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AT&T CEO Interrupted By a Robocall During a Live Interview (theverge.com)
At an Economic Club event in Washington, DC today, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was interrupted on stage by a robocall, pausing an interview in front of dozens of people and driving home that absolutely no one is safe from the spam epidemic. From a report: Over the past few months, regulators at the Federal Communications Commission have been feeling the pressure from lawmakers and consumers who are urging them to put an end to the relentless onslaught of robocalls people receive every day. Last year, consumers received over 26.3 billion of these scammy calls and the problem only appears to be getting worse. "I'm getting a robocall, too," Stephenson said during the Economic Club event, ultimately declining the call on his Apple Watch. "It's literally a robocall."
There is almost NO security whatsoever, and even a total moron can install an app on his phone to spoof somebody's #, potentally ruining the victim's life.
To not even have the most basic security in place when it was rolled out decades ago is criminal.
SHAKEN/STIR deployment should certainly be sped up, at least giving users the option to automatically decline caller-ID spoofed calls. This will make it easier on the abuse enforcement end to shut down their access to legitimate carriers, and also disable their grey routes (e.g. SIM boxes, shady VoIP providers).
I'm calling it. Who wouldn't shut off their phone ringer while doing an interview? BS, pure unadulterated BS.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
They make far too much money from people answering spam calls.
Am I the only one who doesn't see these?
I live in the eastern US, and I don't think I have received a single robocall in the last 5 years, and probably much longer than that.
I hang out with friends, beer and brats, at work, doing random stuff, and they don't appear to get them either from what I have ever noticed.
Who is getting all of these, and why? I believe it must be a thing because I keep seeing articles about it, but it seems like it's a different world from the one I inhabit. I don't see spam or robocalls at all. Unless I keep reading about them, I wouldn't think it's even a thing.
I don't even seem to get the calls which walk through an entire block of numbers in sequence. It just doesn't happen to me.
That sucks.
I believe you. It's just very different from my experience. I suppose I'm getting lucky for some reason. I don't know why tho.
Agreed about your caller ID point.
All that is required is:
(1) Reverse Path Verification (That is, do not accept terminations from a network that could not be the originator)
(2) Do not permit originators to set "Caller ID" to a number they have not rented (from the provider).
Problem solved.
However, this will never happen because in case (1) the terminating network makes money from terminating incoming calls. They will not make this money if they refuse to terminate the call. Therefore, they have an interest in not verifying anything at all as that will adversely affect their revenue stream.
In case (2) the provider (call originator) makes money from originating calls. They do not care that the "caller id" is fraudulent (and they know it is fraudulent because they do know which customer to charge for the call origination). They have an interest in not preventing fraudulent "caller id" since that will adversely affect their revenue stream.
There is absolutely no need for this Stirred and Shaken crappola that will do nought whatsoever.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that dingy-doofus was interrupted on stage by a robocall SINCE HE DID NOT ANSWER THE CALL AND NO WITNESSES HEARD THE ROBOCALL. It was more likely his boyfriend calling to remind him to bring home some more lube.
Turns out it wasn't a robocall, it was trump drunk calling him from the Roosevelt room in the white house. AGAIN.
I've seen a dramatic drop in robocalls to my cell phone over the past two weeks. Prior to last Monday my average was ~ 5 robocalls per day. Last week I had 2 all week. This week I've had 2 so far. I haven't changed anything - I've had the same phone number for 20+ years and same carrier for 10+ years - so I don't know what happened.
As much as I would like to think that John Oliver's move might have something to do with it, I still don't expect the FCC guys have any concern for us poor bastards on our regular consumer-grade cell phone plans.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Basically the only thing pushing back against the tide are around 2,000 nutjobs with homebrew Asterisk servers trying to robodial back against 100,000+ autodialers dumping billions of calls on the telecom network.
Thanks to robodialers being employed everywhere, they're pushing voice calls into obsolescence. My job moved to a closed SIP network off of PSTN years ago, and I only have 2 relatives left alive who send me PSTN calls, the rest text. When those 2 people die---no more need for voice service.
I've never had a robo call in my life. I don't live in America. I don't know the laws in my country, but the problem just does not exist here. I've had the occasional (like once every 2 years) have a random person call me regarding a survey or trying to sell me something.
While we are at it, how about home, office, secretary. Oh, and the same for all the other carriers, land and wireless. I sense a good Kickstarter coming.
Or how about 666 Satan join the dark side
You're just lucky. Once some asshole puts your number in the list though, you'll never be free of them. They call me 2-3 times a day now.
If only it weren't so fucking obvious. If he were frequently pestered by robocalls he'd be like the rest of us and simply never answer his phone, especially during an interview.
This is on par with that stupid Bill Gates bullshit "here's a jar of mosquitoes - see how big a threat Malaria is now?"
Who is getting all of these, and why?
Me. I am getting all of these. I have asked everyone I work with about it, and they too are getting them, and we are all on different networks.
Why? How the fuck should I know? It's a robocall - it's automatic (hence the name). A script cycles through every fucking number that exists and calls it. How are you not getting them?
Nobody would walk away from that thinking "even the CEO of AT&T can't escape them. I guess there really is nothing they can do about them."
Everybody would think that it's an example of how annoying robocalls could be and that telcos haven't done enough to stop them by this very example.
It's like having a police chief stage a stunt where he gets robbed during an interview hoping the audience would be fooled into thinking "crime's everywhere, nothing we can do about it".
