Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 432 posts

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

#391

Post by BenjiWiebe »

droithomme wrote: post #335
sj4nz wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm already there wanting to stop using phone numbers. So. Much. There. I haven't had a "land line" in multiple-decades. My short list of "the next thing" requires: - Ability to install on a mobile device without any connection to a "phone number." Phone numbers in my mind are dead. - Skip the synchronous social convention of calling. Everything should be async by default. You don't ever cause someone's device to int…

> I haven't had a "land line" in multiple-decades. I'd love to have a land line but it completely stopped working decades ago. After deregulation, no one was responsible. Countless attempts to get anyone to fix it were in vain. This year I saw a thick line completely knocked down by a fallen tree. I called the power company. They said it was a telephone line not a power line. And that there wasn't anyone left for the…

I live in Central Kansas. In our house there's next to no cell service. We could switch providers, but then we'd be in a dead area every time we drove a few miles. No carrier has good coverage in our area. Without a landline we would even have trouble calling 911. Thankfully POTS is still alive here at least.

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

#392

Post by Karunamon »

xur17 wrote: post #316
Karunamon wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an option - the other thing you can do is get a Softphone app on your phone and log into the service with it. They work with text messages as well. That is the one downside of this is now having two numbers to deal with. I was getting so many garbage calls though, the trade off has been worth it.

Don't you get spam calls directly to your phone now (this is the problem I have with Google Voice)?

Yes, but once you've got this "call screening" set up on your formerly primary phone number, you can safely set your phone to discard all calls from people not on your contacts list.

This introduces two ways of working with the service - either you set the service to show "your" phone number as the calling party, and then listen to the name when picking up, or you ignore this and use the softphone app for all calls.

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

#393

Post by smittywerben »

dredmorbius wrote: post #151
smittywerben wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder how long distance rates are charged in the first place. A little OT but did we used to call websites?

In dialup, you (or your modem) would dial a POP server, or point-of-presence. That was a modem bank on one side, and Internet backbone link on the other, generally as a local call. The website was reached via the POP, but you could reach any website anywhere on the public Internet without having to dial up each individually. More specifically, PSTN is a public, switched , telecommunications network, in which each com…

That's impressive how POP servers communicated across the Internet backbone considering some websites were long distance. I get to read about Erlang now. Carrier-grade NAT in regards to ip addresses reminds me of my grandparents had a shared phone-line for their neighborhood. It's funny you mentioned BBS, I think that's what I was initially unclear about. That answers many of my questions, ty for the time.

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

#394

Post by smabie »

_f1dq wrote: post #144
smabie wrote: post #141

While robocalls are annoying, what's the moral justification for making this illegal? If a person is allowed to call you, why can't a computer? Also the line is getting blurred recently, so it seems like a problematic distinction at this point in time.

Because many, if not most of these calls are scams.

That’s nor a good moral justification. Most people using Tor are probably doing something illegal, but it wouldn’t follow that Tor should be illegal, would it?

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

#395

Post by smabie »

philipkglass wrote: post #171
smabie wrote: post #141

While robocalls are annoying, what's the moral justification for making this illegal? If a person is allowed to call you, why can't a computer? Also the line is getting blurred recently, so it seems like a problematic distinction at this point in time.

In context, people mean "illegitimate robocalls." Nobody is proposing to outlaw legitimate robocalls (like when a pharmacy makes an automated call to notify you that a prescription is ready.) It's mostly illegal to make human or automated marketing calls to numbers in the US that have signed up for the national Do Not Call registry. The problem is that huge numbers of illegal calls still reach numbers on the Do Not C…

I’m not talking about legality, I’m talking about morality. What moral framework can we use to classify the moral status of unsolicited robo-calls?

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

#396

Post by smabie »

dredmorbius wrote: post #169
smabie wrote: post #141

While robocalls are annoying, what's the moral justification for making this illegal? If a person is allowed to call you, why can't a computer? Also the line is getting blurred recently, so it seems like a problematic distinction at this point in time.

Because abuse by a very few destroys trust in and value of the system to all: [S]ince mid-2015, a consortium of engineers from phone carriers and others in the telecom industry have worked on a way to [stop call-spoofing], worried that spam phone calls could eventually endanger the whole system. “We’re getting to the point where nobody trusts the phone network,” says Jim McEachern, principal technologist at the Allia…

That’s not a bad answer (“things that undermine trust in systems are bad”) but when generalized, can lead to undesirable results. For example using your axiom, undermining trust in a corrupt and harmful system would also be bad. Like for instance, speaking out against a repressive government regime.

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

#397

Post by smabie »

codeplea wrote: post #225
smabie wrote: post #141

While robocalls are annoying, what's the moral justification for making this illegal? If a person is allowed to call you, why can't a computer? Also the line is getting blurred recently, so it seems like a problematic distinction at this point in time.

>what's the moral justification for making this illegal? The robocalls I receive are all using fake caller IDs. At that point, it's fraud, isn't it? I wouldn't mind robocallers if they used a real caller ID. If that were the case, I could just block them and be done with it.

Misrepresentation is a commonly agreed upon morally bad thing (i.e lying). But spoofing is an issue seperate and apart from robo-calls, even if the correlation between the two is very high. So we still need to figure out what, exactly, is morally bad about being robo-called. And the answer can’t be related to spoofing, do not call lists, or whatever, as these are not related to the essence of what defines a unsolicited robo-call.

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

#398

Post by erik_seaberg »

smabie wrote: post #397
codeplea wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what's the moral justification for making this illegal? The robocalls I receive are all using fake caller IDs. At that point, it's fraud, isn't it? I wouldn't mind robocallers if they used a real caller ID. If that were the case, I could just block them and be done with it.

Misrepresentation is a commonly agreed upon morally bad thing (i.e lying). But spoofing is an issue seperate and apart from robo-calls, even if the correlation between the two is very high. So we still need to figure out what, exactly , is morally bad about being robo-called. And the answer can’t be related to spoofing, do not call lists, or whatever, as these are not related to the essence of what defines a unsolici…

Tragedy of the commons. Unwanted bulk requests that intentionally evade automated filters are an attack on the availability of a communication network.

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

#399

Post by tokai »

rasz wrote: post #390
tooney712 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The go to example of this will always be Kodak. Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera (and a device to display it on) in 1975 while working at R&D at Kodak. He had a fully functional DSLR by 1989, complete with memory cards. Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera. They kept the patent of the work and sat on it, and when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued…

>Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera other than selling $20 million worth of 1991 Kodak DCS 100, and following it with many more advanced models ....

Selling just under 1000 refitted nikon cameras over 4 years doesn't seem like pushing digital cameras hard. They even brought the nikon bodies through retail.[0]

If that's not dragging your feet I don't know what is. They could have defined the marked for professional digital cameras. Instead they just proved that a digital nikon would work nicely.

[0]https://www.nikonweb.com/dcs100/

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

#400

Post by hnick »

philipkglass wrote: post #88
Semaphor wrote: post #68

I have a question, why are robocalls such a problem in the U.S.A.? As far as I know, they aren’t in Germany (or if they are, not on that level, I never got one).

There are a lot of people living outside the USA who can speak English. Both legitimate and fraudulent English-language call centers are easier to set up internationally than German-language call centers. The robo part of the call can obviously be automated from anywhere but there are actual humans pretending to be from "Apple Support" when a target responds. That raises another question: are other Anglosphere countr…

They're rare in Australia (though I haven't had a fixed line for years now, so maybe mobile phones have a different targeting profile).

Interestingly, there's been an uptick lately but the recorded messages are all in Chinese.

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/bc8p2w/chinese_r...

Post reply on HN