There should be another fines in the future. Also, there should be asset seizures and long jail time if we want to see these crimes stop their harassment on us. I have just read an article that also talks about robocalls at https://www.lemberglaw.com/what-are-robocalls/. Hope the law enforcement will think seriously about this problem.
FCC fines robocaller record $120M
161–170 of 175 posts
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> when the same origin hits every number There is no real concept of "origin". Unless you're the direct upstream carrier of the originator of the robocalls, the robocalls will be diluted with legitimate calls in such a way no single inbound carrier stands out.
I see, are there second layer provides agregating multiple VoIP retailers? I thought VoIP route directly to the big telcos networks. But even in this case - just drop the whole 2nd layer provider and they will quickly deal with their spammer clients.
Big carriers* often route directly, but even then, it's not guaranteed (they could use a third-party or even a competitor as a fallback in case their own interconnect goes down), and to be fair, big carriers (Twilio, etc) are decent at fighting abuse - it's not them we need to worry about.
Small & shady carriers are where the problem is, and those often just resell capacity from bigger carriers (some of which in turn resell even bigger carriers), or sometimes even resell illegal "black" or "grey" routes as they're called, could even be compromised servers from legitimate customers of big carriers.
In the end this entanglement mixes legitimate calls with malicious ones by the time they reach the destination (final) carrier, making it impossible for them to drop malicious calls without impacting a lot of legitimate usage.
*I avoid saying VoIP retailers because it doesn't really mean anything; carriers often allow you to use different interconnects, and VoIP is just one of many.
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#163Can we please get phone OEMs to enable a feature to only allow calls from people in our contact list? Baked in. No apps that scrape your phone book to do it. If you're not on my contact list, go to voicemail and I'll decide if you're legit. And have an option like DND where if you call in rapid succession then I'll pick up.
For Android phones without this feature built in, try the Block Calls app by Jachness.
It's not on F-Droid, but the source code is available on GitHub.
Play Store listing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jachness.b...
GitHub repo: https://github.com/jachness/blockcalls
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that, but they also charge for Caller ID name lookups.
This is interesting. So if I get a strange number and search 800notes.com or whatever the carrier is getting paid?
No, this occurs at the telco level. When a call is placed, only the number is sent. The receiving exchange must look up that number to get the name, and that lookup costs some fraction of a cent. This is why Caller ID with name costs extra money.
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
T-Mobile offers it as a free option with two levels: labeling the call as Scam Likely and blocking it outright. The latter is quite effective - I was getting 5+ calls per day and it’s now 1-2 per week.
The “Spam Likely” determination is fairly unreliable, IMO. They have labeled my doctors office “Scam Likely”, while many “Scam definitely” calls have not been labeled.
I haven’t had a single false positive. I get 1-2 false negatives per week but haven’t found an iOS call blocker which had comparable or better accuracy.
That’ll probably require fixing the broken design of the telephone system.
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#166These robo callers are the bane of my existence. I get at least one call per day with the same area code and first 3 digits of my phone number.
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#167Please tell me this guy is the one responsible for the daily calls I get from numbers that sort-of look like mine.
There's thousands of scammers doing the same gig. It's not just him :(
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see, are there second layer provides agregating multiple VoIP retailers? I thought VoIP route directly to the big telcos networks. But even in this case - just drop the whole 2nd layer provider and they will quickly deal with their spammer clients.
Big carriers* often route directly, but even then, it's not guaranteed (they could use a third-party or even a competitor as a fallback in case their own interconnect goes down), and to be fair, big carriers (Twilio, etc) are decent at fighting abuse - it's not them we need to worry about. Small & shady carriers are where the problem is, and those often just resell capacity from bigger carriers (some of which in turn…
>In the end this entanglement mixes legitimate calls with malicious ones by the time they reach the destination (final) carrier, making it impossible for them to drop malicious calls without impacting a lot of legitimate usage.
No, I did not say "drop calls", I said drop the source. If Twilio got blocked on T-Mobile it would found which re-seller is responsible in no time. If it was their hacked server - they, again, would have found it and patched. It's no different from e-mail spam in early 2000s - all e-mail from a server sending spam would have been blocked, including legitimate e-mail.
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
2% monthly churn is not low. That annualizes to ~25% which is significant. The cost per acquisition of getting a new customer is actually quite high so their churn numbers definitely hurt them.
When there are only 4 carriers in the US, it doesn't really matter. AT&T will lose a customer to Sprint, Sprint loses one to T-Mobile, T-Mobile loses one to Verizon, and Verizon loses one to AT&T. No one is getting rid of their cell phones.
The point is they still have to spend the money to make keep their flows positive otherwise they'll bleed customers to the other 3 and die eventually.
Re: FCC fines robocaller record $120M
#170Which will dissolve and re-start within hours.