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Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

reportphonespam.org

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Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#21

Post by solardev »

troydavis wrote: post #17
solardev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US you can report them to the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/rules-political-campaign-calls-and-texts Keep in mind that sometimes they can skirt the rules by not using automation per se. Instead, they have a bunch of volunteers sit in a room (or online) with special apps that distribute a phone number list (often from NGPVan or the Republican equivalent, forget what it's called) between the individual devices. Then…

Just to clarify for anyone reading, this meets the FCC's requirements (ie, it's legal and the FCC won't do anything about it), but it generally is not allowed by the terms of use of the underlying wholesale carrier. So, you should still report it to the sending carrier. Background: Most larger, reputable US-based wholesale carriers have policies that are similar to the CTIA's guidelines for political campaigns: https…

Thanks for this clarification/differentiation!

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#22

Post by balderdash »

jwie wrote: post #4

The first order problem with spam calls/sms is you probably opted in to something. Most spam, like it or not, you asked for, and they can almost certainly prove it. The TCPA lawsuit business was so lucrative for years that a lot of effort goes into producing proof that the contact is legal. Rather than stopping spam calls these laws basically guarantee spam, but legal spam. Also carriers have pretty well cracked ille…

This is comically false - unless you mean that by providing my phone number to someone I’ve opted in (and I’m not talking about buried in some TOS (which is still BS), but say my local dry cleaner who spams me because I provided my phone number when they asked for my name and phone number when I dropped my clothes off.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#25

Post by mullingitover »

I wish we could euthanize this garbage, antiquated phone system. It shouldn't be expected/required that every adult has a phone number when the system is so irredeemably broken and dangerous.

If the web didn't have HTTPS, it would be illegal to conduct sensitive business over it. Yet we're stuck with this entrenched telephone system, the best we can do is STIR/SHAKEN, and that's not real security.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#26

Post by bhpm »

dboreham wrote: post #23

My solution since 2002: don't answer the phone.

Same here but every time I post that on this site I get replies about how they have to answer the phone because their kid could have fallen down a well and their wife could be in a coma and the police would be trying to contact them and if they don’t jump to answer the phone every time it rings their entire family could be murdered.

So IDK. It seems to be a problem, I just don’t have enough of a life for it to be for me.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#27

Post by conception »

davchana wrote: post #16
giancarlostoro wrote: post #12

The amount of spam I get since I left Googles old number service is insane. Whats worse is some will say reply stop to stop and just send you more bullshit.

most of the time, STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE (or clicking any link) marks the phone number or email as hot, and gets sold for more money in the market.

I wanted to note that for email this generally isn’t the case. Really spammy spam generally is easy to catch, I don’t think I’ve seen any in over a year. Any legitimate business generally adheres to unsubscribe requests. So if you unsubscribe from stuff hitting your mailbox generally you’ll stop getting it. My mailbox pretty much only gets signal to it, almost zero noise.

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#28

Post by simfree »

troydavis wrote: post #5
paultopia wrote: post #2

Is there any reason to think that this would work for political party donation spam? Do the telecom carriers that provide services for all those horrific text messages about how the other party is going to install a dictator unless you donate to them right now actually care enough to punish those?

From firsthand experience, yes, it works for unsolicited political party donation messages. Not 100% of the time, but way more than 0%. These wholesale carriers know that recipients will flag unsolicited political messages as spam (to the recipient's wireless provider), and they don't want consumer wireless providers to block or heavily rate-limit messages from their phone numbers. The political campaigns cycle throu…

It's also common practice to hard drop abusive campaigns that do not respond to STOP, HELP and similar keywords at the provider's SMSC, and just collect the revenue from them texting your clients.

The 10DLC cartel wants to fine instances of unsolicited text messaging up to $20,000 per instance, hence why there is a big pushback against registering with this unsanctioned, not FCC mandated organization called The Carrier Registry (TCR).

TCR has been a nightmare to work with for those that do participate in their bureaucracy. You fill out pages of forms with everything from EINs/SSNs to the owners and co-owners of the firm and exact examples of what they plan to text, then 6 months or so later the TCR says "Oh, sucks to be you, we're invalidating all current registered companies, pay $50 to register again and fill out entirely different forms!

Also, T-Mobile is tacking on a new inactivity fee of $xx a month per business if your client doesn't message a T-Mobile number every few days :D"

Re: Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

#29

Post by troydavis »

jdanyow wrote: post #24

Would it be possible to build an app to automate all this?

Great question. I think the biggest challenge would be maintaining high-quality reports/complaints. Basically, preventing people from reporting things that they opted in to but are frustrated with (just because it's really easy to do). There's a chance that the reports would actually become worse (less actionable) if it was too easy or too automated.

A small challenge is that the high-quality carrier lookup APIs charge a fee for each query. The fee is tiny (like 1/10th of a cent per number), but enough to add up.

If anyone is interesting in discussing this, my email address is in my HN profile.

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