Slashdot Mirror
John Oliver Fights Robocalls By Robocalling Ajit Pai and the FCC (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comedian John Oliver is taking aim at the Federal Communications Commission again, this time demanding action on robocalls while unleashing his own wave of robocalls against FCC commissioners. In a 17-minute segment yesterday on HBO's Last Week Tonight, Oliver described the scourge of robocalls and blamed Pai for not doing more to stop them. Oliver ended the segment by announcing that he and his staff are sending robocalls every 90 minutes to all five FCC commissioners. "Hi FCC, this is John from customer service," Oliver's recorded voice says on the call. "Congratulations, you've just won a chance to lower robocalls in America today... robocalls are incredibly annoying, and the person who can stop them is you! Talk to you again in 90 minutes -- here's some bagpipe music."
When it came to robocalling the FCC, Oliver didn't need viewers' help. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I don't need to ask hordes of real people to bombard [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of robocalling, I can now do it all by myself," Oliver said. "It turns out robocalling is so easy, it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it," Oliver also said. He noted that "phone calls are now so cheap and the technology so widely available that just about everyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls." Under U.S. law, political robocalls to landline telephones are allowed without prior consent from the recipient. Such calls to cell phones require the called party's prior express consent, but Oliver presumably directed his robocalls to the commissioners' office phones. Oliver told the FCC commissioners: "if you want to tell us that you don't consent to be robocalled, that's absolutely no problem. Just write a certified letter to the address we buried somewhere within the first chapter of Moby Dick that's currently scrolling up the screen... find the address, write us a letter, and we'll stop the calls immediately."
When it came to robocalling the FCC, Oliver didn't need viewers' help. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I don't need to ask hordes of real people to bombard [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of robocalling, I can now do it all by myself," Oliver said. "It turns out robocalling is so easy, it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it," Oliver also said. He noted that "phone calls are now so cheap and the technology so widely available that just about everyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls." Under U.S. law, political robocalls to landline telephones are allowed without prior consent from the recipient. Such calls to cell phones require the called party's prior express consent, but Oliver presumably directed his robocalls to the commissioners' office phones. Oliver told the FCC commissioners: "if you want to tell us that you don't consent to be robocalled, that's absolutely no problem. Just write a certified letter to the address we buried somewhere within the first chapter of Moby Dick that's currently scrolling up the screen... find the address, write us a letter, and we'll stop the calls immediately."
Why such a long period in between calls? It should be 90 seconds.
I live in CO now, so anytime I see my old VA area code calling my cell phone that isn't in my address book, I at least don't get tricked... but it's annoying getting one or two of those a day and you're in the middle of something and ring ring some spoofed number again. Seems to be happening everywhere! >:(
Nothing better than using a PAC to do the robocalls.
Make sure you get his five burner cells we're not supposed to know about. And all his kids.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That is actually funny, lucky for those idiots he is not calling their home phone.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Lol. Getting the message across using humor and millions as your witness :)
That's news to me, I was under the impression that it isn't a problem with a simple solution.
That linked article has a video that is not available in the UK - and other places I imagine. Here is one that works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... . It is cropped to pass youtube's flagging, so not the best (post if there's a better one), but if you want to see what the post is about it will serve...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I get @ least 3 of these a day @ lunch/dinner, despite having put myself on the NATIONAL "Do not call" list. Go figure. The world's lawless lately...
* @ least they're not clogging up my answering machine, MOSTLY (some do leave long messages though), & they're always bullshit I don't need or want too (of course, it also goes without saying I don't want these types of calls period).
APK
P.S.=> I'm sure I'm not alone in it either & NO they are NOT 'political in nature' which iirc, those types of calls ARE EXEMPT from the national do-not-call list (correct me if I'm off/wrong on that note, & "TIA")... apk
Best of luck finding a jury who agrees with you that this is harassment!
right up there with the telephone scammer who called the former FBI director
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...
Want to take bets on if they are all on the do not call list ?
My bad, it is an old episode. Who would have thought, you can't trust people on the internet! :D
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Of course it has a business purpose... to get press coverage, publicize his show on HBO, and get more viewers.
John Oliver is so cool... /s
What better way is there to get the rules fixed than using their inadequacies to annoy the hell out of those responsible for making them?
