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Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers

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

#301

Post by matsemann »

organsnyder wrote: post #290
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A school nurse is certainly expected to leave a message with a callback number. There are hundreds of millions of ways to leave a callback number that isn't 1 specific number you want. But "leave nothing" obviously isn't an acceptable solution, and leaving a personal cell number as a callback is a more acceptable one. tl;dr: leave message+number, how you do so is up to you

Absolutely. The person I was replying to said that voicemail was not a reasonable option. If the nurse needed to send an SMS their only option may be to use a personal device, and it isn't reasonable to expect educators and staff to provide personal contact information to parents. The proper procedure is for the nurse to leave a voicemail with their school-provided contact number (either the school office or a way to…

However, since voice mail isn't common where I live, I also get all communication through text. Most systems send out texts. It's how I communicate with the plumber, my dentist etc. Basically never talk over phone with anyone.

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

#302

Post by stetrain »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #260
stetrain wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are not the same thing as impersonation, lying about who you are and where you are calling from. Cable is not full of ads that say they are from AT&T and you need to contact them about your bill at but the ad isn't from AT&T and the number goes to a scam call center.

Yes, but most scam calls aren't impersonations either. I bet if you tallied it up, there's many more people being tricked into taking on bullshit contracts with legitimate companies[0] and losing much more money in total, than there are victims of actual impersonation scams. I firmly believe both schemes are morally equivalent, and that one of them is still considered legal only means we should push firmly for a chan…

All of the spam calls that are an annoyance to me are clearly spoofed numbers from my home area code.

That’s impersonation.

I know they are spoofing numbers because my own numbers gets spoofed as well. Real people call me back and leave voicemails saying I’m the one who called them.

None of this is standard advertising.

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

#303

Post by chrisBob »

steelframe wrote: post #99
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. My son got sick at school last week and I ignored the call from the school nurse because I have been so thoroughly conditioned by daily scam calls to ignore any unrecognized number. It’s insane that this is still a problem.

The exact same thing happened to me last week. My son got sick at school, enough so that they ended up calling the paramedics. But I had been spammed so much the week before with spoofed phone numbers from my area code that I had my phone on "Do Not Disturb" allowing only people in my contact list through. I thought it would be fine since the school's phone number is in my contact list. Unfortunately the school's sys…

I feel very lucky to have a phone number from when I lived in northern NY for a few years. There are 4 people from that area code that I might ever want a phone call from, and they are all in my address book. Any other 315 number is safe to ignore.

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

#304

Post by adhesive_wombat »

sentientslug wrote: post #288
kwhitefoot wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway it is an offence with penalties per infringing call to cold call anyone who has registered their number with the Brønnøysund registry more than 30 days ago (the equivalent of the Telephone Preference Service).

The US has the same thing for a very long time with the National Do Not Call registry: https://www.donotcall.gov/ The problem is that it's nearly impossible to enforce this. Would be curious to know if Norway has had any better luck.

I don't know about Norway, but the UK Telephone Preference Service does issue a number of fines for the line marketing calls they are responsible for, with enforcement via the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO, the GDPR people too): https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/pages/enforcement

Obviously if scammers are willing to commit serious fraud that will definitely result in prison if caught, they're probably not too worried about that. Along with scams, silent calls also fall under Ofcom's jurisdiction: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/complaints/complain-about-phones-or...

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

#305

Post by ghaff »

chrisBob wrote: post #303
steelframe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing happened to me last week. My son got sick at school, enough so that they ended up calling the paramedics. But I had been spammed so much the week before with spoofed phone numbers from my area code that I had my phone on "Do Not Disturb" allowing only people in my contact list through. I thought it would be fine since the school's phone number is in my contact list. Unfortunately the school's sys…

I feel very lucky to have a phone number from when I lived in northern NY for a few years. There are 4 people from that area code that I might ever want a phone call from, and they are all in my address book. Any other 315 number is safe to ignore.

I'm reasonably nearby the major city that has my cell phone's area code but I'm in a different area code and most people who are in the city who could even potentially call me are in my contact list. (For a long time I used to regularly get calls from areacode-exchange-random 4 digits which I knew to safely ignore/block.)

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

#306

Post by dredmorbius »

gwbas1c wrote: post #162
jimmydddd wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the posted page that the telecoms are interested in stopping spam. If they really cared, they would have addressed it by now. I suspect they are somehow making money from the spam callers.

(This is a US-based response response about the US phone system.) Because it's a political problem, not an engineering or business problem. In order to prevent monopolies, we have very strict requirements about carrying all calls that enter the network. Otherwise, phone companies would randomly block each other as part of anti-competitive tactics to push each other out of business. The telephone spammers take advanta…

NB: There's no HN guideline against discussing politics, though political submissions are somewhat discouraged.

Where political comments are problematic is generally where they run up against other guidelines, notably:

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

The other red line is accounts that principally push political viewpoints.

A fair bit of political discussion tends toward each of these. Avoid those rails, however, and you're good.

Dang's posted often on what does and doesn't work with political discussion, see: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...>

I'd specifically point at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34481375>

Where a problem, such as robocalls / spam phone calls, really is fundamentally one of politics and policy, discussing those political and policy elements is entirely appropriate.

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

#307

Post by emeril »

I came up with a pretty bulletproof solution years ago though it is a bit of a nuclear option...

(1) change your phone number to somewhere you don't know anyone that ideally has a single area code (e.g., north dakota with "701") (2) use some sort of app (e.g., numbershield on iOS) on your phone to block all calls from 701-XXX-XXXX (3) use this new number going forward (or transfer the existing number to google voice which seems to have an effective blocker and have it forwarded to new 701 number

now I can confidently pick up all unknown calls especially if they are local to me knowing they are legitimate - I now only get a few spam calls per year since doing this

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

#308

Post by doesnotexist »

Wouldn't it be nice if you could give out a revokable token in place of a phone number to various businesses. If you ever received spam through a token just revoke it and move on. Puts the power back into the hands of the recipient rather than having to rely on some centralized service or your carrier.

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

#309

Post by flerchin »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #132
flerchin wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. We're talking about spam texts and phone calls. That stuff isn't legal. Yeah what everyone else does is creepy af, and _should be illegal_, but that's not the facts on the ground today.

The creepy af stuff being legal is one of the cracks that the illegal stuff uses to leak through. Those cracks need to be sealed, but there's enough creepy af industry lobbying that it won't happen because money. There's money in them thar retirement villages.

I don't really grok this argument. Google's panopticon is not facilitating or causing the Car Warranty calls, or text messages about my package waiting at the 'usps facility'.

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

#310

Post by kwhitefoot »

sentientslug wrote: post #288
kwhitefoot wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway it is an offence with penalties per infringing call to cold call anyone who has registered their number with the Brønnøysund registry more than 30 days ago (the equivalent of the Telephone Preference Service).

The US has the same thing for a very long time with the National Do Not Call registry: https://www.donotcall.gov/ The problem is that it's nearly impossible to enforce this. Would be curious to know if Norway has had any better luck.

Well something must be working because I have only had one cold call in the last ten years. We never got very many but now it's so rare as to be worth remarking on if it happens. That one cold call turned out to have been a mistake on the part of an otherwise well behaved company who were very apologetic when I pointed out that my number was on the register.

Companies do occasionally get fined.

I have had a couple of calls from outside the country but I generally just don't answer unrecognized numbers from outside the countries that I have a connection with.

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