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FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

consumeraffairs.com

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Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#41

Post by DINKDINK »

mysterydip wrote: post #4

Great! I'll tell all the scammers calling my phone that what they're doing is illegal. That should stop them.

I have a similar dim view of "making something illegal to patch a problem". Though I wonder if there are contract structures that require customer activity to be classifiable as "illegal" for a relationship to be terminated. Given how regulated phone infrastructure is, I wouldn't be surprised if there were laws that "guaranteed access" in the name of forcing the expansion of network access but could be weaponized by adversaries / spammers.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#42

Post by slater »

While I love that the FCC has fixed this (especially the "scammers spoof a U.S. number, usually one in the victim’s area code" part), something tells me the scammers won't just roll over and go "whelp, there's nothing we can do!". They'll just find a new "loophole".

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#43

Post by castis »

viraptor wrote: post #16
lol768 wrote: post #3

I would argue that the legality of this doesn't matter; there's a huge technical problem in that there's no authenticity guarantees at all when it comes to caller ID and the entire feature is badly designed and has always been open to abuse. SHAKEN/STIR is the (technical) answer to this, though I'll be interested to see to what extent it's adopted.

It's not a real answer though. Imagine everybody adopted it (pretend everyone is using sip/VoIP). The only thing that would change is you'd get same amount of calls from the actual numbers - what are you going to do about it then? If the callers (who LE can get to already with enough questions) are safe now, they'd be safe after the change. Sure, the hn crowd will easily set up appropriate filtering, but we were neve…

> It would maybe reduce the number of scam calls though

Sounds great, lets do that.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#44

Post by slater »

I wish (and I bet there's something on Android for this) that there was some kind of social app just for sharing scam numbers among trusted friends†. E.g., as your phone receives a call, it'd hash the number and compare it with you and your friends' reported "spam caller network". If you or your friends have marked something as a spam-originating number (number spoofing not withstanding, yesyes), it would either drop the call outright, or highlight it as potential spam call ("5 of your friends have marked this as spam!") before you need to pick up.

† Why just among your friends? Cos we all know that the minute you make it open to everyone, the marketing and MBA folks will get their fangs in it and monetize and data-mine.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#46

Post by Operyl »

mysterydip wrote: post #4

Great! I'll tell all the scammers calling my phone that what they're doing is illegal. That should stop them.

I think, honestly, it’s more a bureaucratic nightmare thing. “This wasn’t technically illegal, so we’re not going to comply with your extradition request.” Now it is.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#48

Post by e40 »

slater wrote: post #44

I wish (and I bet there's something on Android for this) that there was some kind of social app just for sharing scam numbers among trusted friends†. E.g., as your phone receives a call, it'd hash the number and compare it with you and your friends' reported "spam caller network". If you or your friends have marked something as a spam-originating number (number spoofing not withstanding, yesyes), it would either drop…

The numbers are random so why would sharing the numbers help reduce anything??

I never get calls from the same number. I've had the same scammer call me 3 times in one day from 3 different numbers.

This is the scammer that has called me 100s of times in the last 2 years: http://www.caribbeandiscountsinternational.com/about/

I tried to contact Tucows to complain, no way to do that. Then, I filed a report with ICANN that Tucows was violating their contract (because I can't report abuse), and that case was closed after two weeks.

The entire system is supporting the scammers.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#49

Post by albeebe1 »

slater wrote: post #42

While I love that the FCC has fixed this (especially the "scammers spoof a U.S. number, usually one in the victim’s area code" part), something tells me the scammers won't just roll over and go "whelp, there's nothing we can do!". They'll just find a new "loophole".

Nothing is fixed. The spoofed calls will continue. This just makes it illegal but they’ve already been breaking the law scamming people.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#50

Post by snazz »

slater wrote: post #44

I wish (and I bet there's something on Android for this) that there was some kind of social app just for sharing scam numbers among trusted friends†. E.g., as your phone receives a call, it'd hash the number and compare it with you and your friends' reported "spam caller network". If you or your friends have marked something as a spam-originating number (number spoofing not withstanding, yesyes), it would either drop…

You sometimes even get calls from your own phone number. Caller ID reported numbers don’t tell you anything.
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