On the Trail of the RoboCall King • Hacker News Board

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#21

Post by ElCapitanMarkla » Thu, May 09, 2019, 7:23 AM UTC

janj wrote: post #14

kimi wrote: post #9

I wonder if one should not use a dialer to call them back, sending an automated message until someone listens and acknowledges? They have a huge outbound capability, but their weak spot is inbound and call completion - they expect basically no call to complete. So anything that keeps their agents busy will immediately reflect on the number of calls they make. Would it be legal?

I answer most robo calls and usually try to call back after I get them to hang up on me. The number is almost never in service. When it is and it leads to the scammer I'll sometimes continue calling and messing with them until my number is blocked by them. I've been messing with spam callers for more than 20 years. I wish more people would answer these calls and waste as much of their time as possible.

Not advisable to call them back from New Zealand at least. I've heard of a couple of people calling them back only to find out a month later that the number they called was actually a pay per minute number and they were charged upwards of $20 a minute.

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#22

Post by topherPedersen » Thu, May 09, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

Developer of RoboStop here. If anybody here in the comments section happen to use an Android phone and are plagued by telemarketing calls from Indian dev shops offering to build you a website, check out my app! http://robostop.org. It's pretty simple, just hangs up on anyone not listed in your contacts. Very effective. Just make sure to turn it off when you order an Uber.

P.S. it's not on the Play Store anymore because I got booted off along with all of the other apps which access users CALL_LOG(s).

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#23

Post by dewey » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:06 AM UTC

topherPedersen wrote: post #22

Developer of RoboStop here. If anybody here in the comments section happen to use an Android phone and are plagued by telemarketing calls from Indian dev shops offering to build you a website, check out my app! http://robostop.org . It's pretty simple, just hangs up on anyone not listed in your contacts. Very effective. Just make sure to turn it off when you order an Uber. P.S. it's not on the Play Store anymore beca…

Is it just me or does it feel weird to download some random APK from a http site that then has access to my whole call log?

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#24

Post by dewey » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:08 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #15

Why are robocalls not a thing in my country? (Sweden)

Because (at least in Germany) it's illegal and comes with very high fines.

> telephone calls to consumers for sales purposes are illegal if the calling company is not in possession of an explicit and effective declaration of consent by the consumer

https://www.limegreenipnews.com/2017/08/germany-federal-netw...

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#25

Post by rmason » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

I'm getting daily calls where they leave a voicemail in Chinese. I live in a metro area where at most there are 0.05% Chinese speakers. The costs must be so low they just do not care.

Course I block the numbers but they seem to have an almost endless supply. Interestingly my Pixel doesn't report the call ever as suspected spam.

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#26

Post by Ruedii » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

55555 wrote: post #20

Seems to me that the FCC doesn't actually want to stop these. Watch the senate commission deposition(?) of Adrian Abramavich. He says all these calls are routed through 5 or 6 tier-2+ VOIP firms who openly solicit robocall business and then blend the traffic to prevent the most obvious red flags. Just pull their licenses(?). Unless there's more to the story and everyone in the industry is getting rich from this, whic…

Under Obama they made steps forward to stop these, penalties were drastically increased, and an actual investigation team was put together, but Trump defunded the efforts and now the complaint form leads to a massive master in pile with no hope of a single message being read.

The phone companies ARE able to stop the caller ID spoofing with a simple notch filter placed at the right point on the line, or packet filter on the right place on the firewall.

They could easily force businesses to give a valid return number on their calls and prevent jamming based caller ID spoofing, but instead they don't want to because these calls mean more money for them.

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#27

Post by Ruedii » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

The "in the wild" hack of the caller ID jammer is probably openly available if you look hard enough.

There are also likely phone system commands to quickly verify the incoming phone number a second time utilizing out of band signals. If how to derive how to do this, one might be able to detect spoofed caller ID and retrieve the actual source line information.

I wonder if either of these technologies could be used to detect robocalls.

Personally if I had the time and ability to write such a system, what I would do to incoming robocalls is go and route them (and pressing one if it is necessary) to an AI voice system just smart enough to pull the person's leg for a few hours making the person run in circles trying to explain the deal to what they think is a person who can't understand it. You know, robo the robo-call.

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#28

Post by willvarfar » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:38 AM UTC

Ruedii wrote: post #27

The "in the wild" hack of the caller ID jammer is probably openly available if you look hard enough. There are also likely phone system commands to quickly verify the incoming phone number a second time utilizing out of band signals. If how to derive how to do this, one might be able to detect spoofed caller ID and retrieve the actual source line information. I wonder if either of these technologies could be used to…

Something like https://jollyrogertelephone.com/ ?

If you haven't heard a few, listen to some of the calls on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3OxCWLEmoIhNMm-hnvBm9Q

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#29

Post by yitchelle » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:57 AM UTC

janj wrote: post #14

kimi wrote: post #9

I wonder if one should not use a dialer to call them back, sending an automated message until someone listens and acknowledges? They have a huge outbound capability, but their weak spot is inbound and call completion - they expect basically no call to complete. So anything that keeps their agents busy will immediately reflect on the number of calls they make. Would it be legal?

I answer most robo calls and usually try to call back after I get them to hang up on me. The number is almost never in service. When it is and it leads to the scammer I'll sometimes continue calling and messing with them until my number is blocked by them. I've been messing with spam callers for more than 20 years. I wish more people would answer these calls and waste as much of their time as possible.

Did you just fulfilled for "one ring" scam by calling them back?

Re: On the Trail of the RoboCall King

#30

Post by imglorp » Thu, May 09, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

kimi wrote: post #17

janj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I answer most robo calls and usually try to call back after I get them to hang up on me. The number is almost never in service. When it is and it leads to the scammer I'll sometimes continue calling and messing with them until my number is blocked by them. I've been messing with spam callers for more than 20 years. I wish more people would answer these calls and waste as much of their time as possible.

Sometimes they leave a message on the voicemail, and in this case you do have a number to be called back. I wonder if it would be legal for you to recall them using a robodialer. Say you implement something like this: https://www.wombatdialer.com/blog/blog/2017/03/17/outbounds-... this is a reverse IVR, that keeps calling until it gets an explicit acknowledgement. It is cheap to run (you set up a FreePBX somewhere),…

It would need to be paired with something like Jolly Roger, above, which is darn good at spoofing a human for a while. It would need a variety of voices and scripts so the recipient humans wouldn't get trained on it too fast.