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The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

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11–20 of 432 posts

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#11
There needs to be postage imposed on connecting calls between systems, payable to the person called, and potentially refundable upon lack of complaint for being unsolicited.

This could work for email spam, as well.

Bonus if people get to set their own postage rates.

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a market-based problem rather than a policy problem: The problem is the low cost of making calls. Make calls cost money and the problem will naturally go away.

No, this is a problem where the necessary resources used to punish white collar crime are not being allocated. If there was a known Florida-based drug dealer that was bringing in $120,000,000 of drugs/year, there'd be dozens of cops working around the clock to bring him in. A Florida-based robo-caller, fined $120,000,000, who isn't paying a penny? Nobody cares. I understand lack of enforcement against some robocall f…

To be fair $120 million in drugs and $120 million in uncollected fines are apples and oranges. The drug money is financing murdering drug cartels that have brought Mexico to their knees. Robocalls are kind of not on the same level as funding human-trafficking, murderous cartels.

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#15

Stop allowing spoofed numbers. Period. I'm sorry BigCorp, but this is a public nuisance and trumps your "need" for a single phone number.

This is the US, where money is speech and one dollar is one vote. Individual consumers don't have enough money to matter compared to BigCorp.

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#16
post #2

Honestly I'm surprised they've managed to collect that much. Good job guys.

This is a market-based problem rather than a policy problem: The problem is the low cost of making calls. Make calls cost money and the problem will naturally go away.

Telcos are not incentivized to do much about this problem because they get paid by the scammers to complete their calls. As long as telcos continue to make money from these fraudulent calls, the problem will continue to exist.

I'm not even sure that raising the floor cost of making calls would help because scammers only have to swindle a single person out of thousands of dollars to offset the costs. :(

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a market-based problem rather than a policy problem: The problem is the low cost of making calls. Make calls cost money and the problem will naturally go away.

I think the problem is that it's possible to spoof called ID. The fraud starts before you answer the phone. Caller ID used to be an extra charge. The telcos needed it not to be mandatory. But now my land line is going away because it's become nothing but an annoyance. They could have prevented that but... but...

That is part of the problem, but it costs almost nothing to spam calls.

So even if you track someone down, what will you do if they are dirt poor?

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#18

There needs to be postage imposed on connecting calls between systems, payable to the person called, and potentially refundable upon lack of complaint for being unsolicited. This could work for email spam, as well. Bonus if people get to set their own postage rates.

Sure, because that totally would never be abused to facilitate illegal payments or to launder funds.

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#19
post #8

Never knew you could contract it has into it's as well.

"It's good to see you," Joe said. "Yes, it's been too long," Jim replied.

English is like C, even after 30 years it still has the potential to surprise you :)

Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

#20
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a market-based problem rather than a policy problem: The problem is the low cost of making calls. Make calls cost money and the problem will naturally go away.

No, this is a problem where the necessary resources used to punish white collar crime are not being allocated. If there was a known Florida-based drug dealer that was bringing in $120,000,000 of drugs/year, there'd be dozens of cops working around the clock to bring him in. A Florida-based robo-caller, fined $120,000,000, who isn't paying a penny? Nobody cares. I understand lack of enforcement against some robocall f…

If you read the article, you’ll see that often the ones running these scams can’t pay the full amount.

You don’t need a lot of money to spam calls.

It wasn’t always this way, and getting random BS calls almost never happened back then.

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