At least I believe that's what he's said on several occasions.
I guess the guy can't catch a break.
... would it really hurt to give some kind of warning to that effect?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sue the phone companies for selling a known defective product, caller ID. What percentage of phone calls either don't give an ID or give an incorrect ID? About 80% for me. That is s a defective product which the phone companies charge customers and they know it is defective.
A class-action lawsuit would bring an end to robohumping to an end very quickly.
How is this comparable to the telephone scammer who extorted money from old people? Derp. The reason they went after him is because he made death threats and stole from pensioners, not because he robo-called.
Are you simple or what.
Is this happening to anyone else? About two weeks ago we started getting regular robocalls at 6 AM local. (Usually they've waited until 8:30 AM local time.) And then, late last week we got one robocall at 5:15 AM. (I'm on call, so I *have* to answer the phone.) And this is to a cell phone! (We haven't had a land line for a couple years.) This is going beyond annoying, to the point where I'm going to start calling FCC commissioners myself.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I know it's annoying, but it's quite likely that the person who linked to it did not know it was region locked. I know that in many cases I would have no way of knowing and no reliable way to test if it was.
They DO have a legitimate purpose. The people being called are public officials. They are the natural recipients of petitions for the redress of grievances WRT communications in the United States. No law may abridge that right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Video unavailable
This video is not available.
You mean Mitch McConnell's hand-picked FCC Chairman hasn't solved this (or any) problem? I'm SHOCKED! https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/fbi-investigating-identity-theft-in-net-neutrality-comments-report-says/
One solution might be... pass a law(or have teleco's do it on their own(yeah right)) where any outbound call center within USA/Canada/wherever else) must register and prove they are not total BS'ers.. a license.
Then append any international call ID as 'int' or something...
Then simply have a reporting *455 or something after any spam calls you get.. If enough people complain within a given window of time the registered(and or possibly international, tho less likely cause of routing bs) service is killed/or blocked on citizen phones.
local/residential phones can be blocked just the same way, but no registering needed.. 'ie: they are not going to be spending hours dialing out repeatedly from their home phone..
Then also provide a system to 'ignore internaional calls'; This would also have the benefit of bringing support services back to north america, since many locals would refuse suck calls.
I get 4-6 junk calls a day, every day.. It costs me $2 to answer first one(prepaid).. I try never to, but when I'm expecting a call... I think verizon likes it actually.. I've had same phone number for 8 years or so, never give number out to utilities/services and forever get calls.. any suggestions? Most just hangup when I do answer.
Basically ingress filtering. If you are accepting an inbound call from a subscriber, any calling party ANI you pass should match DIDs for which you are the owner.
They know what numbers belong to what carriers so that they can terminate calls to them correctly. I mean, we have number portability and that doesn't work without a database that says which carrier each number belongs to.
If you do this you can go a long way towards killing off robocalling and other scam calls with forged numbers.
I'm sure the more legitimate call center business will get upset, many of them forge ANI for legitimate reasons but this can be pretty easily handled either administratively (by some form or signature from the number's owner) or on the back end with communication between the owner and their provider (so that the owner physically routes outbound calls).
Ordinary business phone systems shouldn't be affected, they're already associated with the DIDs they send out as ANI as well as any base numbers assigned to their phone circuits.
They have been, but those calls have exploded in volume in the last 2 or 3 years.
That is true, but I know for a fact I installed my robo-call blocking apps way before Trump was elected.
It is ALSO true it was enough of a problem when Obama was president, the FCC should have been doing something at that point.
Doesn't mean they shouldn't do something about it now as well.
One fun new trick I've just started seeing in the last few months - calls from *international* numbers where the number ends up looking like a local number - so a call from Greece for example has a country code of "+30". You get a call from 304-298-8442 (not a real number), and if you are not looking closely for the leading "+" in callerID, you don't realize it's international number instead of a number from West Virginia (for example).
Let that soak in fo ra bit - calls are so cheap that even if you start doing something about U.S. numbers. spammers may just move to international lines.
What I would love to see is a discussion of - what CAN the FCC actually do to stop this? What would work? Or does the solution need to come from somewhere else, like congress? Maybe a few spammers wake up to a Seal Team 6 visit, or inside a CIA black site? I'm open to ideas here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They're political robocalls, and as such they do not need a business purpose.
