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FCC fines robocaller record $120M

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Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#111

Post by raverbashing »

bdamm wrote: post #56
amluto wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the correct approach is economic, not technical. Make a rule that, if you get a spoofed call, then your telco owes you $100, not subject to any arbitration clause or other contractual waiver. Give a way out to avoid actually killing the telcos: annual penalties are limited to a few percent of annual gross revenues. The telcos will find a technical solution real fast.

How would you prove the call was spoofed? Record all calls? Prove it with statistics? No telco will pay. This is a technical problem.

If an incoming call is saying it's coming from 555-1234 and telco owns 555-1234 and it's not one of their authorized income points then the call should get dropped.

Or if they don't own it then it's on who's inserting the call into the system.

Telco systems are fun. And by fun I mean it's a complete mess. ISDN is hard and full of caveats (look at SIP for a taste of what it involves).

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#112

Post by c22 »

nikanj wrote: post #80
bradleyjg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is why no major mobile carrier is offering a solution to this. It’s a pretty competitive market and this could be a big selling point. When the isp wars were going strong, before broadband put everyone under the thumb of monopolists and also before gmail, spam filtering was a serious competative advantage. Why can’t phone companies take an RBL like approach? If your VoIP service garners too ma…

Should be technically possible to have ”these numbers can originate from this operator”. I’ve learned that if a phone looks to be from my area code, it’s actually from China. No idea what the robocaller is saying. My operator should be able to have a short list of teleoperators in this zip code, and drop other calls.

I've had the same phone number for over 20 years now, since LNP became a thing I've moved it a couple of times to different providers. Most recently I've parked it with a non-local voip provider which gives me a great deal of flexibility. It sounds like under your proposal no one would receive my calls?

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#114

Post by kj4ips »

There is no way this guy can pay that, so I assume he will either:

* sacrifice an LLC (if he has one)

* declare bankruptcy

* be garnished at the legal maximum rate for the rest of his life? (little bit less than 25% of after-tax)?

I wonder if it is worth an FOIA to ask some of these high-profile agencies how much they are raking in with garnishments from gigantic fines?

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#115

Post by c22 »

gruez wrote: post #104
Paul-ish wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FCC at some point considered requiring authentication numbers or attaching names to numbers. They ultimately rejected the idea. There were multiple reasons why they rejected it, but from talking to someone at the FCC one of the reasons they rejected connecting numbers to identities too strongly is that victims of domestic abuse may need to call their abuser (eg about child support), but do so without giving away…

payphone? also, can't you call as a blocked number?

The last time I saw a payphone was several months ago, that one was missing the handset and looked like it may have been in a fire.

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#116

Post by bshep »

afo wrote: post #90
lend000 wrote: post #3

The real problem is the lack of security and authentication on telephone networks, which enables number spoofing with virtually no chance of reprisal -- foreign callers (realistically out of the FCC's jurisdiction) use VoIP services to create calls that originate from an IP address from the telephone network's perspective, and the phone network makes no attempt to authenticate the metadata (like the phone number that…

We (Nomorobo) protect you from both neighbor spoofing as well as "standard" robocalls. We add over 1,300+ new robocaller numbers every day. It's pretty crazy out there.

I used Nomorobo for 6 months and it was NOT useful, i have a phone number from a area code + prefix that i dont live at, yet I get about 5-10calls/day from similar looking numbers. Nomorobo would mark them as ‘unblockable’ because of the areacode+prefix match, so i would have to manually block each one.

I switched to ATT Call Protect which works much better. Now i get 1-2 calls/week. I would go back to nomorobo if it worked better.

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#117

Post by hunter23 »

pboutros wrote: post #59
bradleyjg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is why no major mobile carrier is offering a solution to this. It’s a pretty competitive market and this could be a big selling point. When the isp wars were going strong, before broadband put everyone under the thumb of monopolists and also before gmail, spam filtering was a serious competative advantage. Why can’t phone companies take an RBL like approach? If your VoIP service garners too ma…

I think the answer is that it is not a pretty competitive market. The two biggest carriers have a 1-2% monthly churn rate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/283511/average-monthly-c...

2% monthly churn is not low. That annualizes to ~25% which is significant. The cost per acquisition of getting a new customer is actually quite high so their churn numbers definitely hurt them.

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#118

Post by afo »

rayiner wrote: post #61
bradleyjg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is why no major mobile carrier is offering a solution to this. It’s a pretty competitive market and this could be a big selling point. When the isp wars were going strong, before broadband put everyone under the thumb of monopolists and also before gmail, spam filtering was a serious competative advantage. Why can’t phone companies take an RBL like approach? If your VoIP service garners too ma…

Blocking calls from certain VoIP services is almost certainly going to be a violation of common-carrier rules (which still apply to phone service no matter what happens with broadband). At a technical level, spam filtering relies heavily on analyzing email text. Doing similar analysis on voice calls is way harder. Also, there's UI issues. You can redirect suspected spam emails to a folder the user can inspect for fal…

Actually, the FCC clarified their rules a few years back that carriers CAN block robocalls.

More details here: https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/fcc-clarifies-robocal...

Note that Ajit Pai (then a commissioner, not chairperson like now) voted AGAINST this.

Full disclosure: We (Nomorobo) advocated to the FCC to allow carriers to block robocalls.

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#119

Post by stronglikedan »

post_break wrote: post #30

Can we please get phone OEMs to enable a feature to only allow calls from people in our contact list? Baked in. No apps that scrape your phone book to do it. If you're not on my contact list, go to voicemail and I'll decide if you're legit. And have an option like DND where if you call in rapid succession then I'll pick up.

Someone already mention iPhone, and there is a similar method for Android [0], baked in, as you say.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7MH6hkTieE

Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M

#120

Post by r00fus »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #109
acdha wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T-Mobile offers it as a free option with two levels: labeling the call as Scam Likely and blocking it outright. The latter is quite effective - I was getting 5+ calls per day and it’s now 1-2 per week.

That's T-Mobile? I thought it was Google Voice.

Definitely TMO - it's on the billing statement (free line item).
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