A robot built to strike back at IP telephony spammers.
https://jollyrogertelephone.com/
FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
301–310 of 352 posts
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#302Wait, caller-id was not authenticated all the time?
It's a widespread incorrect belief.
* http://jdebp.uk./FGA/truths-about-telephones.html#CallerID
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#303Earlier 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.
Australia speaking. We get a buttload of spam calls from China (in Chinese, no less).
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I can actually weigh in here. In the past ten years, I've spent significant amounts of time in the US, France and the UK. In the UK, I get the occasional spam call ("I'm calling with regards to the recent accident that wasn't your fault..."). At its peak, I got about one such call per week. It's been months since I've had a spam call. In France, I got zero. In the 7 years I lived there, I got exactly zero. Every…
Different people in the US have different experiences. Why is some random anecdote (assuming it's not made up) good enough to define xxx million people? I don't get 2-5 calls per day. My experience is more like what you describe with the UK. But that could be affected by my being on the do not call list on one hand, and on the other, occasionally answering a telemarketer by accident when I'm waiting for another call.
>Why is some random anecdote (assuming it's not made up) good enough to define xxx million people?
It's not. Who told you it was?
Experience reports are still useful and interesting.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#305Why is this problem unique to the USA? I'm not saying I never get spam calls, but I certainly have to scroll back quite a bit in my phone call history to see the last one. Also, on the rare occasion I do get a spam call it's always from some random international country like South Sudan or Oman that I would never expect a phone call from. What makes this problem uniquely hard to solve for the USA as opposed to anywhe…
It’s not, but the scale... in the Netherlands if your number is on the lists you get I’d say about 5 calls from ‘Microsoft’ each month, not multiple calls a day.
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Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#306Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
We shouldn't interfere in the free market. Those robocalls are just good old American ingenuity.
People like to razz on it for being a free market, but it's really a gov. backed oligopy.
There is alot of people that do not have a proper understanding of what free market is, and misdirect the failing of the current markets from their proper blame point (government) to what they have associated with "free markets", failing to understand the influence that existing regulations have had on those markets including elimination of competition in the market.
Telco has not been a free market, ever.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 windsc…
You can find lots of similar stories here:
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
? Telecom is one of most regulated industries in the United States. Not sure why this pattern ("look how bad the free market is" @ highly regulated market) is so common here and on reddit.
I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic.
He is criticizing the sarcasm.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#310Good. 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…
I employ one of two strategies. Either I answer with “911. What’s the location of your emergency?” or similar. If it’s a live person calling it usually gets them nice and confused. I then get to yell at them for calling an emergency line. My favorite was the guy I talked to when I pretended to be “Shepard Sharp, deputy director of the NSA”. “How did you get this unlisted number? Where are you located, we are dispatching a team to your location now.” This person seemed to believe me.
The second and more common is to simply ask for their company name, their name and employee number, and their boss’s name. By the time I get to the third question they hang up and often don’t call back again. In my state you can sue for unwanted cell phone calls and the max you can get is something like $1200/call, which I am happy to inform them of. No clue how to actually do this but if someone automates the process of filing a suit, I will split the profits :)