John Oliver does a lot of these little sort of revenge stunts. It gets a bit tiresome after a while, and I don't think it really helps.
I really hate Robocalls, and have gotten them for 10+ years now. That's over 3 different administrations, and now 5 different FCC directors. If ending robocalls was so easy, it would have been done by now.
I'm not a fan of Pai, but I have a hard time blaming him exclusive for this.
I've never had an early Rabo-Call that I know of, but I have had a handful come at 9-10pm at night... that's new.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Howabout doing your freakin' jobs and passing legislation to outlaw robocalls... oh, except of course during your campaigns. We wouldn't want to miss those /s.
ITT: people who are not lawyers telling us about their interpretation of laws they've never even read
I live in CO now
Ahh, then any moment you too can start getting the spam calls from Greece ( +303-XXX-XXXX )
If you see a + at the start, do not answer the call.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's harass government officials because we know we can get away with it, ha ha ha.
We'd start a media shitstorm if the other side did this, but it's fine because we're the ones who are RIGHT!
(This is what socialists actually believe)
You are barking up the wrong branch. You need to bark at congress.
What is the new FCC supposed to do that the previous FCC's couldn't?
There is a "Do Not Disturb" setting on Android that lets all callers NOT in your contacts roll straight to voicemail and no ringing of your phone. They can still leave voicemails if they wish, but they are easily deleted.
You're too boring even for spammers. You have nothing, no money. You're just a loser incel. Nobody is calling you.
So what is wrong with any of what I said there? Instead of down-modding me, please explain what the FCC can do? I am all for demanding the FCC do something, if there's something they can do - so what is that? What are we trying to harass the FCC into doing - exactly, with details?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Funny you skipped over the big, obvious one: by burdening the FCC with robocalls they'll likely be inclined to push rules against robocalls which will burden Last Week Tonight less with robocalls. It's also as if this were some sort of government petition against grievances about the business expense of dealing with all these robocalls.
If I had time, I would write an app that would let me add a number to a list to target for return robocalls. The way it would work is that I get the call telling me that there is nothing wrong with my credit, and I hit a button. From the next week, I return the call every half hour or so, and kindly inform them that there is nothing wrong with their credit either (aren't I helpful).
This sound innocuous, until you consider that they are bothering enough people who have the free app to have someone calling in every second. The amount of slashdotting will be directly proportional to the number of people they've irritated. And since I'm not using the phone anyway, it is no skin off my nose. Hopefully, with enough calls, their phone system will be rendered useless.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
>"Oliver described the scourge of robocalls and blamed Pai for not doing more to stop them."
Sorry, Oliver. Nothing of value was done under the previous FCC director, nor the one before, or before, or before. Stop making it sound like something should be different now.
Otherwise....
Yes, it is a serious problem.
Yes, we need some serious action taken.
No, just making it "illegal" or a "civil thing" isn't going to help.
We need better/accurate caller ID.
We need to make phone carriers responsible for allowing spam.
We need to have criminal penalties for abuse.
We need actual enforcement.
Sorry, no more time to post, I have to go manually sort through a dozen more spam call voicemails today, mostly robocalls, on my answering machine now, so I can see if my vet left a message with important lab results.
We already have laws in the books prohibiting telemarketing calls to cell phones and numbers on the do not call list. My cell phone number is on the do not call registry, and I still get telemarketing calls to it. Adding more regulations blocking telemarketing calls are unlikely to help, when they're currently ignoring the laws that are already in the books. So while Oliver's tactic may tickle the humorous irony meter, it won't actually solve anything.
The problem is there's no reliable way to figure out who is actually calling you. I get a telemarketing call, and I have no way to file a complaint or lawsuit against the caller - because I have no way to accurately identify the caller. If you want to fix this problem, that's what you need to fix. Pass a law forcing the phone companies to provide a way to accurately trace who is calling you the moment you receive the call. It'll be an uphill road because the telecom companies will fight tooth and nail against it (they make a good chunk of their revenue from telemarketers). And even if we win it'll result in prices going up (lower utilization of the network does not decrease the flat cost to install and maintain the network, so the telecom companies will have to charge more per call to offset the loss of telemarketer revenue). But it'll be worth it not to miss an emergency call from my credit card about "unusual" activity on my account, because I didn't recognize the number and assumed it was a telemarketer, and didn't answer.
