How many of these people get prosecuted every year? Is there some sort of Interpol of spam/scam/phishing to coordinate efforts against these guys? They should be easy enough to catch. It seems that right now there's not enough disincentive for these people to stop what they're doing. If the decentralized web wants to have a chance to succeed, we'll need to find a solution against spammers and scammers.
Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
101–110 of 196 posts
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#102I'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.
Their lobby is powerful, and the ideology of many in tech leans to libertarian and away from regulation.
You can guarantee that if phone companies shut down this sort of spam calling, someone on HN would complain about "censorship!"
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#103Earlier 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?
I'd suggest against it. There are important calls that can come in from true unknown sources, people who just legitimately need to contact you out of the blue, especially officials (police, utility companies, etc...). If you feel like ignoring those, there's also the possibility that a contact of yours needs to contact you in an emergency can can't use their normal phone. As an example, assuming you're married, maybe…
They can (and do) leave a voicemail.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#104He wants his fine reduced? I believe it should be increased! This is taking a property used for the common good (the phone system) and abusing it in such a way that it becomes worthless. These sort of people need to be made an example of, lowering the fine would definitely be sending the wrong signal.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#105"This scheme was particularly abhorrent because, given its breadth, it appears to have substantially disrupted the operations of an emergency medical paging provider. It did this by slowing down and potentially disabling its network. Pagers may be low-tech, but for doctors, these devices are simple and dependable standbys. By overloading this paging network, Mr. Abramovich could have delayed vital medical care, makin…
A denial of service attack?
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suggest against it. There are important calls that can come in from true unknown sources, people who just legitimately need to contact you out of the blue, especially officials (police, utility companies, etc...). If you feel like ignoring those, there's also the possibility that a contact of yours needs to contact you in an emergency can can't use their normal phone. As an example, assuming you're married, maybe…
This happens less often than being killed by lightning, which you do not take proactive measures against. People can leave a message. Officials can leave a message. When do you ever need to answer a call from a official? 911 is for getting instant help in emergencies. No one needs you to answer your personal phone immediately.
I do take protective measures against being hit by lightning. I don't take shelter under trees during a lightning storm - I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
T-Mobile will sometimes display "Scam Likely" for me in place of the phone number. It's way to conservative though. It would be nice to have a way to report scam phone numbers back. Kinda like Apple's "was this voicemail translation helpful" in voicemail. I'm sure this would weed out scammers phone numbers pretty fast. Although, once a number is flagged its gone for good and phone numbers need to be recyclable.
> and phone numbers need to be recyclable. Why?
Finite supply.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Ok...?
The point is that companies like Tesla can change their business model at anytime and start selling something new, like they did when they started selling battery packs in addition to cars.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#109Earlier 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…
Yes. I called a number back one time when I saw that it had a Facetime option. I figured it must be a real person. Somebody answered my video call and they weren't very happy with me.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
This happens less often than being killed by lightning, which you do not take proactive measures against. People can leave a message. Officials can leave a message. When do you ever need to answer a call from a official? 911 is for getting instant help in emergencies. No one needs you to answer your personal phone immediately.
I do take protective measures against being hit by lightning. I don't take shelter under trees during a lightning storm - I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.
> I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.
On a serious note, all buildings are different so you can't really do this reliably as it is unlikely you will locate the lightning rod before it is too late to course correct.
So please tell me you are joking :)