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FTC Fines Four Operations Responsible For Billions of Illegal Robocalls (cnet.com)
Four companies that made billions of illegal robocalls have been caught and fined. From a report: The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday said the agency reached settlements with four operations responsible for billions of illegal robocalls pitching debt-relief services, home security systems, fake charities, auto warranties and Google search results services. The companies were charged with violating the FTC Act, as well as the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule and its Do Not Call provisions.
"We have brought dozens of cases targeting illegal robocalls, and fighting unwanted calls remains one of our highest priorities," said Andrew Smith, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC, in a release. "We also have great advice on call-blocking services and how to reduce unwanted calls at [our website.]" The settlements come as the agency focuses on combating illegal robocalls. The four companies, NetDotSolutions, Higher Goals Marketing, Veterans of America and Pointbreak Media, are banned by court orders from robocalling and most telemarketing activities, according to the FTC's release. Further reading: FTC Tells ISPs To Disclose Exactly What Information They Collect On Users and What It's For.
"We have brought dozens of cases targeting illegal robocalls, and fighting unwanted calls remains one of our highest priorities," said Andrew Smith, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC, in a release. "We also have great advice on call-blocking services and how to reduce unwanted calls at [our website.]" The settlements come as the agency focuses on combating illegal robocalls. The four companies, NetDotSolutions, Higher Goals Marketing, Veterans of America and Pointbreak Media, are banned by court orders from robocalling and most telemarketing activities, according to the FTC's release. Further reading: FTC Tells ISPs To Disclose Exactly What Information They Collect On Users and What It's For.
That'll stop 'em!
How can anyone read that and not think it is hyperbole?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Fines don't work.
Also, are these only for firms actually in the US? What about all the scammers in India and China?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
According to the article, it varied from $500k-$3m.
Depending on the size of the company, that could range from a slap on the wrist to bankruptcy.
Maybe we need to report fines in relation to gross revenue or net operating income...
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
...One can choose to listen or not. No?
Four down, an infinite number to go.
Here's a more worthwhile discussion topic: I'm not trolling, but do think the U.S. is better or worse off being connected to the rest of the world via the Internet? I've cleaned up so much malware from the vulnerable. I've discussed so many robo-scams with concerned seniors. I think of all the industrial/corporate thefts. I know of many municipal system hackings. And there's the successful religious extremism recruiting (and the clean-up we've had to deal with as a result). Etc... I wonder what y'all think the balance is.
It's been said before, but worth reiterating. The operations that were 'fined', likely run out of a condo suite, will fold without paying the fine, and then re-emerge down the block under a different name and do the same thing over again.
The growing telemarketing problem can be solved by simply holding the telcos responsible. Anything else is theatrics meant to distract the public from the fact that the telcos make money through this arrangement, and have successfully bought their way into Washington and the regulators there.
Where's jail time, bank account seizures and company liquidation?
Fines are nothing more than the price of doing business like taxes or kickbacks to politicians.
That link takes me to a really hosed up page.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
if not there's no point.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Since they don't tell us the two mid-range amounts, all we know for sure is that the total fines were between $4.5M and 9.5M for "billions" of calls. "Billions" is probably at least 2 billion, and likely more, so the fine per call was probably substantially less than $9.5M/2B =~ $0.005/call.
Meanwhile, a quick search suggests the going rate for legitimate robocall-selling companies is between about $0.06 and $0.02/call depending on volume.
So, at the extreme high end, the fines *maybe* amount to about( $0.005/$0.02=) 25% of gross income, and likely *far* less than that. $7M in total fines, 3 billion calls, and an average price of $0.04/call translates to only ($5M/3B calls / [$0.04/call] =) 5.8% of gross income.
Sounds like just the cost of doing business to me, hardly enough to seriously discourage other illegal robocalling companies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
From TFA:
The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday said the agency reached settlements with four operations responsible for billions of illegal robocalls
And:
The fines the FTC imposed on the companies and their owners range from $500,000 to over $3 million.
And the translation is: We don't care that you're doing what you're doing, just so long as we get a cut.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
While it is the FCC's job to regulate, it is Pai's job to prevent the FCC from doing its job.
This is true of most Trump appointments. Department of Education -- take money from poor public schools and give it to rich kid schools.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Robocalls are literally unkown in Germany. For one simple reason:
It is illegal to call a private person as a business, if you did not have business with that person before (and that person did not agree to using the number for marketing reasons, since the data protection laws).
It's literally that simple.
Businesses don't get robocalls because the sums of money their deals are about justify a real sales droid calling. And they will first have to get through the normal receptionist people and the like.
But what I really don't get, is why every American doesn't simply have a call whitelist function in their phone, thst whitelists their phone book, and looks up other numbers in a phone dictionary online, and completely hides then if the number cannot be found.
In case faking the outgoing phone number is possible, that is also an obvious fix. E.g all calls coming in from network X *have* to have a specific prefix. Nigeria cannot say "I have a call from Washington, DC".
But until then, look up "greylisting". That filters out at least 90%.
But whitelist based o your phone book would already pretty much solve it anyway.
Great story, enjoyed reading.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have a Samsung S8 phone and every time I get a robocall I add it to the "block this caller" list.
Which is fine as far as it goes; my phone doesn't ring for incoming calls from that exact phone number again.
But (and it's a big but) the incoming blocked call is routed to my voicemail and I get a message left there that I then have to take steps to delete.
It would be a lot more useful if block this call meant block this call and not just don't ring the phone but route it to voicemail instead.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
now they will be making more robocalls to pay the fine...
> how many of these calls do you seriously think they could make at once
2,000, per unit.
2,000 simultaneous calls is typical for an autodialer running on commodity PC hardware.
NOW do the math.