Trying to stop robocalls is not a legitimate purpose? (Why does it have to be a business purpose?)
YES, THAT'S THE SOLUTION!
Put the one person that's trying to do something about the problem rather than greasing the assholes of his corporate buddies in jail.
Dumb fucking moron Republitard.
If any of them have an HBO go subscription you could add it to the EULA that HBO elements get to robo call you.
So how does this really solve anything? Other then giver Oliver's show a potential ratings boost. So your openly going to robo call the FCC and you announce this to the public? That's pretty dumb if you ask me.
But they tried to tackle it, and the little they did before it was undone in the current administration.
I mean they did, a long time ago.
But they tried to tackle it, and the little they did before it was undone in the current administration.
citation needed
... and, generally they just suck.
Here's the best one:
Tell me how I can make a robo caller so I can join in reindeer games and call those motherfuckers, too.
Thanks.
[John, from the IRS department of arrest yo ass]
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Don't you dare bring up a first amendment right that cannot be squashed by claiming that it constitutes "harassment" of a public official to contact them on their office phone. Next you'll be telling me that these calls are expressly authorized by the FCC's own consumer guidance, and I simply refuse to believe it. It's criminal -- some goober on Slashdot can construct a business purpose for it so it must be. I look forward to all paid lobbyists being charged with crimes for placing such calls using similar logic.
Yeah, I'm sure John Oliver will really regret consulting with HBO's legal team instead of Random Cranky Slashdotter #8723423
"... find the address, write us a letter, and we'll stop the calls immediately."
It should have been "Within the next two to three weeks" to be more authentic.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
fwiw most robo callers use 800 numbers and none of them honor the do not call registry. so how do you win when they don't care? easy peasy! yup, totally easy. and best of all, it costs you nothing but a little time and it costs them MONEY, real MONEY !!!
step one ...
using your speaker phone, dial their 800 number, press mute and then walk away
yup, just walk away and ignore the phone.
variation one, if you get a call prompt to press a number, do it. then walk away.
step two
goto step one!
what this does... from personal experience: .11 per minute. that was 25 years ago!
it costs them money. they have to pay for each call to that 800 number. mine used to cost me
does this work?
speaking as an old man who is crippled and has lots of spare time on his hands... yes
at first i tried the "press one to be removed" - that didn't work
then i tried asking politely - that didn't work
then i tried asking angrily - that didn't work
then i tried all of the do not call registries - that didn't work
infact in one case, google just switched lines and called me back from the same call center, line after line after line. that night i logged eight different lines from the same call center!
what does this cost you other than time... nothing but serious sh&ts and giggles, you are wasting their resources at their expense.
fact: i went from ten to eighteen calls per day down to one and that last one is based out of west palm beach florida...
The US federal government is required to listen to feedback from constituents.
You can call the white house every 90 minutes, if you like.
You can call your senator or congress-critter all the time too.
You can call the IRS, DOE, DoD, NSA, FBI, DoEd, DoI, the FCC, FTC, and any other department.
Once every 90 minutes isn't illegal. It is a political call making a political statement.
It is legal to spoof the caller ID number as well, provided you aren't pretending to be someone else and making money directly from the call.
But in the end, all this will do is piss off the people answering the phone.
I've dealt with the FCC a few years ago. A local TV station wasn't including captions in TV programs which they had captioning in for months previously. I had contacted the TV station and the people who eventually fixed the issue 6 weeks later when I got the FCC involved - it didn't work all that time - were the ones who fixed it. For 6 weeks, no captions. The FCC didn't fine them $0.01. I was pissed. It is hard enough being deaf. I found it strange that the president of the TV station asked me to call her next time I had any issues. Does she not understand what "deaf" means? Anyway, I have her email now.
The TV station should have been fined $1,000/day, minimum, for not following the law from the time they were notified of the problem. I did 20+ hrs of troubleshooting which was ignored by the TV station engineer. The fine should have been automatic and on the record.
In the end, the TV station wrote a report to the FCC which I was CC'd one. I responded with the fact they got wrong. They claimed less than 1 day of outage happened. That was total BS. Why would I notify them in August of an issue that they claim didn't happen until October? F^ckin' liars.
