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Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

wsj.com

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Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#11

Post by orev »

advisedwang wrote: post #8

I find it amazing to see STIR/SHAKEN[1] mentioned in an act of congress. Rarely does congress mandate specific technology, usually it just grants authority to make rules to agencies or imposes some kind of duty. I wonder why this law goes this route. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication

It’s because Congress is still stuck in the 1980s and mostly use POTS to do things. This is obvious in how concerned they are about the phone system, but willing to completely gut the Internet (net neutrality) — because they don’t use the Internet so have no idea about it. They still use phone calls for everything, so they’re getting hit directly on their personal devices with these calls. They can’t just ignore all unknown calls like most people do.

Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#12

Post by dec0dedab0de »

Jaygles wrote: post #2

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail.

I havent had voicemail in over a decade. I used to fill it up myself, then later I learned you can call the company and they will disable it. I figure if it was important they would have sent a text in the first place.

But I havent gotten any spam calls in over a year ever since tmobile started blocking them for me. Are the other providers not doing this?

Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#13

Post by exhilaration »

Jaygles wrote: post #2

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail.

I always answer the call and then joyfully "block/report spam" the number in the Android dialer. Being able to do something to fight back is satisfying enough that I don't ignore the call.

I did just switch to T-Mobile and they pass "SCAM LIKELY" as the caller name so I may start declining those.

Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#14

Post by alentist »

orev wrote: post #11
advisedwang wrote: post #8

I find it amazing to see STIR/SHAKEN[1] mentioned in an act of congress. Rarely does congress mandate specific technology, usually it just grants authority to make rules to agencies or imposes some kind of duty. I wonder why this law goes this route. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication

It’s because Congress is still stuck in the 1980s and mostly use POTS to do things. This is obvious in how concerned they are about the phone system, but willing to completely gut the Internet (net neutrality) — because they don’t use the Internet so have no idea about it. They still use phone calls for everything, so they’re getting hit directly on their personal devices with these calls. They can’t just ignore all…

> willing to completely gut the Internet (net neutrality)

Oh please. The internet hasn’t been “gutted”. Far from it. It’s getting faster. It’s getting cheaper. It’s becoming more widely available. Do you have any evidence, anything at all, that the internet has been “gutted”?

And you’re going to tell me with a straight face that the internet has been “gutted” for the vast majority of its existence? Don’t be ridiculous.

Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#15

Post by nahikoa »

The technology behind STIR/SHAKEN is relatively interesting, integrating certificate authorities into the SIP protocol:

https://www.atis.org/sti-ga/resources/docs/shaken-faqs.pdf

As the article mentions, there are some shortcomings. Caller ID spoofing is necessary for some services, as in the VOIP world calls are broken up into termination (dialout) and origination (dialin). If STIR/SHAKEN takes hold, the CID phone number for termination will have to be signed by the origination carrier. It should be fun to watch the carriers handle it. (There are 3 levels of attestation, but that's the gist.)

Bandwidth.com also has a good overview:

https://www.bandwidth.com/glossary/stir-shaken/

Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#17

Post by imglorp »

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #10
advisedwang wrote: post #8

I find it amazing to see STIR/SHAKEN[1] mentioned in an act of congress. Rarely does congress mandate specific technology, usually it just grants authority to make rules to agencies or imposes some kind of duty. I wonder why this law goes this route. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication

I think it is because the current FCC is proving itself to be too incompetent to solve the problem of robocalls among other things.

*beholden

Re: Washington’s new anti-robocall law won’t stop the calls

#19

Post by unlinked_dll »

exhilaration wrote: post #13
Jaygles wrote: post #2

I've just stopped answering my phone altogether. If something is important enough the person calling should leave a voicemail.

I always answer the call and then joyfully "block/report spam" the number in the Android dialer. Being able to do something to fight back is satisfying enough that I don't ignore the call. I did just switch to T-Mobile and they pass "SCAM LIKELY" as the caller name so I may start declining those.

the block button doesn’t do anything since most of the phone numbers are spoofed (someone pretending to be someone else).

Filtering out any number that shares my area code and first three digits and not in my phone book would go a long way to getting rid of spam.

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