241–250 of 527 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine quite a few scenarios in which I prefer for those companies to be able to reach me.
it's always bad news with those guys; no thanks
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There doesn't need to be any kind of technical solution. If a telemarketer wants to sell something, they must declare the name of their company. The company name can be reported to police (or whatever authorities are going to handle this) who can then fine the telemarketers.
And if they don't declare the name of the company? There are a lot of shady people out there. Plenty of them will happily call and give a fake name, or just something vague that sounds important, like, "This is Rachel from cardholder services". So it turns out we really do need a technical solution, which is unforgeable and easily traceable access to the telephone network. Plus robust enforcement of consumer laws, so…
We have that, but it's insufficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN#Limitations
Although STIR/SHAKEN is frequently described as a "caller ID authentication technology", it does not authenticate any caller ID per se. Instead, it authenticates the originating carrier, but that solves a different problem. [...]
It critically relies on a set of trusted certificate authorities (CAs) to manage digital certificates. In the USA, several telecom companies were appointed by the FCC as the CAs. They serve as the root of the trust. All other telcos, must not only trust these CAs but also pay them for compliance with STIR/SHAKEN, typically based on a percentage of their annual revenue. The reliance on trusted third parties severely limits STIR/SHAKEN to work across borders.
Quite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRACED_Act#Criticism
The act requires FCC referrals to DOJ for willful robocall fraud. In the half-decade since enactment, with billions of scam calls and billions of dollars in consumer losses, the FCC made less than a dozen referrals.Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have a "do not call" list in the us. It's effectively worthless.
That just sounds like you don't actually have a "do not call" list, you have something that is trying to be a "do not call" list ;) Speak with your local politicians to fix the issues that bothers you. They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Same way civilians communicate with their governments in every other democracy :)
Protests have never once seemed effective my entire life, honestly
The main problem and challenge with all these regulations is enforcement. How are they actually going to enforce them? The U.S. already has very strict rules against unsolicited calls, yet I still get around 20 spam calls a day saying things like "press 2 to be connected" or offering some "$64K loan." At the same time, I have not received a single unsolicited call from a reputable company. The same is true for text m…
Yet you receive 20 spam calls a day through a known company, namely your phone provider. The way to solve this is to forcibly draft the providers into this; for example: any time you receive a spam call, you can dial a special *# number after hanging up. This message will have the effect of crediting $5 on your next phone bill, and allows the provider to recoup that loss from the originating provider, etc, all the way to the caller itself. The first company in the chain not cooperating in this scheme is out $5 per spam call through their network.
Of course, something like this needs the usual protection against abuse, but that's equally manageable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood what are the technical obstacles to building the phone network in such a way that caller numbers can not be spoofed or suppressed. Then, you could just build a system where receiving an unsolicited phone call from a commercial entity entitles you to a compensation in small claims court, to the tune of 50 EUR, unless the caller can prove that you explicitly authorised them.
The problem is that it's a network. The hard part of networking isn't the technology - it's the other people. And short of a government regulation or a monopoly, they'll never all agree. STIR/SHAKEN has an exception for calls passing through TDM trunks, which don't support it. This created a small industry for passing spam calls through TDM trunks. Such calls can trivially have their caller ID spoofed.
Phone companies used to be monopolies, in Europe they were owned by the government as a public service. But when they become profitable politicians betrayed their citizens and sold them. Nowadays, phone companies are a source of scams, spam and everything wrong with big corporations. And all that profits are now private instead of helping to fund the country.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most countries have these no call lists but they are fairly useless as there is no enforcement What country are you in that it doesn't work in? I know for a fact it works in Spain and Sweden, but it'll really depend on the country. You'd help by others by being a bit more explicit :) > I've even heard stories of some scammers exclusively using such lists, as they are pre-verified! That does suck and seems counter-p…
What country are you in that it doesn't work in? Maybe he's in France, since this article is about France having to ban all telemarketing calls since the block lists apparently don't work. Don't let your regional indignation get in the way of doing basic logic.
How on earth am I supposed to assume they live in France, just because that's in the submission article? Conversations in the comments regularly go beyond the scope of the article, and even the commentator themselves said "Most countries" so clearly they're talking about more than just one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That just sounds like you don't actually have a "do not call" list, you have something that is trying to be a "do not call" list ;) Speak with your local politicians to fix the issues that bothers you. They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Same way civilians communicate with their governments in every other democracy :)
> They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Protests have never once seemed effective my entire life, honestly
Then time to crack open those dusty history books and start reading mate :) Most of the civil rights we have in modern life comes from either protests or protests evolving into riots or protests evolving into riots evolving into civil wars, one way or another. But it always starts with protests.
You might still be young and haven't yet experienced it, but you're bound to at one point or another, even if you yourself might not be out on the streets protesting and agreeing with the movement(s) when that happen.
This shit needs to stop.