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Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

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Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#91

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?

Hrm...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook%20nsa&sort=byDate&pre...

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#92
post #35

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.

It's been years since I looked at any of the telephony standards but... why is phone number spoofing still a thing?

Your telco knows what phone number you pay for. Can't they just not connect calls that claim to be coming from not-that-number?

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#93
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Businesses set their own model and can change it whenever they want.

Tesla can start selling killbots, guess what, that probably isn't going to happen

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#94
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see sending all non-contact calls to voicemail the first time, and letting them ring if they call again. Anything more restricted would make you unavailable if, say, the police called because a family member was in a crash. I will put up with some inconvenience to be available in rare emergencies.

If you get a voice mail from the police, you can listen to the voice mail and respond.

Yes, that was referring to the idea of going further than sending to voicemail.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#96

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?

Please don't post comments insinuating astroturfing or shillage unless you have some more substantive reason for it—in which case you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. All this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

It's natural for things to seem this way, but that's because there's enough data on HN to produce seeming patterns of all kinds. Overwhelmingly, it's just users being users. Unfortunately the internet habit of leaping to "shill!" or "PR!" as an explanation for $annoying_view does more damage, because it's more widespread. That's why we ask people to inhibit the reflex.

I've posted a ton about this if anyone wants more background: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#97
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.

Yeah, luckily for me my area code for my phone is from where I grew up, and I don’t know anyone who still lives there. That means when I see my own area code in the caller, I know to ignore it because it is spam.

Most of the calls are about getting my ‘business listed with google’

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#98
post #92
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.

It's been years since I looked at any of the telephony standards but... why is phone number spoofing still a thing? Your telco knows what phone number you pay for. Can't they just not connect calls that claim to be coming from not-that-number?

This works fine for calls from your landline or cellphone. It doesn't work as well go businesses which may legitimately split incoming and outgoing service, so the outgoing carrier really has no way to know what source numbers are legitimate. There's also a pretty big business in traffic resale, and none of those guys have any idea.

What would be more useful is accessible path information, so I can complain to my carrier about a call, and they can find out where it came from and throw people or companies off the network.

Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

#99
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.

It is interesting half the calls I bother to answer, are just instantly disconnected. Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. It is funny to get a live person and mess with them though..."oh which credit card are you referring to" I kept one agent on the line for a few minutes and was eventually called some very insulting swear words. If I recall correctly I was called a "bitchass mother f…

> Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me.

I think it might be something silly like confirming the number has a person on the other end. For selling to other spammers. Not sure why they can't do both at once though, so maybe I'm off.

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