward for information that leads to the arrest, conviction and castration of robo callers. The bounty is paid from the convicted robocaller's assets. So the investigation required becomes self funding as long as the minimum bounty is set by law at a high enough reward.
It will create new job opportunities for the people so inclined, and with the right skills to track down these scum.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Too much spam. Email tools are getting much better. Phone apps don't seem to be there yet.
Yeah, right? Like oh my god, robots receiving calls from robots?
Who else would put up with a two party (binary) system and call themselves a democracy?
All I had to do was change how I answer the phone. When a person answers the phone, the recipient usually says something like, "Hello?" Most robocallers wait for that and interpret that as being a human on the other end of the line. At that point, it spews out its spiel like, "Your warranty is about to expire on your car. This is definitely not the last time you will hear from us. Press 1 to talk to a human who wants to scam you out of your money. Press 2 to not be removed from the list and you will get another call from us in the next 48 hours once you've had a chance to think about how much you really do want to be scammed."
However, if the person doesn't say anything, the system will wait 15-30 seconds and then automatically hang up. When it hangs up, two things happen: You never hear the scammer's automated message and...the phone number is removed from the calling list, which causes the robocaller to cease making calls. Repeat that process a half dozen times and the robocalls drop off like a rock after that. Pressing buttons or anything constituting an "action" tells the system that there's someone there. Not doing anything causes the system to think nothing is there and that its time is just being wasted. There are plenty of suckers out there, so removing the unresponsive phone number just cleans up the calling list to increase the likelihood of finding a person they can scam/con/whatever. Putting a number on the Do Not Call registry is an open invite to receive robocalls because that means those numbers most definitely want to receive automated phone calls.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=nl&sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bel-me-niet.nl%2F
One side shut down the government on a bullshit whim based on known-false info and cost the country BILLIONS for NOTHING. The other side tried to get a compromise on health care and faced the same GOP obstructionist bullshit.
You're trying to pretend it's 50/50, because that's exactly the sort of bullshit math the Republican faggot traitors causing the problem have put out as bullshit PR.
You want solutions? Stop supporting baldfaced liars and pretending they're 50% correct just because they have an unsupported alternate opinion about the laws of physics. You're a known moron equivocator.
Stop supporting bullshit if you don't like bullshit, bullshitter.
We need laws forcing TelCo's to pass along the real number of who is calling in caller ID with 2 exceptions.
1) Someone explicitly blocking their caller ID info, most people would just have their phone set to block receiving these calls
2) An organization who has a licence from the Government to translate a specific list of phone numbers to one more simplistic number. (so for example a legitimate company with a customer service call center) if an organization is found abusing their licence then the Gov't and/or TelCo's can revoke the licence making only the real number show when dialing out, or blocking calls from that organization all together.
Also all numbers should be registered into categories so a category ID/name is transmitted in the Caller ID data. (Business, Residential, Sales Center, Customer Service, etc...)
That is only 110 calls per year per US resident.
Just get a 900 number. The robo callers and telemarketers get charged charged a fee every time you answer, but you can refund the fee to your friends and legitimate callers. Problem is either solved, or you just sit back and rake in the cash.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
He will probably point you to Snopes and tell you to piss off. And your disbarment request will generate a lot of laughs.
They always testify to congress that this probel is just too tough to solve and they do not know where these calls come from.... Call your congresscritter and point out the following facts:
[a] The phone companies have to know where calls are coming from in order to route them and also to bill for the service.
[b] The phone companies make money charging for all the lines that run into any call center or robocall hub, and they can easily see if the phone lines from one of those centers are dialing sequences of numbers or all numbers in an area, etc.
[c] Because the phone companies are charging for all the lines used by the robocallers, the phone companies are in fact making money from all the robocalling and it is therefore not in their financial interests to limit robocalling in any way.
[d] Since the phone companies have control of their lines and signals, there is no reason for them to allow caller ID spoofing. They can easily determine if any call they are routing is reporting a false originating number.
I constantly get calls from a robocaller on my phone. all attempts to block have failed, as they keep using new random numbers with the same prefix of my google voice number - which is different than the Verizon number assigned to the phone.
The calls to my work phone started 6 months ago and the number is always blocked. I rarely receive phone calls at work, so the robocalls are the most frequent use of that phone.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Right here, he grabbed me right in the pussy.