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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

#311

Post by abirch »

furyg3 wrote: post #227
abirch wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the percentage of occupied Dutch phone codes be lower than the USA? There may be a smaller pay off.

You mean area codes (all Dutch mobiles are on one area code - 06) or do you mean the proportion of available phone numbers to phone users? The latter would imply that spammers are 'wardialing' phone numbers but that seems really unlikely to me as it would be incredibly easy for telcos to detect and prevent.

I meant the second. The hypothesis of with a few smart tweaks such as valid area codes, etc. I've yet to have text spam use my name, whereas email spam is around 10% for me.

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

#312

Post by ossguy »

razakel wrote: post #274
nick__m wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use voip.ms and the only time they where unreliable was when they were under a DDOS attack. What equipment do you use to bridge the voip to your physical telephone? I suspect that it would be your principal source of unreliability.

It's possible, but not cheap, to have a SIM card that can roam on any cell network on Earth, and present as a SIP client.

I'd be interested to hear more if you don't mind posting about which service(s) offer(s) this. If you'd rather tell me privately, email denver@ossguy.com

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

#313

Post by lhamil64 »

organsnyder wrote: post #262
gosub100 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see this failing because the nurse's phone number is different than the school. Any large institution usually has multiple lines.

Depends on how their PBX is set up, but often those lines—even if they have separate incoming numbers—will all have the same outgoing number.

Which is ironically done by spoofing the number, which is why it's so easy for scammers to spoof numbers.

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

#314

Post by lhamil64 »

ghaff wrote: post #289
jaktet wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a word for describing becoming desensitized from false alarms? A similar situation is instead of a shared calendar for OOF status (at work) we are asked to send a calendar invite to our team and immediate team. My calendar is filled with “doctor appointment” invitations from people I don’t often interact with or need to know their in-office status. I started missing meetings and appointments because I was so…

I've heard alarm fatigue used. I think it originated in a healthcare context.

I've also heard the term alarm fatigue. Pretty sure I heard it in the context of cybersecurity where security admins will get complacent if there's too many false alarms and potentially miss legitimate attacks.

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

#315

Post by ipython »

nilamo wrote: post #294
ipython wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides a private right of action for you to sue the culprit in civil court. I have personally received thousands of dollars in compensation for every case I’ve brought under the statute. Unfortunately most of the culprits nowadays are overseas scammers, in which case it’s no help. I would agree in that case- the only way to stop these folks is through the carriers themselves and they don’t seem too keen on doing…

Ok, but who's the culprit for "unknown caller"? If we don't have info, how do we go after them ourselves?

That's the art & science of it... you need to social engineer the info out of them. Most of the time, even if you do get a caller ID, it's spoofed, so it doesn't matter what "number" they call you from. You need to identify a business with an address and phone number, and definitively tie the activity back to that business.

Yes, it takes time and skill, but then again, between the TCPA and state statutes you could potentially recover close to $6000 per call. Now when you negotiate a settlement you may not actually see that much, but you are definitely getting the attention of the offenders, and just the process of responding to your complaint (lawyer time) will take another few thousand dollars out of the pockets of these cretin.

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

#316

Post by BLKNSLVR »

flerchin wrote: post #309
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

I see the lack of any kind of privacy controls or regulation as facilitating the selling of personal information (= legal). This information is, in turn, bought and used by companies behind these scams.

Google's panopticon started this desperate grab for personal contact information (see recent discussions here on HN around Smart TVs as another one of the outgrowths of this) in it's ability to turn it into advertising profit on a previously unprecedented scale.

This is separate to telecomms companies seeming lack of ability to control or monitor what's on their networks. Which is also a regulation / enforcement problem. However, there are functions that are 'allowed' on telecomms networks to facilitate 'business' (eg. overseas companies being able to spoof local numbers so that people actually answer their calls), such that this 'feature' is then exploited by scammers - when, arguably, the whole 'feature' is a scam in the first place.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/mobiles-and-landlines...

(I'm sure I read an article somewhere that described the ability to spoof local numbers as a business decision to allow overseas marketers to sell their wares locally without fear of their calls not being answered. Trying to find it. I may be mistaken.)

Edit: services such as virtual phone numbers, such as these:

https://callhippo.com/blog/country/virtual-phone-number-prov...

https://www.numeroesim.com/how-to-get-an-australian-phone-nu...

https://virtual-local-numbers.com/countries/65-australia.htm...