It takes several seconds to load a web page. With only 35 million seconds in a year, that means a company can show a web page no more than 10 million times in a year.
So for example let's Facebook, where a single user might load a page 1,000 times in a year. 10 million total page loads (based on second per year) divided by 1,000 page loads per user in a year. Facebook can have no more than 100,000 users. That's what you proved.
Unless of course a web site can serve pages to two people at once.* Or a phone spam company can set their computer to call more than one person at a time.
* That's not a crazy limitation. I have a web server that maxes out at two simultaneous clients. It's an ESP32, a $13 computer. So we can reason that the spam callers will need to spend more than $13 on equipment if they want to call billions of people.
He seems to be imagining some sort of system with a mechanical hand to give the crank 3 or 4 quick turns and then tell "Mabel" who it wants to call.
I'd think if you are using 2,000 lines to simultaneously and continually make calls 24h/day, that's going to raise at least some flags with the telecom provider. Also, while the cost of a single line might be neglible, the cost of 2,000 phone lines is not. In practice, there's going to be a much smaller limit on how many outgoing phone lines you'd get from companies that are not already well enough off that they shouldn't need to resort to illegal robocalling in order to generate revenue.
And finally, each call is going to take some amount of real time that is long enough to complete a call, let the phone ring, and leave a message. There are only so many minutes in a day, so that's going to put yet another cap on the number of calls that can actually be made in a given amount of time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
For your mobile, use Call Blocker by Vlad Lee. For your landline use nomorobo.com .
I have no association with either beyond being a happy user.
Here’s how I’ve almost completely eliminated this BS from my life:
(PS, scroll to the bottom for a PRO TIP!)
Step 1: set a ringtone for all contacts, or multiple if you want to differentiate between some callers or groups and others.
Step 2: set the default ringtone for unknown, caller-ID blocking or restricted numbers to “none” and vibration off, or if your phone does not allow that, to a ringtone that is a fraction of a second long, and silent. (I had to create my own one of these. Annoying but worth it!)
Step 3: create a lengthy outgoing voicemail message. If you like, start by saying “hello?” and pausing for a breath, then say “you’ve reached” and your full phone number including area code. (Just your number, NOT YOUR NAME. Whoever dialed u already KNOWS your number. No need to give a spammer or robocaller or a telemarketer, etc., either your name or confirmation of your number allowing confirmation of what name goes with what number.) State that you are not available to take the call, but if they will leave a message including their name and organization, their return contact number or address, and a brief message detailing what the call regards, so that when you’re at liberty to do so, you will be able to return their call.
Step 4: End your outgoing message with something to the effect of “if you do not leave a message with the required information, I will not be able to call you back. Thank you.”
The longer your outgoing message, the more of the robocalls’ BS you will chew up. Hopefully, you can exhaust the entire thing, and anyone who doesn’t truly need to get in touch with you will hang TF up without leaving a message. I periodically see someone has called, (“Missed Call!”) and I look at it; if the number is unknown, and a message wasn’t left, I generally just delete the notification. If it happens more than once with the same number, I block the number. This rarely happens.
Peace and tranquility RESTORED.
This technique has cut down wrong number calls, fraudulent calls, unsolicitated offers for goods and/or services and the like for me by about 99%.
Also, if your VM system has a feature that lets you skip outgoing messages, disable it if possible. If it doesn’t, or you have a landline instead of a smartphone, turn the ringer off entirely or use a conventional answering machine or service with the above outlined technique.
Good luck!
PRO TIP: Get a phone number that is NOWHERE NEAR anywhere you have ever lived, and where you don’t know anyone and anyone from there is unlikely ever to have a legitimate reason to call you. Some spam/robocall assholes try to exploit the fact that a call recipient is more likely to pick up if the call is local, i.e., in the same area code, so they actually make calls from there or spoof the caller ID. SO when you see a call coming FROM that area code, (your own,) you can be confident that the call is either a wrong number or fraud, and safely ignore it.
This approach’s biggest drawback is that by making it a long distance call, you are making it way more expensive for even a next door neighbor to call you, however, as far as I know, this is an obsolete concern as everyone these days with a phone gets free unlimited long distance anyway, so the distance of the call is irrelevant. I discovered this accidentally one day when I lived somewhere briefly but HAD changed my phone number to be local, (which in retrospect was completely f’ing pointless,) and after I moved away, since I didn’t get to know anyone there, I realized all the calls coming in were either wrong-numbers, or junkcalls.
I have now had the same mobile phone number going on 7 years, despite having lived in about 4 different places since I got this number, and I am now on my 4th phone carrier. True story.
I have no plans ever to change my phone number again.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
From everything you just said it would seem you think call centers don't exist?
That's all this is - a call center, with no minimum wage employees required because it's a recording.
If Mabel is a play on Ma Bell, then full points awarded.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And finally, each call is going to take some amount of real time that is long enough to complete a call, let the phone ring, and leave a message. There are only so many minutes in a day, so that's going to put yet another cap on the number of calls that can actually be made in a given amount of time.
My god, you are incredibly dense. I mean, even by slashdot standards, you are exhibiting a remarkable level of stupidity.
The amount of time each call takes to connect is irrelevant. Anything done at scale is done in parallel.
Here's a thought experiment: if a web page takes 1 second to load, how many web pages can a single server deliver per hour?
(Hint: the answer is way higher than 3600)
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Sure, but with phone lines, parallel isn't free. one phone line is cheap. 2000 of them? Not so much... especially after you factor in usage time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
>that's going to raise at least some flags with the telecom provider.
Why? I mean sure - they're going to know you're probably a robocall center, but what do they care? You're a nice tidy source of profits for them, they have no reason to shut you down. That's why there's pressure to try to pass a law requiring telephone companies to shut down robocall centers - because they have absolutely no economic incentive to do so.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.