151–160 of 281 posts
Good start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail.
I'm going to go ahead and say none of them are in the jurisdiction of the DoJ.
On a side note, today and yesterday I've been bombarded with spam calls. Even got one while writing this comment. All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years. No voice mail, nothing. It's not even this bad around election time. Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it do…
The do not call list seems to be a "Spam me, you brute" list. In the beginning, they seemed to take their job seriously, but I doubt that has been the case for many years. Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed, I got zero spoofed calls. I did get a few robocalls, but they weren't spoofed. For a month or so. So that shows the problem can be solved, legislatively. Then, they started coming back, and now, almost every call…
> Also, legit callers should keep in mind
As well as "If you leave a message there's a decent chance I'm going to call you back in 30 seconds, I don't want to start a game of phone tag."
If I don't know your number AND I'm not expecting a call, I 100% will not answer it. If you're legit, sorry, you are the exception, not the typical case. Don't blame me, blame the spammers.
The modern world is absolutely infuriating, filled with self-inflicted problems.
> Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed
> moonlight as spammers
Umm, no it isn’t. This is 2025. The technology to fix this is not complicated, but the people who can implement it simply don’t want to.
If Verizon/ATT/T Mo got fined $25 every time a robo call went through they’d find a way to stop it really fast. Create KYC verification systems and use metadata to route non-verified calls to a spam voicemail folder, problem solved.
At this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale. In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact…
I just don't think anyone wants to fix it. Why can't apple let us send "spam risk" to voicemail?
Like adding extensions, possibly with passwords to your phone line.
It would be good to give an extension or password to friends, or one for each business, which can be automated to input with a pause after answering, and it gets through (or further) if possible.
we should have phone rules just like mail rules.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The do not call list seems to be a "Spam me, you brute" list. In the beginning, they seemed to take their job seriously, but I doubt that has been the case for many years. Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed, I got zero spoofed calls. I did get a few robocalls, but they weren't spoofed. For a month or so. So that shows the problem can be solved, legislatively. Then, they started coming back, and now, almost every call…
Cynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them. Of course they do, and they voted themselves an exception. Same reason some small business in Redmond, WA isn't allowed to put out a sandwich board sign, but 10 months before every election every g*ddamned piece of dirt in Redmond has a political sign stuck into it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. My city started posting about online safety and warnings about various scams. Unfortunately, almost every one of them also mentions how a local resident was victimized. We have a fairly large senior population. It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff when we're young enough to have grown up in this world or started using new technology at an early age. We will be the ones targeted someday and it…
> It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff It’s not just “easy”, it’s an ideological imperative to ensure that the vulnerable have “personal responsibility” to avoid predation, while predators bear no responsibility for their own actions. Many tech business models depend on exploitation — it’s not just phone scammers.
Or rather, to justify what the strong were already doing and didn't have to ask anybody's permission to do, and that nobody else ever had a say about that mattered.
On a side note, today and yesterday I've been bombarded with spam calls. Even got one while writing this comment. All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years. No voice mail, nothing. It's not even this bad around election time. Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it do…
At this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale. In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact…
If I could just block the numbers, or auto send to voicemail, that my phone already flags as Spam/Telemarketing this wouldn’t be so frustrating for me. I do need my phone to ring for unknowns/outside my contacts numbers, so the blocking ability I need isn’t available (on iOS anyway.) I am left manually doing this when something rings if it is flagged, I will ignore it and if it’s unknown and not flagged I will answer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The do not call list seems to be a "Spam me, you brute" list. In the beginning, they seemed to take their job seriously, but I doubt that has been the case for many years. Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed, I got zero spoofed calls. I did get a few robocalls, but they weren't spoofed. For a month or so. So that shows the problem can be solved, legislatively. Then, they started coming back, and now, almost every call…
They figured out the flaw to SHAKEN/STIR. It was mandated for VOIP calls. So instead these scam call centers switched to the legacy SS7, that's how you are getting all these fraudulent calls. SS7 is not IP based and incompatible with SHAKEN/STIR And it'll be 400 years from now before any US telecom thinks about discontinuing SS7.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How I imagine you ~~calling~~ emailing the fire department: https://youtu.be/uesx85EHRTo (The IT crowd - Moss Contacts Fire Department)
Sure, put the emergency hotline on the internet. It already is very special and doesn't use the phone network the way other voice calls do.
Legitimacy aside, the only people who still call me without prior arrangement tend to be those who assume they’re entitled to my time and attention on demand. The phone has always been a disruptive form of communication—even if every single call were legitimate (which is far from reality)—because it disregards the boundaries of the recipient’s time.
That’s why I stopped giving anyone real-time PSTN access. For me, it’s voicemail-only now, and honestly, it’s the best decision I’ve made for cutting down on annoyances.