This is likely coming from the purely 'if it can be abused it shouldn't exist' bias, which may mean I've taken a step closer to becoming an old luddite, but it feels as if, if this is possible, then the entire infrastructure can't be trusted any more - and people consciously choosing to just not answer their phones for any unrecognised number feels like confirmation of this stance.

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

#317

Post by akerl_ »

logicallee wrote: post #221

Could you add an exception for law enforcement? There are 600,000 missing persons reports annually (especially concerning when a person is being prevented from calling their loved one) and it would make their job easier and could start with a very small consent question. Feel free to email me if you need any more background or information.

Calling random phone numbers is not a viable strategy for finding missing persons.

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

#318

Post by cweagans »

ipython wrote: post #315
nilamo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but who's the culprit for "unknown caller"? If we don't have info, how do we go after them ourselves?

That's the art & science of it... you need to social engineer the info out of them. Most of the time, even if you do get a caller ID, it's spoofed, so it doesn't matter what "number" they call you from. You need to identify a business with an address and phone number, and definitively tie the activity back to that business. Yes, it takes time and skill, but then again, between the TCPA and state statutes you could po…

Details, please. Maybe a video/recording of you doing this? I often waste scam caller time by trying to keep them on the phone as long as possible, but this sounds like a much better approach.

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

#319

Post by drdaeman »

calamari4065 wrote: post #149
drdaeman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> telecoms are interested in stopping spam. If they really cared, they would have addressed it by now I'm not so sure about this. No one (except for, obviously, spammers) benefits from email spam, every mailhost and network admin is most certainly interested in stopping it (to some extent), and yet my mailbox can prove that spam is still very much alive. Solving spam problems in a highly distributed large federation…

The analogy doesn't hold because anyone can send an email to anyone else on any service at any time. You can't exactly just climb up a telephone pole and tap off a few phone numbers for yourself. You have to explicitly enter into a contract with a service provider to use their infrastructure. Spammers and scammers are wasting infrastructure resources that the telcos could be allocating to users. The telco can just cu…

> The analogy doesn't hold because anyone can send an email to anyone else on any service at any time.

Sorry, but I disagree. You can't just open a utility cabinet and establish TCP connections with random mail servers either. You have to explicitly enter a contract with a service provider to connect to Internet too.

And every mail system out there uses a bunch of precautions, like SPF, DMARC and of course it refers to some DNSBLs. I just cannot imagine any operational Internet-facing general-purpose SMTP system that doesn't.

Most ISPs out there outright filter out any tcp/25 traffic for their customers, residental or hosted. Typically (in case of server hosting) or less typically (in case of residental network access) this block can be lifted by going through some sort of pinky-swear "won't spam" KYC, but if you abuse it, you'll get booted off the platform real fast. And if it's too weak, the provider will very soon find themselves and their customers unable to send anything.

Because if a LIR doesn't respond to spam reports from their system, RDNSBL bans will very rapidly grow from just a single IP to progressively larger and larger subnet and then the whole AS. And getting out of a DNSBL isn't exactly fun. So network operators really hate email spam - it brings them nothing but headaches.

And that's why virtually all spam today comes from infected or hacked machines, and not some malicious people running a spam server.

I don't know where telephony spam comes from - as I've said I don't have much experience with this side of telecom, but I wouldn't be surprised if a vast majority of it would be from hacked/unsecured VoIP systems. I believe unscrupulous phone companies may be able to pull something, selling access to spammers, but that's probably once-or-twice-in-lifetime thing, because they won't be able to BS that they were hacked or something after a few incidents. (I highly doubt phone companies don't have a culture of blocking abusive peers. Internet operators surely do.)

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

#320

Post by account42 »

red_admiral wrote: post #269
gruez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the web didn't have HTTPS, it would be illegal to conduct sensitive business over it. Source? According to this timeline[1], e-commerence with credit cards predate SSL. Therefore I'm not really convinced that there's some law against it, except for laws that were introduced after SSL was a thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce#Timeline

It's not so much law, as far as I'm aware, as the PCI/DSS requirements made by the credit card companies. Since they'll stop doing business with you if you don't follow their requirements, for all practical purposes, they have the force of law. You could probably get sued for negligence if you process card details over an unencrypted connection, but that's nothing compared to the damage your business will take if the…

Sure, since we do have TLS on the web card companies can require we use it. That doesn't mean that they would just disallow all online transactions if we did no have easy encryption available. Security is after all never the primary concern - if it was you would not interacting with other people and computers at all.
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