Regardless of one may feel about Trump is there a reason @gailcollins must invoke his name in the title of a totally unrelated OpEd? For some people identity politics is a fever.
How is that identity politics?
Let’s Destroy Robocalls
161–170 of 286 posts
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legally carriers are required to connect all calls in the US. That provision is pretty important but leaves the system open to abuse. I hope we can find a way to block out robocalls without allowing the phone system to balkanize. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/251
Federal law also says you can't sell marijuana. However the government has pretty much decided to not prosecute that for some time. In general it's hard to believe that any law such as that would not defacto allow an exception for what can be shown as an abusive behavior. Under the theory that the law says 'you are required to connect all calls' you could say that carriers could not legally block someone who keeps ca…
The big companies aren't going to move until they get some guidance on where the line between blocking some numbers and systematically blocking numbers deemed to be 'abusive' based on the companies own criteria. Of course today you can request specific number be blocked from calling you of course but no one is currently trying that because the dangers of crossing the blurry line can be severe.
Your comparison isn't much more useful than 'prosecutorial discretion exists therefore do any crime you want.' Multibillion dollar companies aren't going to just go out and blaze a trail like that. We even see this in the (spurious) comparison to marijuana, the first companies to step out and test the state vs federal divide were small and local and only after those companies figured out some of the issues did we get large and larger companies coming in. (Though they're still all independent arms because of the difficulties accessing banking because of the federal laws still in place!)
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#163[flagged]
It's a flamebait tagline, to be sure, but we're responsible for our own discussion here on Hacker News and there's just nothing good down this road.
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#164My non-scalable solution:
I occasionally answer the robocalls, get through to a human, establish common ground, and then let the caller know how they are helping to commit fraud.
My goal is to in some way provide a feedback system. I don’t think that this is the responsibility of the consumer, but like most of us, I’m desperately interested in solving this problem.
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#165So robocalls are the result of: - Cost of phone calls decreasing to basically zero - Cost of automation going to basically zero - Phone calls that can come from the Internet so there are no national boundaries anymore - Caller ID operating on essentially the honor system - Bad actors (telephone companies) benefitting from this traffic by charging for it - Larger players having no incentive to punish bad actors There'…
A smart phone app which behaves as a firewall requiring callers to enter, say, a three character PIN code before phone rings may be useful. Incorporate two message files, one for leaving messages from those who know the PIN code and one those who don't, would allow for any contingencies. A front end answering machine box for the home with the same functionalities may be useful as well.
I bought a Tel-Lynx (this thing http://tel-lynx.com/ ) and it worked great for the paired cellphones and the landline, sort of an automated mini PBX. First time callers had to introduce themselves to the system, spammers never bothered. I'd still be using it if it wasn't incompatible with "flashing" through call waiting calls -- like the phone company it wanted to do out of band signalling with the "flash"
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#166We should destroy phone numbers instead, not only for spam, but for privacy and security. You might as well wear an RFID on your collar. Replace phone numbers with DNS and spam blocking. Change it when you want instead of asking your provider. Tell people to contact you through your website.
Sounds good. Would you mind getting in touch with my mom to explain that system to her? THANKS!
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Block unknown callers is a whitelist though. It's literally "block everyone not in my contact list".
...until and unless the phone number is spoofed. Then the blacklist is getting onto the whitelist.
Technically you're right, but what are the chances that a bad actor is going to spoof one of the phone numbers in your contact list.
I mean, the odds of them hitting that are so close to zero I don't even want to think about it.
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#168Make it mandatory $10000/call fine + prison sentence and teach users how to get a money trail. Then the hunt will get efficiently crowdsourced. After few well publicized cases the problem will greatly diminish.
This assumes the offenders are in the same country as you.
Hunters in that other country can also help for a cut.
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#169The legislation mentioned in the article probably would help, but the real untold sorry here is that the blame for the recent increase in robocalls lies with Paj's FCC (and thus Trump). Previous FCC rulings kept robocalls from getting out of hand, but the ruling was overturned on a small technicality. The FCC could easily replace it with a similar ruling but they haven't done anything. (My source here is the recent R…
FCC under Paj "and thus Trump" as you put it (which is a ridiculous notion imo, but it's yours to have)
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/new-r...
Re: Let’s Destroy Robocalls
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
A smart phone app which behaves as a firewall requiring callers to enter, say, a three character PIN code before phone rings may be useful. Incorporate two message files, one for leaving messages from those who know the PIN code and one those who don't, would allow for any contingencies. A front end answering machine box for the home with the same functionalities may be useful as well.
So shift the burden of calling to literally everyone who is acting well? Why would I want to remember a unique PIN for everyone I know? Also, isn't that just taking the 9 digit phone number and turning it into a 12 digit?
You could have a Captcha to force that the person on the calling ewnd is a person and not a computer. That would increase the costs for telemarketeers.
Or the system could ask for information that someone who knows the recipient might know but a telemarketeer might not know, e.g. "What is the 2nd letter of my first name?"