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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... the call was to ask if he was happy with his long-distance phone carrier.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... 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.
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.
> > The US is a target because everyone knows our language and we have money.
> That doesn't explain why this problem doesn't exist in the UK and Ireland.
Because you don't have money?
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
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.
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!