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Why Robo-Calls Can't Be Stopped (washingtonpost.com)
"When your phone rings, there's about a 50 percent chance it's a spam robo-call," reports the Washington Post. Now a computer science professor who's researched robo-call technologies reveals the economics behind automatically dialing phone numbers "either randomly, or from massive databases compiled from automated Web searches, leaked databases of personal information and marketing data."
It doesn't matter whether you've signed up with the federal Do Not Call Registry, although companies that call numbers on the list are supposed to be subject to large fines. The robo-callers ignore the list, and evade penalties because they can mask the true origins of their calls.... Each call costs a fraction of a cent -- and a successful robo-call scam can net millions of dollars. That more than pays for all the calls people ignored or hung up on, and provides cash for the next round. Casting an enormous net at low cost lets these scammers find a few gullible victims who can fund the whole operation...
Partly that's because their costs are low. Most phone calls are made and connected via the Internet, so robo-call companies can make tens of thousands, or even millions, of calls very cheaply. Many of the illegal robo-calls targeting the United States probably come from overseas -- which used to be extremely expensive but now is far cheaper...
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission has been asking U.S. phone companies to filter calls and police their own systems to keep out robo-calls. It hasn't worked, mainly because it's too costly and technically difficult for phone companies to do that. It's hard to detect fake Caller ID information, and wrongly blocking a legitimate call could cause them legal problems.
The professor's article suggests guarding your phone number like you guard your credit card numbers. "Don't give your phone number to strangers, businesses or websites unless it's absolutely necessary."
"Of course, your phone number may already be widely known and available, either from telephone directories or websites, or just because you've had it for many years. In that case, you probably can't stop getting robo-calls."
Partly that's because their costs are low. Most phone calls are made and connected via the Internet, so robo-call companies can make tens of thousands, or even millions, of calls very cheaply. Many of the illegal robo-calls targeting the United States probably come from overseas -- which used to be extremely expensive but now is far cheaper...
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission has been asking U.S. phone companies to filter calls and police their own systems to keep out robo-calls. It hasn't worked, mainly because it's too costly and technically difficult for phone companies to do that. It's hard to detect fake Caller ID information, and wrongly blocking a legitimate call could cause them legal problems.
The professor's article suggests guarding your phone number like you guard your credit card numbers. "Don't give your phone number to strangers, businesses or websites unless it's absolutely necessary."
"Of course, your phone number may already be widely known and available, either from telephone directories or websites, or just because you've had it for many years. In that case, you probably can't stop getting robo-calls."
I use asterisk to screen calls. If it is an previously unknown number a message will request the caller to press a number. If the number is correct the callerid will be added to a whitelist and the call connected.
They should turn it into a source or revenue for the phone companies. When a phone call completes, have an option for the recipient to charge them $1.00. The phone company keeps half.
If they're making money off of this, then at some point a payment gets made someplace traceable where it can be prosecuted, no? It's not all bitcoin - the targets wouldn't be savvy enough to pay that way, right?
Anyway, if these things cost fractions of a cent to make, then the answer is to make all phone calls cost 1 or 2 cents - paid by the caller. I'd sure pay that for the calls I care to make in order to stop receiving the ones I don't want. Kind of like the idea of using a transaction fee to shut down robo-trading. If it hasn't happened yet, it's because lobbyists are paying for it not to happen.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I wonder if it's possible to have a reporting and billing system like this:
1. Answer a call, it's spam/scam
2. While the call is in progress, key in #, the last four digits of your number, # (or some sequence that confirms the recipient's number, and a sequence to identify the type of call, e.g. 55 for spam, 66 for scam)
3. That sequence immediately bills the caller $1 and/or blacklists the calling number.
This depends on being able to trace and identify the caller while the call is still in progress.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
The only way keeping your phone number a secret might reduce spam calls is if the current successor to NANPA (Neustar?) takes a currently-unused areacode, then uses it as the prefix for a random 40-digit phone number (approx. number of decimal digits in the largest unsigned 128-bit value), then allows consumers to link an unlimited number of randomly-picked numbers to your "real" one (and allow you to know what number an incoming call dialed, so you could program your phone to ignore incoming calls to your "real" number, but allow incoming calls to one of your incoming 40-digit numbers to ring).
Then, whenever you had to give someone "your number", you'd peel an unused 40-digit number from the metaphorical stack & give it to them (probably, via an app running on your phone).
If a specific incoming number of yours started attracting too many junk calls, you could unceremoniously nuke it & unlink it from your real number. Likewise, since you'd give a unique inbound number to everyone, you could do 'traitor tracking' & punish businesses that failed to safeguard your number.
Random dialing would cease to work, because a robocaller could literally try random numbers for HOURS before hitting a valid one... especially if the system were designed to detect and frustrate such attempts.
The same service could reserve the shorter numbers (say, 12-16 digits) for more public purposes. Say, I might buy a 16-digit number & post it to social media after linking it to a service that charges callers $20 to complete the call (if I answer) & pays ME $15 for answering it if I agree to talk to the caller for at least a minute. We could ALL have the equivalent of 1990s-era 900/976 numbers to give out to the public & use dollars as a tool for screening our calls. I might even set up one number with a $5 charge explicitly FOR telemarketers to call me at, agreeing to give them 5 minutes of my time in exchange for paying me to listen.
Or... I could point one number to a bot that answers the call, then makes the caller play "Simon Says" & spend 10-20 minutes answering captcha-like puzzles for the privilege of making my phone ring (or the privilege of leaving me a message) for free.
The spam calls I receive do not mention my name or any other identifying information.
As far as I can see, they are just calling numbers randomly.
I am skeptical that keeping your phone number confidential will make any difference at all.
it should cost 5 cents for every call placed. The money would go to the carrier of the person receiving the call and taken from the carrier of the person making the call. It would be up to each carrier to decide how to bill or refund the money to keep this simple.
I can easily afford 5 cents a call (note not 5 cents a minute). And Likely they would reimburse me an other casual callers, just not industrial scale ones.
This way no one has to actively do anything, like report a call. It just snuffs out the tragedy of the commons with a trivial fee.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It is far easier to place a SIT tone sequence at the start of your voicemail. The technique is shockingly effective. https://lifehacker.com/trick-a...
the carrier that transferred the call to my carrier gets billed. THey bill whoever gave it to them, and so on.
If you reach a point where it can't be tracked the carrier that can't track the incoming origin is where the net cost lands.
See how long they put up with not being able to trace their inputs!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We know what carrier every number belongs to thanks to number portability. That database exists and is updated frequently, or you couldn't port your number to a new carrier. This database enables carriers to connect outgoing call to the carrier who can complete the call.
All that needs to happen is for ATT, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile to verify that an inbound call seeking to be completed on their network comes from the carrier that number belongs to. If it doesn't, then it should be rejected. If those four carriers alone started doing this, I'm pretty sure robocalls would collapse because so many of them wouldn't get through.
One step better would be for all carriers to reject any inbound call using ANI that doesn't belong to that subscriber. Since individual carriers know what number blocks they are associated with and which blocks belong to their subscribers (all necessary for proper call termination), that database essentially exists, too.
All this mumbo-jumbo of "what about VoIP" misses the point; the calls have to enter the public phone network someplace, and ultimately in the jungle of low-rent VoIP carriers are circuits that enable them to terminate calls on the major carriers, those circuits cost money and the carrier is keeping track of inbound calls.
The fact that carriers haven't done anything like this really means they're part of the problem, making revenue off of it and are loathe to threaten that revenue.