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Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

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Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#41

Post by gonehome »

Clubber wrote: post #35
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.

Yeah this is called 'neighborhood' spoofing - they do it to get numbers similar to yours (sometimes they'll even appear as a known contact).

I use an app called nomorobo ($2/month) that's basically a blacklist that gets continually updated to block these calls prior to ringing my phone. The way they deal with the neighborhood spoofing is having local access to your contacts so they don't accidentally block any real numbers (though those that happen to be an exact match will go through).

My spam calls went from one to two a day to zero.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#42

Post by ravenstine »

pmcollins wrote: post #29
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.

I'm baffled that telcos allow this, regardless of regulations. I get so many robocalls, I stopped answering my phone. But when I get a FaceTime call or an iMessage, I'm on it. Robocalls dilute the trust consumers have in the phone system. The telcos are rapidly ceding this trust to other forms of communication -- those provided Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. As robocalls proliferate, tech companies win and telc…

Telcos are complicit in the crime because they know they're going to make money no matter what. Everyone is paying for 4G LTE and 5G now, and that's not going away. Why bother fixing the legacy phone system when it still brings in extra cash the way it is?

I for one have had calls disabled on my phone for a long time. Couldn't be happier. AT&T, Tmobile, etc... it didn't matter what carrier I had, they would all tell me to install some 3rd party app to block "unknown" calls and robocalls. Absolutely ridiculous.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#43

Post by randomerr »

blang wrote: post #33

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 calli…

I think phones are stilled needed. They're still the most reliable form of communication. But I see most people switching to white lists. Anyone not in your address book will get sent to voicemail right away.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#44

Post by jpindar »

I too have mostly stopped answering calls from numbers I don't recognize.

What I get are not spam calls, but silent calls. When I answer them there is no sound at all from the other end. If I let calls go to voice mail they leave long silent voicemails.

I also get calls which ring for only a couple of seconds, hardly long enough to reach for my phone before they hang up.

I've heard that these may be scammers trying to trick me into calling back, so they could charge me however many dollars per minute.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#45

Post by delinka »

Clubber wrote: post #35
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.

They've been spoofing numbers for quite some time. It only stands to reason that randomly generated spoofed numbers will be numbers belonging to other owners of phones. They think they're being clever about it: use the same area code and exchange numbers as the target, and randomly generate the final digits, hoping you'll think you know the caller and will answer.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#46

Post by gowld »

marze wrote: post #40
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.

Their business model is data collection and advertising, not sale of collected data.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#47

Post by gowld »

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…

> without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA

Time and place. Zuck's job there was to defend facebook from retaliation, not piss off Congress with whatboutism.

Congressional hearings are show trials, not courts of justice.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#49

Post by gowld »

jpindar wrote: post #44

I too have mostly stopped answering calls from numbers I don't recognize. What I get are not spam calls, but silent calls. When I answer them there is no sound at all from the other end. If I let calls go to voice mail they leave long silent voicemails. I also get calls which ring for only a couple of seconds, hardly long enough to reach for my phone before they hang up. I've heard that these may be scammers trying t…

Unless you are unfortunate enough to have a legacy home phone line, you should configure your (personal) phone to not ring for unknown numbers; maybe to let it ring if the same caller calls back twice in your succession.

New contacts can leave a message, and you can call back and add them to contact book if desired.

> trick me into calling back, so they could charge me however many dollars per minute.

Yup. Bitcoin scammers and dark-pattern website builders have got nothing on classic telecom scammers, exploiting fundamental flaws in the trust model.

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