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.
Their lobby is powerful, and the ideology of many in tech leans to libertarian and away from regulation.
Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
161–170 of 196 posts
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#162I'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…
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#163So 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.
Because he's still a fish.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#164So 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.
Answers to his question. 1. He's right, biased enforcement is a crime against society. It encourages increased criminality by those who are "above the law", and unfairly harms the personal social networks of prosecuted criminals, while the personal social networks on non-prosecuted criminals thrive and have relatively more social power. 2. Random(ish) enforcement is a cost-effective deterrent. Convict 10% of the croo…
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, but honestly 2$/month seems very high unless you get a lot of these calls.
2$/month is not “very high” unless you’re living in the third world. I don’t mind paying it either since I can report numbers that get through to their blacklist. I feel like I’m fighting back.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#166Hopefully 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
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 car…
It shouldn't be difficult to get a single number that is legitimate and limit the caller id to that number. Any telecom carrier whose customer is requesting a wide variety of phone numbers ought to know that something sketchy is going on.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#169In 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.
People weren't expecting targeted political propaganda and other sketchy things.
Re: Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Or maybe Facebook put the games/apps up for free and just gave the data away?
I dunno, but "We aren't in the business of selling your data. We just gave it away." isn't a great message.