I've never received a robocall and the whole thing seems dystopian. Is it something uniquely American? Is there EU legislation that prevents this, such as the "don't call me" register (bel me niet register)? I'm not on that, though. General anti-spam laws then? (Since it's unsolicited commercial communications directed at consumers). Genuinely curious what's different.
Eliminating Robocalls
61–70 of 276 posts
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#62I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
The difference is regulation.
The US is firmly gripped by the belief that "regulation doesn't work", and keeps electing people who try to prove that true via incompetence, cronyism and ideological malice.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what the retry feature is. If it's truly urgent they'll call again within a short timeframe (+3 to +300 seconds; not milliseconds like the 'try to go direct to voicemail' spam calls). I tell this to everyone I care for as well, if I don't pick up by the third ring, hang up and dial again. (This is to skip it going to voicemail and also differentiate the behavior). I don't expect scammers to pick up this tactic…
> I don't expect scammers to pick up this tactic because it would double their OpEx Except my missed call log is full of back-to-back calls from random phone numbers in my prefix. Either half the folks in Metro NYC (where I haven't lived in over a decade) are calling me to report the other half got hit by a car, or this adaption has already been made.
That's neighborhood spoofing - the prefix may match, but if you're only allowing the exact same number to come through then the call would still be blocked.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#64I have had a Google Voice number since it was Grand Central. It has gone on all of my business cards. It's at the bottom of every email. I put it on my website. Google does an amazing, world class, mind blowing, job of filtering out robo calls. I get maybe one a week at most. I get more calls direct to my cell number from random call bots that hit every number with mobile carriers than I do through my Google Voice nu…
I used Google voice for years while Google let it languish in relative obscurity. Eventually after I realized it was silently dropping group messages because they were MMS and Google never worked on supporting MMS (images were dropped too back then) I left it for iOS and iMessage. Getting dropped from group chats meant people thought you were ignoring them and you'd miss invitations. Google had a huge lead with voice…
GV supports group chats/MMS now, however, you can't mute or leave a group chat, at least not with the iOS client. (Given my family's penchant for starting a group MMS for the most minor of occurrences, I'm not sure the group chat support is a blessing or a curse.)
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#65I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
The difference is regulation. The US is firmly gripped by the belief that "regulation doesn't work", and keeps electing people who try to prove that true via incompetence, cronyism and ideological malice.
We have plenty of regulation and government attention on the issue, and I somehow doubt Congressional pockets are being lined by the campaign contributions from Big Spam.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#66I am guessing that the direction this is heading in is twilio somehow coming up with a solution that they can implement and sell to someone. Maybe the multi part blog post is part of the way to gather thoughts in order to learn more and incorporate ideas and reactions from people.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#67I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
The difference is regulation. The US is firmly gripped by the belief that "regulation doesn't work", and keeps electing people who try to prove that true via incompetence, cronyism and ideological malice.
It's amazing how often I hear this kind of argument. " didn't work because it wasn't done correctly"
Why do we humans do that? Why doesn't failure cause introspection/examination rather than excuse making?
On a side note, it feels conspiratorial to explain failure as, "there's double agents on the inside sabotaging the effort"
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#68I don't get that many robocalls anymore after I signed up for https://www.donotcall.gov/ . I also make a point of reporting unwanted calls there too (I got two pretending to be from the IRS saying that I was about to be sued).
I know that people find it annoying to go through the process of reporting the call, but I consider it to be one of those things that fall under the "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" bucket.
It'd be nice if there were donotcall.gov apps for Android and iOS though.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#69I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
Agreed. I experienced a bit of a culture shock moving from Northern Europe to USA. Robocalls are a real pain here in the USA and I don’t know why. I’ve learned that I should never answer a call from a number I don’t know (not that easy), but it doesn’t have to be this way. I also get a number of text messages trying to phish me into buying drugs or sex. It’s totally nuts.
> I've learned that I should never answer a call from a number I don’t know (not that easy), but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Not only that, but you basically need to program in all the random numbers you do business with to make sure you don't miss something important. Dentist, doctor, real estate agent, mortgage officer, the random office you're only going to visit once who did your MRI.
And still, someone can just as easily spoof one of those numbers (even purely by coincidence) and you'll pick up.
Re: Eliminating Robocalls
#70I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
It could have something to do with data sharing, which people in the US (myself included) seem to do more of compared to e.g. those in europe (in my experience).
I get 10+ robo/spam calls a day (to the point where I just gave up on answering all unknown numbers over a year ago) but when I do answer the occasional one they seem surprisingly targeted. I was searching for health insurance a few months ago and that spawned 4-5 robocalls/day all about health insurance. I run a small business that gets ~5 calls/day about financing and a smattering of other cold robocalls about services people could provide. When I had a death in the family, I started getting robocalls about funeral services and life insurance.
I don't know why it's so hard to resolve (why isn't cold calling someone illegal?) but on a personal level it's relatively easy to mostly-resolve by screening calls and limiting your number's exposure (both online and to businesses that resell that information). Lack of regulation, enforcement on what regulations do exist, availability of numbers to buy (aided by metadata on who is on the other side of that number), and a heavier reliance on phones/calls in general (compared to my 1.5 years living in europe) seems to be the biggest driving factors.