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Calling a real estate robocaller back

philly.com

101–110 of 127 posts

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#101

We all hate robocallers and scammers. We all hate getting called every day by them. But did you know there's something worse? My wife recently discovered a not so fun side effect of spam calls... Scammers have this popular trick of spoofing the caller ID for a number local to you. People are more likely to pick up the call if it's a number that seems familiar to them (like, the first 6 digits are the same as your pho…

I’m totally ignorant here, so I’m sure there’s a good reason: why is secure caller id so hard?

The telephone network was designed with total trust for “network operators” who essentially have “root” to do anything.

This worked OK when the only operators were the various national phone monopolies (Cap’n Crunch notwithstanding), but today that level of access is much easier to get and abuse, and is difficult to trace.

There are efforts to bolt-on security to the telephone network but it’s really hard.

I think it’s more likely that (over the next handful of decades) the phone network fades into obscurity as more voice calls are connected over data links which offer much improved security models.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#102

We all hate robocallers and scammers. We all hate getting called every day by them. But did you know there's something worse? My wife recently discovered a not so fun side effect of spam calls... Scammers have this popular trick of spoofing the caller ID for a number local to you. People are more likely to pick up the call if it's a number that seems familiar to them (like, the first 6 digits are the same as your pho…

I’m totally ignorant here, so I’m sure there’s a good reason: why is secure caller id so hard?

Because there's no financial incentive to fix it.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note - I've had the opposite experience but it wasn't with telecom related services - it was cloud services. A friend of mine started a business that focuses on the highly anticipated luxury clothing and sneaker releases. He basically does a proxy business that routes traffic through his network so that people can use multiple IPs that aren't banned on those retailers websites so that they can purchase m…

I applaud them. Reseller middlemen buying up the releases so they can profit are awful and inhibiting that activity is a greater good for society. In the ideal world sneakers could only be sold at retail, let the people who actually want to wear them buy them.

yeah internet scalpers suck!

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#104
I tracked down one of these robocallers once. I'd been getting multiple calls a day from the same number. The number was tied to a business name, which had an old domain name registry in some online index. From there, I was able to find the original domain name purchaser name and phone number. I also found his Facebook page, with poor privacy settings - and a few other details about the guy. So I gave him a call. He was very surprised to get a call - but listened, and accepted that a phone call wasn't where I'd stop if his calls continued. They stopped that day.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#105
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do if you need the risk adjusted return and can’t get it elsewhere.

I suppose that’s fine if we’re agreeing it’s a last ditch effort

Jack Boggle and others have stated you’re not getting above 5 percent risk adjusted returns in the public markets over the next decade at least. You can realize 7-10% returns making a note seller financing. I would assume we’re already of the understanding a last ditch effort is necessary to obtain necessary returns.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#106
post #2

An investigative reporter had no luck figuring out who it was. I'm curious if STIR/SHAKEN makes it possible to find the culprits, or if it just drives them to more niche VoIP providers.

It will prevent the robocallers from using local numbers to call you without actually buying/renting said numbers.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#107

We all hate robocallers and scammers. We all hate getting called every day by them. But did you know there's something worse? My wife recently discovered a not so fun side effect of spam calls... Scammers have this popular trick of spoofing the caller ID for a number local to you. People are more likely to pick up the call if it's a number that seems familiar to them (like, the first 6 digits are the same as your pho…

I’m totally ignorant here, so I’m sure there’s a good reason: why is secure caller id so hard?

It's being worked on - there's a standard called STIR/SHAKEN which uses certs to verify calls. I worked on this on my last contract. It's pretty easy to implement as a prototype - I've done it myself - but integrating it into the entire legacy phone network is another matter entirely.

Here's an article about it: https://www.howtogeek.com/402141/how-phone-companies-are-fin...

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#108
post #82

In the UK I get robocallers phoning me about car accidents or triple glazing grants. I always say "yes", then you get a real person who picks up. Then I will do the old bait and switch. Start talking about how my car got written off after the great M25 exodus of 2018. That I lost my foot from a low flying scooter delivery driver. The story then becomes more and more ridiculous and eventually they will hang up. Since…

Even more cruel: say yes, listen to the start of the spiel, then gently lay the phone down. They'll call back not knowing if it was a line malfunction. Now rinse and repeat. I got some so angry that they threatened to come over and break my face at home. This technique has up to now never failed me.

I once decided to talk with a "Hi this is Windows your computer wanted me to tell you it has a virus" guy once, and he's going through his script, trying to determine whether I have a Windows box or a Mac by describing whether I have a command key or a win key on my keyboard. My fancy-pants programmer keyboard happens to have neither, but in trying to explain this to him, he got so mad I literally heard him throwing things off his desk, last of which being the phone itself. I assume my family is still cursed, though I never took his physically improbable suggestions.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#109

I've had people wanting to "buy" some property you have. Once they get you to agree to sell, then they ask if you can self-finance the sale (i.e., you become the bank and "sell" for nothing and they give you a monthly mortgage payment.) Sounds OK in theory, but you'd need a lot of paperwork/legal to vet the whole deal and you have no idea if the person can even pay until you spend even more on credit checks, etc. And…

They want to rent, but with foreclosure protection. If they rent and don't pay, you can evict in 2 months. If they do this and don't pay, good luck evicting in 2 years.

I'd ask for 25% down and 20% interest, and write quicker eviction for non-payment into the security instrument, as a separate civil action from a foreclosure.

...and then, I'd re-sell the note to a rich person/company who can afford better lawyers, because I don't really need my assets pinned down like that in one high-risk loan.

Re: Calling a real estate robocaller back

#110

We all hate robocallers and scammers. We all hate getting called every day by them. But did you know there's something worse? My wife recently discovered a not so fun side effect of spam calls... Scammers have this popular trick of spoofing the caller ID for a number local to you. People are more likely to pick up the call if it's a number that seems familiar to them (like, the first 6 digits are the same as your pho…

I’m totally ignorant here, so I’m sure there’s a good reason: why is secure caller id so hard?

The architecture of business telecom is really flexible. Customer PBXes have wide latitude to make their own routing decisions, and numbers are shared across arbitrarily complex multi-site, multi-provider topologies.

What your neighborhood grocery store buys from the phone company is just a pool of voice circuits, probably fewer than its extensions and even its DIDs. There is no simple circuit-number mapping like in residential telecom.

Designing federated AuthN/AuthZ for this is not simple; getting it rolled out across all the participating equipment (with many owners and service lifetimes of 15+ years) is basically never gonna happen.

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