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FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

docs.fcc.gov

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Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#231

Post by unsignedint »

mulmen wrote: post #227
unsignedint wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but my point still stands — you have more tools to work with in email. For what it’s worth, I can usually contextualize a message from the subject line and the sender’s address without needing to dive deep into headers. (Phishing is definitely a real problem, but it’s not unique to email in this discussion.) Now compare that to the PSTN: what does 555-123-4567 really tell you? Not much. It’s just a string of di…

You have more tools because the market created them because it’s a federated protocol. The PSTN is a different case where market forces don’t align incentives with spam reduction. This is why regulators like the FCC exist.

I get the distinction you’re drawing, but that just brings us back to the same fork: if decades of FCC involvement haven’t produced a trustworthy caller identity system, then the reliance on regulation isn’t solving the structural weakness, it’s just propping it up.

At that point, we’re repeating the same values clash — you see regulation as a workable fix, I see it as evidence of fragility. I don’t think continuing this line is going to get us any further.

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#232

Post by mrcwinn »

You know, never once in my life have I ever subscribed to anything or agreed at checkout to receiving marketing communications. Ever. And yet my inbox is flooded at all times with retailers I’ve interacted with. I literally don’t care about Gemini because I’ve just given up on using Gmail. If you need to reach me, you probably won’t.

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#233

Post by SoftTalker »

antonymoose wrote: post #189
darkhelmet wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, upcoming iOS 26 has a new screening feature. The idea is that calls from numbers you don't have a connection with will be asked to briefly identify themselves and why they're calling. It'll show you this text and give you the choice to block/send-to-voicemail/ignore/accept.

The problem I have with my iPhone is not callers, thankfully, it’s random iMessage from emails spamming me constantly, as many as 5 per day. The “filter unknown senders” option does not appear to work at all for these scammers.

I filter unknown messages but the iMessage view constantly switches back to “All Messages” instead of staying on “Known Senders”

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#234

Post by SoftTalker »

gwbas1c wrote: post #122
zeta0134 wrote: post #110

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'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken. I think one of two high-level approaches: We could be ultra-strict about who is allowed to call whom, and have penalties and enforcement similar to how we police credit card fraud. Or, we could do away with phone numbers and instead come up with a scheme where you show a QR-like code to allow someone to call you; and th…

Very simple: charge caller $0.25 to make a call.

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#235

Post by gibspaulding »

bilsbie wrote: post #210
thephyber wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I didn’t realize how bad it got until my father stopped answering calls. It turned out he was getting (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day from spammers and vendors he had no relationship with. I used the iOS filter, the AT&T filter, and turned on the shortcut so the phone doesn’t ring unless the caller is in his contacts. The problem is that it already changed his behavior. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore, even if…

Can you share those countermeasures you mentioned? I haven’t been able to find anything for the iPhone.

Search settings for “focus”. You can set up a do not disturb mode that does roughly what the parent comment describes.

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#236

Post by thfuran »

uncletammy wrote: post #228
thfuran wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've received I think two total spam calls in the years since I ported my cell number to a voip service and set up an IVR in front that just says to press any number. It also blocks the very, very few robocalls I might actually want, and occasionally some company will refuse to accept a voip number as a cell number, but most everything just works fine.

Can you recommend a service for this?

I use voip.ms, which gives full SIP for something like $4/mo / line. Their SMS/MMS bridge is a bit limited, but I really don’t use that, and otherwise I haven’t really run into any issues.

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#237

Post by gruez »

spc476 wrote: post #225
bilsbie wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share those countermeasures you mentioned? I haven’t been able to find anything for the iPhone.

Set a default ringtone to silence. Give each contact on my phone a custom non-silent ringtone. If a non-contact calls and it's important enough, they'll leave a voice message. The first year or so some spammers would leave a message (usually half a message as my outgoing message caused their canned robot to start speaking), but the past year or so, no bad voice mail messages.

Can't you use the "silence unknown callers" option instead?

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#238

Post by tzs »

ryandrake wrote: post #112
zeta0134 wrote: post #110

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…

Imagine if the concept of a phone call did not exist. We still have these computers in our pockets, but without the history of the telephone system. Then, one day, an app developer thought: Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing, play a sound, vibrate the device, and put up a full-screen dialog, that this all could be activated remotely by any other device by simply typin…

A similar hypothetical was in the classic book "Peopleware" from 1987, if I recall correctly, imaging the reaction if the phone was a new invention and the phone company salesman wanted your company to put a phone on every engineer's desk which would allow anyone else in the world with a phone to at any time interrupt your engineers with no warning.

They had an anecdote about one company they consulted at which illustrated how normalized interrupting engineers had become. The engineers were putting their phones on "do not disturb" (DND) to stop all the interruptions so they could get their work done, and management sent around a memo saying that the engineers needed to stop putting their phones on DND because that caused the calls to forward to the secretary, and all the calls were making it hard for the secretary to get any work done.

Re: FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections

#240

Post by dreamcompiler »

SoftTalker wrote: post #234
gwbas1c wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken. I think one of two high-level approaches: We could be ultra-strict about who is allowed to call whom, and have penalties and enforcement similar to how we police credit card fraud. Or, we could do away with phone numbers and instead come up with a scheme where you show a QR-like code to allow someone to call you; and th…

Very simple: charge caller $0.25 to make a call.

That's how it was before about 1980. Every call outside the local area cost money, and every international call cost a lot more. As a result, spam landline calls were rare and international spam calls were nonexistent.

Keep in mind this was the era before CallerID so you never knew what number was calling you in advance. You answered every call on blind faith. And strangely enough most calls were worth taking, because all calls cost money.

Spam happens when it costs the spammer nothing.

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