I get 4-5 a day. Disgusting.
Corporatism != Free Market
Their feelings are more important than facts.
Jesus APK - stop repeating yourself. Crawl back into your box under the overpass.
What are you, 12?
Have some links.
Come on idiots, they already get their share of spam plus the usual share of yoyos who call every government office possible to push their delusions. Why would they even notice his calls, unless they want to make an example of him? Only bad outcomes likely.
and that was without robocalling, robocalling being 100% irrelevant to speaking by phone.
They KNOW who they paid, they HAVE to. They paid 'em. So even if you claim that a situation arises where the number is falsely reported, they still know who they billed, so what frigging difference is it? The one being "falsely" used was getting paid for the robocall, and they will be "falsely" reimbursing the calls made that they profited from.
So you right wing snowflakes are upset at facts? If someone is white and bad, DO NOT CALL THEM BAD, 'cos that's unfair!!!!
Saw these guys on Shark Tank the other day: https://jollyrogertelephone.co...
With a little voice recognition we could turn this into a killer app.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Let's make it ultra easy for people to participate in this type of... let's call it "activism".
He's a buffoon- why is this news?
If this problem were really so hard to resolve, it would be an issue in every country. But it's not. The volume of robocalls in European countries is orders of magnitudes lower than in the US. I get maybe one every couple of months. That suggests to me the issue is much more one of political will and regulatory teeth than it is about technical challenge.
Part of the $TECHNICALITY is that it would cost some of the carriers a lot of money to block them. Not spent on the effort, but lost revenue from the robocallers (who DO pay for network use, even if it's a pittance per call).
As long as that perverse incentive is in place, don't expect a lot of action from phone companies to block phone spam.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Just leak their cellphone numbers. I'll be sure to call them every minute.
I don't think it is the network use that is driving the profit, but that they sell the ability to fake the caller ID numbers. They're entirely complicit, not just bystanders who refuse to do anything because of some passive benefit.
There are definitely perverse incentives.
What has often been proposed in the past is to force them to limit the caller ID choice to only other numbers on the same account. That would solve the whole thing, and they'd still be able to offer the legit part of the service. They refuse, because legit users are a small user base compared to scammers and liars.
Who do I trust to have a better handle on it, John Oliver and the lawyers at HBO, or random anonymous internet guy?
And I don't even doubt you're a lawyer. It is just that your swollen head won't make your opinion as important as the opinions of the lawyers who are involved. They put a lot of work in to make his show even possible.
You may not know this, but the guy on the screen talking in the first person is just an actor. He didn't actually do any of this himself, other than reading it to you. And maybe writing some of the jokes. Maybe.
Why obsess about Ajit Pai or whomever when the problem can easily be solved by using an app with better authentication - like Facebook Messenger or Skype or Duo or whatever? You get to control who calls you and confirm their identity much more reliably. We are holding on to technologies like paper mail and numeric phone numbers that have long be superseded with better solutions that need no government to regulate them.
That definitely wasn't APK. It used complete sentences and made sense. Totally out of character for APK
In Australia there is a Do Not Call list to which it is easy to submit your phones numbers. Telemarketers can be fined up to AUS$2.2 million in court for each day on which infringements occurred. I can't remember ever receiving an unsolicited call in the last 10 years. It's not that hard if there is a will for it.
The problem with robocalls is the issue with caller ID originates from the dialer's end not the receiver's end. This makes it exceedingly difficult to apply an effective unilateral solution within the United States. Many robocalls are already originating outside of the United States and anything you implement here will do nothing to stop those calls. Whatever calls still originate inside the United States will just move operations to another country. The only unilateral method the US could employee in those cases is to force carriers to block all calls from carriers in countries that don't control caller ID.
The biggest problem is spoofing numbers. 100% of the calls I get not on my Contacts list are robo/scammers/etc, which are considerable amounts, are spoofed residential numbers. Every single number I look up is from John, Sue, Betty, [...], in the community.
So if they did put a law in place to blacklist/block on robo-calls/scammers: by the end of the next decade everyone will have everyone on a blacklist.
The telcoms MUST figure out a way to fix the spoofing before anything else.