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Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

bloomberg.com

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Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#31

Post by icebraining »

mancerayder wrote: post #3

I'm glad something is being done and it's being reported. But it's only one guy, and there's an epidemic of these annoying calls. My elderly father gets dozens of them a week on his landline, and I get a spoofed number at least once a day, from an exchange very similar to my own. It's funny how freedom of speech is considered in light of for-profit stuff like this (in the Bloomberg article it was the misleading natur…

In an ethical world, it would be time for a flip: heavily regulate the commercial elements of speech.

You're lucky: in the US, that's already the case legally. There's no such thing as an hate speech exception to the First Amendment, and political speech in general is mostly untouchable, whereas commercial speech can be much more regulated.

Which is why this man is facing a $120M fine.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#32

Post by nonbel »

ghaff wrote: post #16
inetknght wrote: post #4

I've frequently wondered why, in this day and age, telcos are permitted to provide telephone service without any guarantee whatsoever of the originating phone number being accurate.

Part of it is that their are legitimate reasons to spoof CallerID such as when a company wants to set all outgoing calls to show the main company name and number, even when the call originates from a direct inbound dial line. Carriers could block calls from numbers that supposedly don't exist or dial out--and I believe some are starting to offer than as a service. But if they spoof as a real number, that won't work.…

>"If the average person was getting a hundred calls a day to the point where they couldn't use their phone service, something would happen."

This does seem to be the endgame. The last excuse I heard was "what if a friend of a friend wants to invite you to her party so she gets your number from the shared friend, and she also does the same for a bunch of other friends of friends?"

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#33

Post by blang »

I was wondering aloud at work the other day if robocalls could actually spell the end of the phone number. It is extremely rare that I actually make a telephone call to talk to someone, it's been replaced with facetime and google hangouts, and it's very rare that someone calls me on my phone number that isn't a scam call. Pretty much the only time I get calls that I need to pick up are when my kid's day care is calling to tell me that my kid is running a fever and I need to pick them up, in this case they could probably text or email me.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#34

Post by icebraining »

nemacol wrote: post #27
rubicon33 wrote: post #8

In the US we just had congressional hearings over Facebook. While Zuckerberg walked a fine line and performed as well as anyone could under such situation, I was left disappointed. He (more or less) took a beating from congress without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA, or anyone else who is breaking trust and downright abusing existing platforms and ignoring privacy. Robo…

That is very entertaining. Thank you for the link.

There's also https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/, though that one only answers calls, doesn't make them.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#35

Post by Clubber »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

In the US we just had congressional hearings over Facebook. While Zuckerberg walked a fine line and performed as well as anyone could under such situation, I was left disappointed. He (more or less) took a beating from congress without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA, or anyone else who is breaking trust and downright abusing existing platforms and ignoring privacy. Robo…

I've recently had a bunch of calls and it seems like the callers are spoofing other people's numbers. I came to this conclusion when I didn't answer and called back. It was just a regular person who didn't know anything about it. A few days later, someone called me thinking I was robo calling them.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#36

Post by portal_narlish »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

I get so many robocalls I don't even bother with call notifications anymore. If they're a friend, they'll probably text instead. If it's a business matter, they'll leave a message.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#37

Post by gnopgnip »

fosco wrote: post #9
rco8786 wrote: post #2

Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

Hiya on android will block calls from known spam numbers, or you can set it to allow the calls but flag them as known spam or telemarketers. It also supports blocking calls based on what the number starts with. So if you have a non local number, and spammers are spoofing a local number it is easy to block them without missing important calls. Lastly, how many calls do you get that are important, but not important enough that they would leave a voicemail?

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#38

Post by munk-a »

So reading through the article, his main argument seems to be

"There are bigger fish in the sea so why are you even going after me?"

In the US there is a real problem with selective enforcement in general but this is BS, the fact that someone else is breaking the law worse doesn't make your crime not a thing.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#39

Post by gnopgnip »

drewg123 wrote: post #23
fosco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling. I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important. Any thoughts on this?

Me too. The vast majority of my spam calls are on the local exchange for my phone's native number. I use Google Voice on a Pixel2, so nobody should even be using the native number. I've often wished for a way to either: Block any call for the native, non Google Voice number or Block any call claiming to originate from any number in the native number's local prefix. Eg, 604-233- I haven't found a call blocker that can…

Hiya on android will allow you to block numbers that start with a prefix, so you could block all calls that start with 604-233 604-232 and 604-234

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#40

Post by marze »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

In the US we just had congressional hearings over Facebook. While Zuckerberg walked a fine line and performed as well as anyone could under such situation, I was left disappointed. He (more or less) took a beating from congress without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA, or anyone else who is breaking trust and downright abusing existing platforms and ignoring privacy. Robo…

It baffles me, the outrage over Facebook data collection and sale. Isn’t it obvious that is their business model, and why they are worth $0.5 T?

They want to know everything about everyone. Always have.

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