If you get phonespam whisper at increasingly lower volumes, then out of the blue shout I HAVE ALREADY TOLD TO YOUR MANAGER TO BLACKLIST MY NUMBER WHAT IS YOUR SURNAME AND CUSTOMER SUPPORT ID
They usually hang up at 'blacklist'.
FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
311–320 of 352 posts
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#312Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#313Good. 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…
The iPhone has a setting that has you route unknown callers to VM ("silence unknown callers"). I used to do the silent-answer trick, but this is so much better. If it's important,I get a vm and I'll call right back.
The times it has failed me is, actually, right now. I put in a call to have a delivery, maybe the last four digits are 4700- I've plugged that number in. But the guy calling me back calls on 4709 and gets VM. So I have to remember to turn this off if I'm expecting a delivery.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#314Earlier 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.
We shouldn't interfere in the free market. Those robocalls are just good old American ingenuity.
Such a disingenuous argument. The government quite frankly ties the free-market with weird regulations that essentially prevent competition. And then we get snarky comments such as this that say "oh wow, look how badly the free-market failed". For an example of free market trying to solve this, albeit not in a great way, have a look at TrueCaller and similar software.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#315Earlier 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…
If it was actually a real person calling me about the accident, I'd love to respond with a furious "no it's YOUR fault' and try to convince them I'd literally just had an accident answering the phone whilst driving.
The time I told the robocall bot that this was very worrying because I was on my way to a driving test was actually true though. :D
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Auto-dial systems will route the call to a person when they get a "live" response. I don't know the criteria but I'm pretty sure it's them detecting noise on the call (which could be voicemail). I work with phone systems. It's usually determined by how long they hear a continuous sound at the start of a call. If it's relatively short (and it can be adjusted by settings), it assumes it's a live voice (like someone s…
Neat job. Question you might know the answer to: I've noticed it's a pretty common practice to get appointment reminders with caller ID from the doctor's office. I like that feature. I'd imagine there are plenty of other legitimate use cases for caller ID spoofing as well. Do you have any idea how that's going to work with STIR/SHAKEN? I'd guess it's going to be some kind of oauth for your phone number, where you own…
It's going to be a problem for some systems for sure, but as the STIR framework is used to attest the number, the caller itself doesn't need to do anything. The originating carrier then attests with a level certainty A, B or C who the caller is, and adds a crypto signature to the signaling.
The key here is the attestation. If the calling carrier (usually the provider of the DID in retail but in commercial, not necessarily the same carrier) can attest by the caller, then the call will go through regardless. So tele-center company can agree with the calling carrier that, basically, tele-center company really owns the number (A) or it's more or less certain of it (B) and the call will be sent attested.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
We shouldn't interfere in the free market. Those robocalls are just good old American ingenuity.
? 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.
> here and on reddit
If you pay upvotes and karma, you get unsubstantiated politicised arguments. The feedback mechanism rewards those comments.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
It took a while for the carriers to bring themselves into compliance with the technical requirements to make it work.
Yup - good call. I thought this was a nice post by the Twilio CEO last year: https://www.twilio.com/blog/your-phone-your-call-eliminating... Basically, he walks through the history of the phone system and how it never really considered bad actors, and then what they are working on now and what it'll take to deploy it.
A lot like the early Internet. Hopefully we've learned that systems must be designed security-first to scale.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Seconded for the P. They call me every 3 months. Every single one promises they'll note in their CRM how I wont be contacted again. None can answer why they didn't read the note from all their previous calls.
Re: FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
From my understanding, it basically means all telecoms will be required to do what T-Mobile already does in the U.S. If I get a call and the reported Caller ID doesn't match the transmitted one, it reads on my phone as "Scam Likely". Pixels also have their own solution to this: If that condition occurs, the Google Assistant will answer the call and auto-decline if it is actually a robocall.
I think T-Mobile only does this for postpaid users though. Prepaid users are excluded AFAIK.
It is available to all customers[1] with a supported device (plan doesn't matter, but I suspect prepaid customers are more likely to have cheaper, unsupported devices).