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Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

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Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#51

Post by samstave »

gowld wrote: post #47
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.

>Congressional hearings are show trials, not courts of justice.

Exactly, given the fact that most of the senators were donated to by FB prior, and the fact that they all had met days before the "hearing" and had conversations about FB etc, I am pretty sure it was bunch of congressional dinosaurs attempting to be sycophants in the private pre-meetings/dinners...

Its a farce. And given that FB tracks even physical people without their permission, or consent - FB is a social cancer just waiting to metastasize.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#52

Post by jto1218 »

gonehome wrote: post #41
Clubber wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

I've been using a free alternative to Nomorobo called Hiya that's been working really well, for what it's worth.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#53

Post by mintplant »

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 feel like I've read the exact same HN comment, comparing Facebook to the NSA, five times in the past couple days. Here it's barely tangentially related to the topic at hand. Is there some sort of mini PR push going on to mitigate FB's recent reputational damage?

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#54

Post by gowld »

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.

Wait at least 3-7 years until the pro-freedom-to-pursue-life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-property FCC & FTC are out of power.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#55

Post by jschwartzi »

delinka wrote: post #45
Clubber wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually use this to screen calls because my exchange and area code are from T-mobile in Pierce County WA circa 2003 and I've long since moved away from that area.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#56

Post by komali2 »

epalmer wrote: post #14

I am 64 and am approaching the date I can enroll in Medicare. I am getting 30+ robocalls a day at home and a handful at work and on my mobile phone trying to sell me medicare supplemental plans. We just let the home phone roll to VM now. I don't answer the work phone and only my mobile phone if I know the caller. Grrrr.

Given your age and the fact that you're posting here I'm gonna safely assume you know more things than me, but just in case you haven't given it a shot - I took a custom google voice number and almost never get unsolicited robo calls on it. The only ones I get are from a couple debt collectors that are tossing around an old hospital bill they can't decide if I need to pay or not, i.e. they got my number relatively legitimately.

Not sure if this is because of some sort of built in spam protection, or if because my area code is weird,but, worth considering?

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#57

Post by gonehome »

jto1218 wrote: post #52
gonehome wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

I've been using a free alternative to Nomorobo called Hiya that's been working really well, for what it's worth.

I think Hiya uploads your contact list to the cloud - I'd rather pay the $2/month rather than rely on an unknown business strategy.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#58

Post by Abundnce10 »

gnopgnip wrote: post #39
drewg123 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But will it allow me to block all calls from 604-232 and 604-234 that are not in my contacts? Because I've noticed a similar trend where I get calls from numbers that begin with the same 6 numbers as my phone number.. but I have friends and family with phone numbers similar to mine and I don't want them blocked. Just ones not in my contacts list.

Edit: I read a review of Hiya and it sounds like they're still missing what we're all looking for: "Two things are missing. First, the ability to block all calls not in contacts. I have to download a separate app for that. Second, on inbound calls from the same area code (i.e., spoofed numbers) it does not pre-screen the call."

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#59

Post by scarmig »

Imagine that, on average, each robocall wastes 15 seconds of a person's time. Let's round it out to 100M calls. That's 1.5B calls seconds, or over 45 years of times destroyed.

He almost murdered someone, spread out across 100M people.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#60

Post by teamhappy »

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 think they have to allow it so that services like call forwarding work.
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