I retract your Shenanigans.
maybe a dialtone patent troll at work? we have the horsepower to intercept every call in the US, voice print the caller and drop the packets if they like... why not just let the FCC let the NSA do it.. packet sniffing 101... smells like a scam, looks like a scam.. quacks like scam, walks and talks like a scam.. reverse traverse to caller via packets and disconnect service to foreign call center.. uh.. took like 10 minutes to for the NSA to add the rules to their filters and then click enable... no privacy invasion, just packet inspection.. maybe? maybe not?
... the call was to ask if he was happy with his long-distance phone carrier.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Fuck off, nlgger.
I've been seeing this so often that there's no way it's not deliberate.
... says only country where this regularly happens.
You just gotta get over the idea that everyone has a god given right to advertise to anyone anywhere. But getting that particular meme out of the US consciousness is going to be difficult.
I know you can setup asterix virtual PBX to have an automated system that makes callers answer some type of prompt to get your phone to ring. I don't think it will work on smartphones, but there must be some sort of thing that can do this.
That way anyone you know who calls you gets through automatically based on their phone number, anyone else will have to use touch tones to answer a basic question (like picking your name out of a 1-9 numbered list) or do some very easy math.
We're always told - don't pick up, don't engage. But the truth is, if we want to stop these robocalls, then if you can you *should* answer, you *should* engage, and you should try to keep a live person on the line with you for as long as possible. This will cost the scammers money... after all, talking to a human isn't free; that human is getting paid. Or if they aren't paid by the hour, then if they are busy with you who (presumably) knows its a scam, then they are unavailable to be scamming others.
If we as a culture decided to waste a few minutes of the scammers' time with every phone call, then they would quickly lose their value, and many scammers would go out of business.
1. Get a Google Voice phone number (or some other IP number)
2. Use it on all web sites, credit applications, loyalty cards, etc
3. Never answer it
4. If a number doesn't leave a voice mail, block it
5. Check the voice mail, if it's a scammer, block it
6. If it's a real call, let them know your real number
7. Now, setup a 'fake' email
8. Use it on all web sites, credit applications, loyalty cards, etc.
9. Check it from time to time in case email you want gets in there so you can update that one email
10. Move the rest to trash and setup trash to delete all email older than 30 days.
And .. probably the most important
1. Never answer a call on your real phone unless it's in your contacts. If it doesn't go to voice mail, it wasn't important anyway.
2. Stop downloading every stupid game, be more selective. This also virtually eliminates downloading a virus
3. Use incognito mode when shopping or searching
4. Be sure you don't automatically download pictures in your email client.
5. Only put on social media profiles the bare minimum information. And never make any of it public.
There .. solved that for you. Without the need for any government regulation. It's what I use and it works.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Your German is abysmal. More school, less race pride for you.
This would help solve a lot of this issues.
OK, AT&T. Then do something about it. Or is robocalling somehow profitable for you, so that you talk, talk, talk but give no meaningful action? Right.
i hear a lot of US people complain about robocalls, it seems to be a real, serious problem.
it's something i never ever hear about with my friends, colleagues, family, etc here in EU.
i'm really interested to know/hear why this seems to be a US only(?) problem, what's stopping robocallers in EU?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
This had to be a stunt. I mean what moron goes on a stage for an interview without putting their phone into do not disturb mode? These AT&T people may be evil, but they aren't morons. Hence this was staged. It was probably a call advertising 5Ge.
I could be technical problems.
That's what I've been wondering. The coincidence of the timing is interesting though.
Facebook, Google, and Uber had technical problems recently.
I've never used Facebook or Uber in any way, shape or form. Facebook of course has been known to build profiles of non-users but they've never had my phone number or any other information that I would enter in to it in the process of starting a profile. Uber should know little to nothing of me as I've never signed up for them or installed their app on any phone I've ever owned.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There is a very easy way to stop most unsolicited calls:
Charge a small amount to receive a call. Does not have to be much. All spam, including email and robocalls, is depending on the spam being virtually free. Make it non free and the business model goes bust.
Here in Denmark we have no robocalls at all and very few unsolicited calls by humans drones. The main reason is that there is no way to make a call to a danish phone without paying for the call. This is because by law the phone company is allowed to request a small regulated amount to pass on the call.
That's not a "rented phone number". By federal law that's my number. I can take it to another provider. It's like owning a static IP, vs. renting one from your ISP. You get to take it with you.
Which is good, because number lockin was a way to keep people from moving to another provider, and caused rates to go higher.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
It's literally a robocall.
Really? So you mean it's not figuratively a robocall? The pervasive unnecessary use of the word "literally" needs to stop.
Thatâ(TM)s all it would take to stop most robocalls.
My uderstanding is this: In US the reciever of a mobile phone line pays for the call. Not caller. So a robocall is essentially free of charge. Whereas in europe the caller pays. So the robocall is not as cheap. So it discourages calling a million recipients.
Imagine what would happen to spam email if youd havbe to pay even a small token amount per mail.
Just post your number here and we can take a look to see why you are being lucky. :-)
screw apple.
I don't get many on my mobile number, but...
I recently got a new Google Voice number, which I have never given out to anyone, and it gets repeated calls from the same number(s) (different numbers, but on any given day repeated calls from the same one) almost daily. I just disable notifications from Voice, and every day or two block and report as spam all of those numbers.
Even if you own your land, then you are still renting it, in the form of land seizures if you dont pay yearly taxes (rent). ANYTHING that requires additional expendeture to not be siezed is by measure rented. Now what things ate and what call them to manipulate complacency are often quite different
As someone who has had his land and vehicles siezed, you are correct. You only own what you can defend.
You keep what you kill, Riddick.