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

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71–80 of 93 posts

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

#71
post #2

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

Yes, this has been my practice as well, except that voicemail is mostly for unknown callers to get a chance to actually get a message to me (just in case). For people I know, if it's important then they need to SMS me to tell me that they're going to call. If they can't text for some reason, then there's always voicemail.

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

#72
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.

That was my old practice, but spoofing means that not only is that ineffective, you're often blocking real numbers that you might want to be able to reach you.

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

#73

having a phone number will go the way of the landline same with email addresses -- this is some combination of your identity and a license to spam you spam protection is the main feature of gmail because email wasn't designed with fraud in mind -- an email system rebuilt from the ground up for 2019 would be safe for medical information, receipts, not be the giant password reset security hole that email currently is,…

So then how would people reach me? Ignoring snail-mail, all means of reaching me involve either my phone number or email address.

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

#74
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I love this. You wouldn't happen to have a blog post that details your setup?

I wonder if it's based on the same thing as https://old.reddit.com/r/itslenny/top?t=all

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

#76

having a phone number will go the way of the landline same with email addresses -- this is some combination of your identity and a license to spam you spam protection is the main feature of gmail because email wasn't designed with fraud in mind -- an email system rebuilt from the ground up for 2019 would be safe for medical information, receipts, not be the giant password reset security hole that email currently is,…

I suppose “social networks” are the replacement, you’re exchanging getting spammed by random actors you don’t know to a single actor (the social network).

Aaaaand here we go reinventing the wheel of "trust graph." Key signing party anyone?

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

#77

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 call…

You’re now incentivizing the carrier to deliver spam calls, and the customer to report as spam every call they receive from a party they have no expectation of talking to again regardless of whether it’s spam.

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

#78

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 call…

Why not provide a way to report spam calls and then heavily fine, dissolve, or jail the executives of companies that engage in the practice?

As this forum attests, this commercial activity is destroying the worldwide utility of a vital communications channel for everyone.

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

#79
I'm not sure why Washington has to be involved in this.

I've owned a landline phone that had a blacklisting feature. A little useful, except everyone got one shot ... until the available memory slots were used up. I bought it.

Why any phone with a CPU would not offer a whitelisting option is a mystery. Not on the list ... zero attention paid.

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

#80
post #73

having a phone number will go the way of the landline same with email addresses -- this is some combination of your identity and a license to spam you spam protection is the main feature of gmail because email wasn't designed with fraud in mind -- an email system rebuilt from the ground up for 2019 would be safe for medical information, receipts, not be the giant password reset security hole that email currently is,…

So then how would people reach me? Ignoring snail-mail, all means of reaching me involve either my phone number or email address.

Perhaps you'd give them single-use invites, or invites that included some form of certification path? I've noticed that Discord makes me go out of my way to hand out a reusable/non-expiring invite URL instead of a 1-day use-up-to-10-times link; obviously Discord's implementation relies on their hosting all the servers, but one could imagine a cryptographic equivalent that worked in a federated protocol.
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