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FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

docs.fcc.gov

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Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#291

Post by frereubu »

m101 wrote: post #285
cletus wrote: post #184

Good. But really, why did this take this long? It should be relatively easy to identify the bad actors here and I don't mean the spammers, I mean the telcos that make this possible, deliberately so, by essentially "laundering" spam calls. My response to picking up a number is to answer the call and say nothing. Auto-dial systems will route the call to a person when they get a "live" response. I don't know the criteri…

My strategy has been to do the exact opposite. I've claimed to have had the accident, spoken to the real person, asked them to hold the line whilst I finish something off some "urgent" work, received the follow up call after they hang up and asked them to call me back in a couple hours, again kept them waiting a few minutes. It really wastes their time and turns me in to an expensive call for them. Yes, it's wasted m…

A friend of mine used to actively enjoy doing this. Most of the calls he got were of the "we hear you've had an accident" variety, and he would start with a generic story about something like a car accident. The story would slowly get more and more bizarre until he's eventually telling them a story like how he hit a lorry full of miniature circus animals, with loads of tiny tigers and giraffes bouncing off his windscreen. He'd see how deep he could get them into the story before they realise they'd been had.

Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#292

Post by mtgx »

cletus wrote: post #184

Good. But really, why did this take this long? It should be relatively easy to identify the bad actors here and I don't mean the spammers, I mean the telcos that make this possible, deliberately so, by essentially "laundering" spam calls. My response to picking up a number is to answer the call and say nothing. Auto-dial systems will route the call to a person when they get a "live" response. I don't know the criteri…

Isn't it obvious? It's the NSA - same reason they haven't fixed the SS7 flaws.

I'll bet anything that even this "authentication" requires some sort of man-in-the-middle attack for the NSA before implemented, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing this announcement.

Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#294

Post by wiz21c »

rapnie wrote: post #273
readme wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't interfere in the free market. Those robocalls are just good old American ingenuity.

Indeed. I'm from the Netherlands and never, ever in my life received a robocall, and also do not know anyone else who received one.

I live in Belgium. I receive such a call on average twice a (week) day. Sometimes it's just blank call (nobody answers) sometimes they're offering gifts if I go to shop X, they ask if I want to compare my phone/energy bill.

The funniest one is when my fixed line provider (let's call it P) calls me on my mobile phone (which is another provider) and ask me if I'm one oh their (P) customer :-) (the explanation is that the mobile/fixed businesses are separated to avoid monopoly and, since they can't share customer data ('cos of data protection rules), they have to ask them again :-))

Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#296

Post by nullc »

_xnmw wrote: post #128
mumblemumble wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be surprised if turns out to be a bigger problem in the USA (and perhaps also Canada) than elsewhere simply because the USA is a bigger, easier-to-access pot of honey. It's a large area where everyone speaks the same language, lives in roughly the same regulatory and infrastructural environment, and has a lot of money to be scammed out of. Europe is also a big pot of honey. But people speak all sorts of d…

I'm not sure why your comment is being downvoted. Having THE largest rich homogenous market segment in the world with a weak regulatory environment (aka a free market) is probably a huge factor in scam targeting. See also Amazon fake inventory and fake reviews, which are a much bigger problem in Amazon US than in Amazon Canada, for example.

To me it suggests they're resource limited rather than victim limited currently.

This means they'll exploit the most profitable targets almost exclusively. It doesn't have to be much more profitable, just the most.

If they were victim limited, they'd expand the pool of targets to include the most profitable N until they became resource limited again.

Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#298

Post by PetitPrince »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #260
nimish wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took this long because the fcc is run by people who simply do not believe in using government to enforce oversight.

Good thing we replaced career lobbyist Tom Wheeler with someone who would actually do something, right? Are we so looking at the FCC through our worldview that we can't even acknowledge positive action? Wheeler was born on April 5, 1946 in Redlands, California. He attended Ohio State University.[7] From 1969 to 1976, Wheeler led the trade group Grocery Manufacturers of America.[8] He then went on to work at the Natio…

Not US citizen so I only looked at it through the spectrum of some Ars Technica article, but I had the impression that this Wheeler guy had a pretty great record while leading FCC: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/how-a...

Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#299

Post by chrisan »

m101 wrote: post #285
cletus wrote: post #184

Good. But really, why did this take this long? It should be relatively easy to identify the bad actors here and I don't mean the spammers, I mean the telcos that make this possible, deliberately so, by essentially "laundering" spam calls. My response to picking up a number is to answer the call and say nothing. Auto-dial systems will route the call to a person when they get a "live" response. I don't know the criteri…

My strategy has been to do the exact opposite. I've claimed to have had the accident, spoken to the real person, asked them to hold the line whilst I finish something off some "urgent" work, received the follow up call after they hang up and asked them to call me back in a couple hours, again kept them waiting a few minutes. It really wastes their time and turns me in to an expensive call for them. Yes, it's wasted m…

There is actually a dude who streams this https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga

I don't see how people can sit there and watch this live with him trying but normally the clipped/edited videos are pretty funny how much he can waste their time

Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

#300

Post by efreak »

75dvtwin wrote: post #248
mulmen wrote: post #3

Does this mean I can start answering my phone again? Are there other vectors for spam calling which are not addressed by this solution?

I hope this addresses the abuse. See [1] It basically asks the telecom operators to implement digitally signed certificates. So it would work, if I understand it conceptually, like your web browser, when it receives https traffic unsigned certificate, or https traffic from a domain that's not part of the certificate chain. Therefore, this mandate will prevent 'spoofing'. And without spoofing, the spammers would neces…

> I missed important business calls when in US. Because they were calling using same area code where my sim card was registered, so I thought it was from the area local to me.

I just ignore calls from my prefix. There's literally nobody in my contacts that has the same prefix I have, and I consider it extremely unlikely that any legitimate calls will come from there. 90% of spam calls come from my prefix, and most of the rest come from out of state (different area code entirely).

Another way is to just ignore all calls not in your contacts, and use Google voice's voicemail transcription (I think I've read about some way to do this with Twilio or another service, but I might be wrong).

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