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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

#241

Post by socalgal2 »

HankStallone wrote: post #186
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…

That's wild. I'm in the US, and I get maybe 1-2 spam calls a month. I get more spam texts than calls, though not many of those either. I've never done anything special to try to prevent them, so I wonder what the difference is.

I get about 6 a day, just as another data point. As the other poster said I've set my phone so that only people in my contacts make it ring. Unfortunately that still means I have to manually go delete the voice mail notifications, all of which are 6-10 second of silence (6 out of 7 times) or some Chinese (I'm not Chinese and don't speak Chinese).

Stupidly, AFAICT, none of the phone services bother to auto-delete silent voice messages so I have to manually delete them, each one taking ~6 seconds ("call from One Two Three Five Five Five Six Seven Eight Night at three twenty seven pee em, on friday june twenty sixth ..........." delete. Repeat

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

#242

Post by recursivecaveat »

HankStallone wrote: post #186
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…

That's wild. I'm in the US, and I get maybe 1-2 spam calls a month. I get more spam texts than calls, though not many of those either. I've never done anything special to try to prevent them, so I wonder what the difference is.

If you pick up it's a positive signal that routes more to you. For a week or two I was like "eh, takes 5s, maybe it's a call from my doctor or something" and would pick up. Big mistake, got like 10 a day for a while after that.

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

#243

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #169
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…

This sounds stupid, but it worked for me. Change the ringtone.

You mean that vibrating sound that the phone makes when a robocall comes in?

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

#244

Post by transitorykris »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #169
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…

This sounds stupid, but it worked for me. Change the ringtone.

The original iPhone ringtone still causes anxiety when I hear it because of a horrific couple years on call. Changing the ringtone works.

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

#245

Post by nrdvana »

cesarb wrote: post #220
ryandrake wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 typing in a short numeric code When you're actively using your smartphone, phone calls show up as notifications, not full-screen dialogs (which trips up…

But then, ICQ also died of spam...

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

#246

Post by drysart »

Terr_ wrote: post #135
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 suggest the caller stakes a little bit of money as a deposit that is, by default, returned to them within a day... But an angered recipient can retaliate by choosing to seize the deposit. I think this works for many situations: 1. Between amicable friends and businesses/clients, nothing changes. 2. If there was a normal relationship, but one side starts unfairly seizing call-deposits... Well, maybe it's time to no…

> There's still a problem where someone asks to be called (the number needn't actually be theirs) as a way to trick the caller into losing money... But even then, I think it represents an improvement over what we've got now.

That's basically the purpose toll free area codes used to serve; and there's no reason that same sort of solution (with some adjustments for the modern era) couldn't continue to be used under a deposit based system. Just add some universal prefix, some unused country code for instance, that can be dialed for a "no deposit" call; and then give control to the recipient whether they want to accept such calls.

Or, well, since most modern dialing is done by submitting the whole number at once rather than digit-by-digit; it could even be a suffix. If your number is +12125551212, maybe something like +12125551212*0 could indicate a "no deposit" call. I mean, the whole suffix space could even be turned into something akin to a password so instead of just opening up accepting "no deposit" calls from the entire world, you might only accept them from specific whitelisted suffixes; and if someone leaks one and you start getting spam calls on it, you can just turn off that suffix. There might need to be some provider-enforced fail2ban to prevent wardialing those suffixes, but it doesn't sound like it'd be too difficult.

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

#247

Post by bee_rider »

unsignedint wrote: post #203
mulmen wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a corollary to Chesterton’s fence. unsignedint’s public good. If you can’t explain the benefit then you can’t tear it down. The PSTN guarantees that all telco operators interoperate. Without it you get what happened with instant messaging. AKA walled gardens. You take for granted the ability to call an iPhone with an Android. The FCC is responsible for maintaining trust, which they have done here. They can in…

I think Chesterton’s fence is a fair analogy—but it only works if the “fence” still serves a protective function. With the PSTN, the fence is riddled with holes, and the people meant to maintain it can’t keep up with the erosion. Interoperability was indeed its greatest strength, but today that same universality is what lets malicious actors reach everyone at trivial cost. Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled g…

After all, Chesterton’s fence most importantly is about a fence that we don’t know the purpose of. We (in a collective sense, not me personally) know everything about the phone system, it isn’t even really all that old in the grand scheme of things and is actively maintained. We know how it is supposed to work and can see that it isn’t working.

This is more like “Chesterton’s radio with a broken antenna,” a thing broken in an obvious way that we just haven’t gotten around to fixing or replacing.

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

#248

Post by drysart »

godelski wrote: post #163
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.

> upcoming iOS 26 has a new screening feature I had this on my old Pixel. The result was that people generally hung up and didn't leave a message. Apple is a little bit better with marketing and hopefully won't make the same dumb move of making it a "pro only feature" so maybe it'll be different this time around...

I've been running the iOS 26 beta for a while and really the only problem people have had with it is that it's very clear the message the caller gets is pre-recorded, and without fail everyone who's interacted with it was expecting a beep, like an answering machine, before responding to it; but it doesn't actually beep, it just asks the caller to describe who they are and why they're calling.

So every screening popup I got had amusing text like "Is it going to beep? Hello?"

When it becomes commonplace, I expect the real problem with it will be that spam callers will recognize it and just starting giving false information to it to try to trick the party into accepting the call.

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

#249

Post by drysart »

m463 wrote: post #154
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…

There are so many simple solutions, just like phone privacy is fixable (firewall your phone) 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…

> I just don't think anyone wants to fix it. Why can't apple let us send "spam risk" to voicemail?

You can. At least with iOS 26 you can, I don't know if it's new or not. You can have known spam numbers silenced, sent right to voicemail, and then the voicemail is immediately put into a spam folder.

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

#250

Post by [deleted] »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #224
pdabbadabba wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job. How?

I didn't even know it had happened. I can't say. But if I was to speculate ... The ACMA effectively killed email spam originating from Australian businesses years (decades?) ago. The government passed legislation allowing ACMA to impose big fines on companies that sent spam, they then set set up a web form you could upload spam emails to, and a couple of years later there was no email spam ... from Australia. It didn…

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