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France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

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Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best technical solution I've seen is a spam review fee that turns into a reward and charged to the next closest originating peer. For example say you get a spam call. You notify your service provider and pay $10 to have them review the call recording to verify that its spam. An employee listens to the call and determines that it is, in fact, spam. You get a $100 reward for reporting spam and your service provider…

its unlikely going to be worth the costs involved for the telco to do this reviewing. perhaps AI systems and other filters could be used but ultimately its tons of time needed because audio takes time to play. a lot of cases will be clearcut instabans but for the ones that are not it requires all of them to be reviewed with _some_ depth and then some with much more. its also prone to mistakes which is another process…

A few points to consider:

1. Phone spam is pervasive. Single actors are responsible for billions of calls per month within the US alone.

2. The goal in setting the liability charge high is to create an incentive to propagate investigations up the chain. $10 * 1 billion does create a substantial incentive to a phone operator to pursue actions. Especially if a large fraction of the traffic is peered from a small number of sources, if not a single source.

I'd really like to see a serious attempt at pointing out possible abuses or issues with the system, though I think it could work, and may be necessary to address the fundamental economic incentives spurring phone spam. See my own variant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679>.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its unlikely going to be worth the costs involved for the telco to do this reviewing. perhaps AI systems and other filters could be used but ultimately its tons of time needed because audio takes time to play. a lot of cases will be clearcut instabans but for the ones that are not it requires all of them to be reviewed with _some_ depth and then some with much more. its also prone to mistakes which is another process…

Why? They get paid $10 every time spam is reported regardless of the outcome. Trained staff listening at 3x speed with AI assistance could classify 3 obvious spam calls in a minute. If you can't turn $1800/hr per employee into a profit center I don't know what to tell you. That's a lot of money to cover for extreme outliers. Eventually the obvious spam callers would all quit and the volume would reduce to a handful o…

Volume and calling patterns alone should be sufficient to identify spam calls in most cases.

Audio analysis (probably AI/LLM-based) might be invoked on some, but even that is probably overkill.

Better: an appeals / review process which more-or-less automatically grants an initial reverse judgement, though if complaints continue from additional sources, that decision is reversed.

The real goal of my variant of this proposal isn't to nail the call originators but the networks (carriers) which either serve as origin or transit this traffic.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They get paid $10 every time spam is reported regardless of the outcome. Trained staff listening at 3x speed with AI assistance could classify 3 obvious spam calls in a minute. If you can't turn $1800/hr per employee into a profit center I don't know what to tell you. That's a lot of money to cover for extreme outliers. Eventually the obvious spam callers would all quit and the volume would reduce to a handful o…

But your idea is basically that the telco pays anyone 90 dollars per spam call they receive, how does that become a profit center? They can't get the money from the spammers, if they could this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

Peers, with a bonding obligation, and no transit offered to unbonded (never bothered, bond rejected/expired) carriers.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679> from a few days back.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#524

Here's what has worked for me (in the US), after feeling helpless for so long: Call Screening. I had no idea this existed on iOS (there may be an equivalent on Android), and I was very skeptical about it, but it has turned spam calls into a non-issue for me. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/screen-and-block-call...

There are features available for most phone types / plans, with varying levels of effectiveness.

For old-school landline phones, look for "Smart Call Block" or a similar feature. These direct all unknown numbers to voicemail, with numbers in your contacts or allow list ringing directly. The feature is phone-specific, so you'll need a device which supports this capability. Unknown calls don't ring but are screened. Call block can be enabled or disabled if you're expecting a call from an unknown number.

For smartphones, various options:

- Numerous third-party call-blocking apps, such as NoMoRobo, Spamblocker, Saracroche, Sereniphone, and more.

- OS-level Unknown-caller blocking. iOS offers a full version of this, see: https://support.apple.com/en-mide/111106>. Android, produced by the world's largest advertising agency, unsurprisingly doesn't have quite a satisfactory setting, though there are some approximations: https://www.android.com/intl/en_uk/articles/stop-spam-calls-...>.

- Carrier-level call filtering. "Call Filter" on Verizon, "ScamShield" on T-Mobile, "ActiveArmor" on AT&T. Many Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) don't offer network-level spam call blocking. (This is companies such as Mint Mobile, Cricket, Boost, H20 Wireleess, Helium Mobile, etc., see: https://bestmvno.com/mvnos/>.) Carrier-level filtering may work through an app, at the network level directly, or both. App support may be dependent on your specific device and OS.

VOIP services should in theory afford the highest level of capabilities, though this depends on what your provider enables for you. Rather to my surprise, Xfinity/Comcast actually has one of the better network-level spam-blocking systems by description, "Voice Spam Blocker". This is a three-tiered risk-based system with complete rejection, direct-to-voicemail, and CAPTCHA challenge. (Presumably there's also a whitelist option.) See: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/change-spam-blocker...>.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have more information on this? Why are those non-STIR/SHAKEN TDM trunks serving as transit trunks (non-terminating), rather than terminal-only trunks? Seems a pretty obvious hole to close.

DEFCON talk "Journey to the center of the phone network" Slides: https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2033/DEF%20CON%2033%20pre... Video recording: somewhere

Thanks!
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