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

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

#51

Post by techsupporter »

walshemj wrote: post #42
exhilaration wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have had (in the uk) a few recently - they stopped after the last one after I answered in my best BT Phone Voice "Met Police Duty Officer"

When I used to get a lot of spam calls (because I had to answer my phone for everything), I used to answer numbers I didn't recognize as "Orleans County 911, what is your emergency?" Most spammers got the hint and either hung up immediately or stammered out an apology and hung up.

One person insisted on trying to sell a car warranty so I ramped it up a bit. I'm only a little sorry that the person was apologetically crying about "interfering with emergency services" by the end of the call.

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

#52

Post by mulmen »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #32
exhilaration wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve found that when I get a robot call, if I type randomly on the numpad it usually gets me on the line with a real person, who’s time I’m happy to waste. I figure this is the most expensive outcome for the caller

Is there some way to implement this as a service with a chat bot or just prerecorded mumbling and confused statements? I guess it could happen by just transferring the call.

The true future of AI is robots sending eachother spam.

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

#53

Post by michaelt »

EamonnMR wrote: post #35
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't getting the robot voicemails yet? I mean sure I can ignore those too - but it's that much more annoying since I now have to filter through my voicemails to see if anyone left a message that actually matters. I'd guess about 1/3 of robocallers are leaving me voicemails now. I also very recently started getting obvious phishing attempts via SMS.

This is why I just don't listen to voicemail. There is no reason to leave a voicemail, just send a text.

My cell provider could disable voicemail, after I asked them nicely. That way people don’t even get the impression they’ve left me a message.

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

#54

Post by QUFB »

daemonk wrote: post #24

I wonder if it is possible to forward robocalls to another service that will attempt to keep the robocaller busy as long as possible. It would be great if everyone can just answer the robocalls and press a button to forward to a time-waster service. Hopefully, every busy robocall is one less call to another person.

I have a pretty stupid bot set up with Asterisk. I think the record is 17 minutes, and the bot even repeated the script. When I get bored I put up some calls:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYyYngFvpbNqsAhpAI6DoeA

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

#55

Post by viraptor »

y4mi wrote: post #48
Aardwolf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never noticed this spoofing ability in Europe though. Can someone make a phone call and appear to have a different number (and is this about mobile or landline numbers)? If so, why isn't it being done at large scale in Europe to get around apps that block known call centers? Why would there be no tech solution around fake caller ID? The phone company knows who it's billing for this call, doesn't it?

iirc, the calling number is reported from the calling device, not the service provider. I remember playing around with that on my rooted Android phone years ago (around Android 2.0-2.2) in germany. It would probably be possible to discard this information from the client and overwrite it as the service provider, but they weren't doing that at least back then. It would also be costly (like a MitM proxy overwriting hea…

It's not costly. There's a lot of similar processing already happening, the proxies you mention are not mitm - they're part of the system. Most providers do ignore what you send them about your external caller id - in many cases you don't even know the correct one. Blind forwarding the cid is a bug rather than something people decided to do for cost or other reasons.

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

#56

Post by righteous »

This is an economic problem not a technical one. We simply need to make it unprofitable to wholesale spam call citizens of the wealthy first-world.

Every outbound call should cost $1 to the terminating carrier. ATT, Centurylink, Etc. Recipients can mark spam calls (*69, an app, whatever) and the dollar is split between the carrier and consumer. After 60 days the money is returned for calls not marked as spam.

No calls are connected that don't include this advance this money.

Now, the assholes who dial 2,000 people a minute will need to afford $2,000 a minute of credit to run their operations.

Carveouts or credits can be extended to bona fide groups such as political parties, 503c, etc.

Over time, trustworthy callers will have a revolving account or insurance to cover the costs. Untrusted caller no longer can afford to make calls.

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

#57

Post by tartoran »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #19
exhilaration wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, this only blocks legit numbers since they're spoofed anyway and next spam call will be an auto-generated number anyway (form a similar area code). My solution is to simply not pick up calls that are not in my phone's address book. I still get a lot of annoying calls, from a few a day to dozens. It's frustrating but I refuse to get annoyed, to keep my sanity. Most of the calls that I get are making an announcement in Chinese. I am not Asian and I do not understand Chinese. I've read somewhere that it's scam meant to swindle Chinese citizens in the US for money.

My wife received a call from a person who was angry at some phone scammer and started cursing her and telling her not to call anymore. My wife tried to explain that she did not make the call, that the number was spoofed, but to no avail, the curses continued until they hung up. I find this kind of breach quite problematic and don't really understand how it can proliferate to this extent.

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

#58

Post by asdf21 »

wuunderbar wrote: post #38
EamonnMR wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I just don't listen to voicemail. There is no reason to leave a voicemail, just send a text.

Yeah that's going to screw you over at some point, I presume. I had the California DMV try to reach out to be about some form inconsistencies and they only contacted me by phone and voicemail. (To their credit they left me 3 voicemails through a very busy day I had.) There was no other way they were going to contact me before letting my car registration expire.

Same thing just happened to me just this week, I wasn't checking voicemails because I get too many spam calls / spam messages and I almost got withdrawn from Graduate School because of it -- (I needed to verify a term break and since I never did, automatic withdraw initiated.)

Sorted it out, but barely. Very frustrating to have that sort of outcome from the root cause of phone spammers.

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

#59

Post by rb808 »

daemonk wrote: post #24

I wonder if it is possible to forward robocalls to another service that will attempt to keep the robocaller busy as long as possible. It would be great if everyone can just answer the robocalls and press a button to forward to a time-waster service. Hopefully, every busy robocall is one less call to another person.

https://jollyrogertelephone.com/ though used to be free looks like they've started charging.

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

#60

Post by yellow_lead »

mehhh wrote: post #50
nahikoa wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see any/some/most/all carriers implementing STIR/SHAKEN for termination soon?

As someone who works with multiple carriers, I doubt anyone outside of the wireless carriers and Inteliquent will implement STIR/SHAKEN soon in the USA. Inteliquent (aka Neutral Tandem, Onvoy, Exiant, Vitelity, plus 20 other sub-brands) is the only provider implementing this protocol outside the cellular industry, and most of the CLECs they work with are not capable of maintaining SIP with a TLS certificate, let alon…

Yeah, it's mostly wireless carriers at least for now. Already T-Mobile and I think ATT are rolling this out to consumers, called Certified Caller ID I think. However, the FCC is coming down hard on all carriers for this. I don't know if there's any fines for not having it implemented, but I know Chairman Pai said he expected it to be implemented this year. Obviously, telecom moves slow and it's not possible for all carriers. Even some SBCs I'm sure don't support it (specialized call handling hardware). It will be interesting what kind of legal requirements they put in place with regards to this. I think they will try to strong arm all carriers soon.
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