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US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

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Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#211

Post by katbyte »

Ensorceled wrote: post #201
katbyte wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you signed up for the national do not call list?

Yes, of course I have. But the “CRA”, Duct Cleaners, and the women who speaks only Chinese all ignore that list.

I really wonder what the difference is between numbers, I’m on telus and I don’t think they make any attempt to block them? And I’ve had my number for 20 years, with both bell and Rogers in the past. and made no effort to keep it secret. Thou I occasionally answer the calls when I’m bored and waste them time.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#212

Post by ghaff »

matsemann wrote: post #145
ghaff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of people, not being reachable by voice is not really an option in the case of emergencies, medical offices, business, etc. I do more texting than leaving voice messages but, for example, my dad essentially will not text or email.

I guess it's more that no one here ever leaves a message. A medical office for instance would never call to give out that info over phone, instead I would get an email or sms telling me to log in securely to their portal to see test results etc there.

It's not so much test results. But, for example, just this morning my dentist's office told me that a slot for an appointment I had been waiting for opened up this afternoon. More has switched to texts and portals but there's still a fair bit of calling in my experience in the US.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#213

Post by dymk »

thfuran wrote: post #189
dymk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not VoIP callers. I’m primarily dealing with small to medium sized businesses, which use landlines, or cell plans like Verizon for Small Business, which are basically normal lines on normal cellphones.

A ton of small and medium businesses use voip. Even residential landline phone service can be voip these days.

To reiterate the problem: Legitimate callers don't all use VoIP. I don't have every legitimate caller's phone number in my contact list.

Blocking all numbers not in one's contacts list is therefore not a solution to blocking spam calls while allowing legitimate callers.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#214

Post by thfuran »

dymk wrote: post #213
thfuran wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of small and medium businesses use voip. Even residential landline phone service can be voip these days.

To reiterate the problem: Legitimate callers don't all use VoIP. I don't have every legitimate caller's phone number in my contact list. Blocking all numbers not in one's contacts list is therefore not a solution to blocking spam calls while allowing legitimate callers.

Yes, but many legitimate callers are voip so blocking all voip calls also isn't a good solution if you're looking to avoid blocking legitimate callers.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#215

Post by nikanj »

thfuran wrote: post #214
dymk wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reiterate the problem: Legitimate callers don't all use VoIP. I don't have every legitimate caller's phone number in my contact list. Blocking all numbers not in one's contacts list is therefore not a solution to blocking spam calls while allowing legitimate callers.

Yes, but many legitimate callers are voip so blocking all voip calls also isn't a good solution if you're looking to avoid blocking legitimate callers.

To me it is a good solution. Again, I’m happy to sacrifice some signal, if that loses essentially all noise.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#216

Post by kube-system »

philistine wrote: post #202
kube-system wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should still take into account the usability of public utilities for those who struggle with internet illiteracy or disabilities, regardless of how well your parents can cope. A full 25% of people 65+ don't use the internet in any capacity at all.

What's the number of people 65+ who don't use a phone in any capacity at all? It's not zero. There will always be people left to the wayside, and we need to act when that number is manageable. 25% might be way too much to legislate against robocalls in all forms, but we need to weigh the loss against the gains; how many seniors would benefit from less scams?

Of course, there are always exceptions. 25% of a major demographic is not one, though. I know that young people and those working in tech are totally over voice calls, but outside of our bubble, people still use telephones as telephones.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#217

Post by Evidlo »

tzs wrote: post #182
Evidlo wrote: post #89

Semi-related project I worked on: https://github.com/evidlo/nanpa_lookup Simple bash script to lookup what companies own spam numbers. Almost all of my spam calls are from domestic VOIP companies. >>> ./lookup.sh -n 907-200-1234 "GCI COMMUNICATION CORP. DBA GENERAL COMMUNICATION" >>> ./lookup.sh -f path/to/numbers.txt "GCI COMMUNICATION CORP. DBA GENERAL COMMUNICATION" "CELLCO PARTNERSHIP DBA VERIZON WIRELESS - NC" "…

That example doesn't work for me. It produces no output for that number. The problem seems to be that the entry in database.csv for that number is this: 907|200||GCI COMMUNICATION CORP. DBA GE|PCS||6872 Given 907-200-1234 lookup.sh looks it up by grepping for '907\|200\|1'. Compare to a number that works, 858-598-7654. That ends up grepping for '858\|598\|7' and that matches this line from database.csv: 858|598|7|T-M…

Thanks, I'll try it out.

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#218

Post by dymk »

thfuran wrote: post #214
dymk wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reiterate the problem: Legitimate callers don't all use VoIP. I don't have every legitimate caller's phone number in my contact list. Blocking all numbers not in one's contacts list is therefore not a solution to blocking spam calls while allowing legitimate callers.

Yes, but many legitimate callers are voip so blocking all voip calls also isn't a good solution if you're looking to avoid blocking legitimate callers.

Yes, agreed, blocking VoIP is not a solution, blocking everybody not in your contacts is not a solution - the solution is enforced and widespread STIR/SHAKEN

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#219

Post by 300bps »

toast0 wrote: post #209
300bps wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long have you been on the Internet? I ask because I started an ISP in 1996 and IP address spoofing used to be soooo much worse. Today’s situation is the product of literally 2.5 decades of encouraging and/or shaming Internet-connected networks into properly configuring their routers to drop spoofed packets egressing from their network with a spoofed IP address not from their network.

Approximately forever, although while I worked at an "ISP" in 1999, it was a two T1 ISP; one for modems, one for upstream; and then we outsourced all the modem stuff to MegaPath when something weird happened to our modem T1, but I was never trained on how that T1 worked, all just magic to me. I kind of sort of get the idea today, but ... I poked at the RADIUS server, and setup webhosting for customers. I never worked…

but it's still probably easier to get a big DDoS with UDP reflection than through botnets directly hitting the target.

We were more sophisticated back then. So picture your netblock is 207.180.10.0/24 and you've directly connected all 200 computers on your Class-C netblock directly to the public Internet without any NAT. 207.180.10.0 is your network ID and 207.180.10.255 is your broadcast address.

Someone comes along and sends a 64 byte ICMP ECHO request to 207.180.10.255. And they get 200 responses. Literally every one of the computers on your entire network responds with an ICMP ECHO reply.

So now they can spoof an IP address from Victim IP address to send 1k ICMP ECHO requests to 207.180.10.255 and multiply their attack 200:1.

But now imagine instead of a tiny Class-C netblock they find a similarly configured broadcast address for a huge Class-A netblock. And their scanner counts 29,000 ICMP ECHO replies for each request they send out. Now their attack is multiplied 29,000:1.

And since they've been scanning for broadcast addresses on the public Internet every day for a month they have compiled a list of hundreds of them so the attack seems to be coming from everywhere.

https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/smurf-attac...

Re: US Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force

#220

Post by cptskippy »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #205
cptskippy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, one of the loopholes in rules requiring STIR/SHAKEN and other protections was that smaller carriers, usually serving rural or under served markets, were exempt. This became a profit center for them as they became one of the only means for these spam calls, which originated in overseas call centers, to connect to US callers. Thus the smaller carriers were incentivized by profit to connect the calls.

Now that STIR/SHAKEN is supposedly a thing, is there a way in Android that I can block calls that go through those carriers?

Unfortunately it's carrier to carrier and not data we're privy to. Carriers get paid arbitrage fees for carrying or connecting calls, so they really have no incentive to stop these calls other than legal liability.
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