I feel the correct solution (given the current admin, and U politics in general) is just to stop allowing telcos to charge for receiving calls. Fundamentally for everything they say about robocalls, it's still profitable for a telco if you ever pick up.
FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
161–170 of 184 posts
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#162According to Ars they want to leave it up to the carriers if they want to charge for it, if that is accurate and the robocall problems escalate then you could end up paying for it by default ... or just get robocalls all day. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pais-roboca... "It will cost $X a month for service, and $Y more if you want to be able to use it..." And as a revenue stream I worry this could…
The more I look at things as I age, the more I see market based solutions as only benefiting the supplier and always hurting the consumer.
we dont need to have a pro market or pro socialist conversation. we all agree robocalling needs to stop.
Make it illegal, make it illegal for telecoms to allow it.
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#163If this actually happens I will be thankful that at least he did something good during his tenure. I suppose this will get through since it doesn’t hurt the profits of the telcos. In fact it will give them a new profit center! Because I’m sure that they won’t offer “block by default” for free.
I suspect everything he does is vetted by the telcos.
I think another way to implement it that would be "telco friendly" would be to charge for each phone call, even if it doesn't connect.
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#164I will welcome a workable solution to the robocall problems. In the interim, they provide a source of entertainment. The most common ones I get are from The Credit Card Company to tell me that because of my excellent credit history, I have qualified to get my credit card directly through them at a lower interst rate, instead of having it resold to me through Visa or Mastercard. For these calls, I'll generate a fake c…
> Inevitably, when the number comes back as bogus, they get angry, and yell at me
I was really surprised the first time I got a got a bunch of obscenities out of one of these scammers-- I figured they'd consider being screwed with just a cost of doing business.
Weird.
Aside: I went from a couple a day to none in the last three days after saying "DO NOT HANG UP. You have reached the US department of illicit telephone communication". Perhaps a coincidence.
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#165Is there any legitimate use case for robocalls at all? Can we not make it illegal punishable with the death sentence? Would any law abidng citizen be affected? Presuming post and sms messages are still allowed. Hypothetically, natch.
> Can we not make it illegal punishable with the death sentence? I think all spammers should be dealt with in the manner Vlad Tepes used to deal with Turks, criminals, and people who talk at the theater. However, we're going to need a lot of thick, sturdy bamboo stakes if we're going to impale every spammer we find.
> However, we're going to need a lot of thick, sturdy bamboo stakes if we're going to impale every spammer we find.
Sharpen the femurs of their predecessors. Because most spammers yield two femurs, you only need one starter stake and then your supply of weapons is self sustaining.
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#166Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#167This is awful. There's no chance of their system having a 0% false positive rate (positive in this case meaning spam). Even a low FPR means that potentially important calls will get blocked by default.
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Duterte pretends to be a hardass, right? Tell him to deal with it by any means necessary or else the USS Jimmy Carter starts to sever their submarine cables one by one until the problem is resolved that way. If anybody thinks that's too severe, explain to them that DDOSing a nation's telecom system is an act of cyberwar.
Do you really think that having Duterte kill these people is an appropriate response to robocalls? I mean, sure, I understand the temptation , but... it's a bit extreme for the actual harm being done.
Duterte's a crazy man, if anyone deserves to get whacked, it's him. In a normal administration, we could manage this, but with a septuagenarian and John "war is fucking awesome" Bolton around, the bastard gets showered with praise.
Sorry to say it, ditto for Erdogan
/politicsrant
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would this account for (legitimate) blocked numbers or those that originate behind a switch? I get calls from recruiters from time to time that do this as a matter of course. Although I have no expectation the GOP would actually do this, I would add an asterisk to the policy... * If you use these lists for marketing to existing customers, we reserve the right to sue you out of existence. Kindly GFY.
> * I get calls from recruiters from time to time that do this as a matter of course.* If this gets widespread adoption, then recruiters and legitimate robocalls will come up with solutions. The problem I have is that if I block all unknown numbers, I'll also be blocking my bank/credit card/pharmacy or other legitimate robocalls. So I can't do this myself. But if everyone blocks unknown calls, these entities will be…
They likely do it so they don't have people calling back a direct line on a whim. Usually will ask me to call a different number if I'm actually interested.
Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
#170This will probably get buried, but I’ll give my personal solution to reducing the number of robocalls over the past few months. Be a robot. Either answer the phone with absolute silence or have a very loud dial tone playing. It might be a coincidence, but I’m fairly certain this has put me on robocall blacklists. Bonus points if they give you a callback number to a call center... just keep spam calling them with a loud dial tone. I only get a couple of calls per week now.