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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

#61

Post by ceejayoz »

linsomniac wrote: post #19
paulie_a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that phone companies won't do anything about it. Nor the FCC There's a bunch of solutions. I received 19 spam calls spoofing cell numbers. That's a felony I suggest everyone that get an illeagl robo call to call your rep Everytime. Ask them to block India entirely. The problem would be solved very quickly. Or block all calls from Florida and Texas. The nuclear option The basic one is just waste their time. A…

I started doing that once. After 2 or 3 of those time wasting calls, I got one that the person said "Thank you for playing , you will continue to receive calls" and they hung up. IOW: They have so many resources available, and it is so cheap for them to make the calls, that even after they knew I was going to waste their time, they continued the calls. This was after I had tried their options for "press 1 to be remov…

I've taken to pressing one and just shouting at max volume "LAAAAAAAAAAAAA" into the phone until they disconnect. Seems to work; they tend to taper off fairly rapidly.

No one wants the hearing damage, I suspect.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#62

Post by ghaff »

asark wrote: post #38
EGreg wrote: post #30

Seriously, if you have a good data plan, why have a phone number? The phone system is so laughably insecure and limited compared to the voip alternatives. And so riddled with SPAM. There are SIP bridges to it, for the legacy calls.

Everyone expects you to have a phone number for some things. Certainly many online services expect you to be reachable via SMS for 2-factor auth. VOIP service plus a semi-decent data plan is at least as expensive as just adding on voice, and then you have two bills instead of one. You can simply ignore calls when you're not expecting one—if it actually matters they'll leave a voicemail. Those get transcribed so I don…

Maybe technical or maybe just that the person who is going to send off money so that their social security number isn't taken away or so that the police don't come to their house and arrest them on felony charges are more likely to respond to a call--even a robo one--than a text message.

On my cell phone, the biggest annoyance is that I have to turn on Do Not Disturb when traveling internationally which means only the specific numbers in my contacts list can reach me in an emergency at all hours.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#63

Post by criddell »

lemcoe9 wrote: post #59
gwbas1c wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, this will break a lot of (cough) features (cough) that no one uses, like call forwarding. I also wonder if this will break VOIP systems that small businesses use? The reality is that no one should care. The telephone system is broken when most of the calls we get are fraudulent. I want my phone to be useful; I don't care if fixing it breaks some phone system set up by a sketchy IT wannabe.

I am glad that you "don't care" about breaking a few million phone systems across the world. Every single IT manager, however, does care. If you start having carriers wholesale-blocking calls based on their lack of STIR/SHAKEN's verifications, then you will completely disable the vast majority of IP- and POTS-based phone systems in the country, many of which were purchased/installed in the early-2000's. You can have…

> If you start having carriers wholesale-blocking calls based on their lack of STIR/SHAKEN's verifications, then you will completely disable the vast majority of IP- and POTS-based phone systems in the country, many of which were purchased/installed in the early-2000's.

It's far too early for carriers to block by default, but consumers should have the choice. If I could set my phone to give a busy signal to any caller not authenticated through STIR/SHAKEN, I would in a heartbeat.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#64

Post by tantalor »

gwbas1c wrote: post #36
tantalor wrote: post #33

Is it currently feasible for carriers to block these calls? Like, it should be easy enough to check if the call originated internationally but the area code is domestic. This regulation would appear to compell carriers to act on that.

Apparently, this will break a lot of (cough) features (cough) that no one uses, like call forwarding. I also wonder if this will break VOIP systems that small businesses use? The reality is that no one should care. The telephone system is broken when most of the calls we get are fraudulent. I want my phone to be useful; I don't care if fixing it breaks some phone system set up by a sketchy IT wannabe.

Doesn't the article say such "features" will be banned under new FCC rules?

Isn't "call forwarding" another name for "caller ID spoofing"?

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#65

Post by Scoundreller »

ceejayoz wrote: post #61
linsomniac wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started doing that once. After 2 or 3 of those time wasting calls, I got one that the person said "Thank you for playing , you will continue to receive calls" and they hung up. IOW: They have so many resources available, and it is so cheap for them to make the calls, that even after they knew I was going to waste their time, they continued the calls. This was after I had tried their options for "press 1 to be remov…

I've taken to pressing one and just shouting at max volume "LAAAAAAAAAAAAA" into the phone until they disconnect. Seems to work; they tend to taper off fairly rapidly. No one wants the hearing damage, I suspect.

I do the same thing for Mandarin calls.

I need a Mandarin sound board to keep them on the line since I don’t know any more than “Nihao”.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#66

Post by pixelbath »

londons_explore wrote: post #5
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.

The solution doesn't have to be at the phone network level either. It would be easy enough for a regulator to simply fine any company whose products are advertised or sold through telemarketing. Make it the companies problem that some of their marketing contractors or affiliate schemes lead to illegal calling.

How would this curb the scam calls that aren't interested in selling you a product?

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#67

Post by asark »

ghaff wrote: post #62
asark wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone expects you to have a phone number for some things. Certainly many online services expect you to be reachable via SMS for 2-factor auth. VOIP service plus a semi-decent data plan is at least as expensive as just adding on voice, and then you have two bills instead of one. You can simply ignore calls when you're not expecting one—if it actually matters they'll leave a voicemail. Those get transcribed so I don…

Maybe technical or maybe just that the person who is going to send off money so that their social security number isn't taken away or so that the police don't come to their house and arrest them on felony charges are more likely to respond to a call--even a robo one--than a text message. On my cell phone, the biggest annoyance is that I have to turn on Do Not Disturb when traveling internationally which means only th…

> Maybe technical or maybe just that the person who is going to send off money so that their social security number isn't taken away or so that the police don't come to their house and arrest them on felony charges are more likely to respond to a call--even a robo one--than a text message.

That occurred to me, but you can direct someone straight to a website that can then do god-knows-what with a text message, and they're even easier to automate and do in quick, huge batches than phone calls, so even at a much lower % success rate I'd think they'd be viable for scammers, and maybe even preferable to calls. Maybe they're more expensive to send? That'd be dumb, but then phone billing's never made any sense.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#68

Post by marcosdumay »

lemcoe9 wrote: post #59
gwbas1c wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, this will break a lot of (cough) features (cough) that no one uses, like call forwarding. I also wonder if this will break VOIP systems that small businesses use? The reality is that no one should care. The telephone system is broken when most of the calls we get are fraudulent. I want my phone to be useful; I don't care if fixing it breaks some phone system set up by a sketchy IT wannabe.

I am glad that you "don't care" about breaking a few million phone systems across the world. Every single IT manager, however, does care. If you start having carriers wholesale-blocking calls based on their lack of STIR/SHAKEN's verifications, then you will completely disable the vast majority of IP- and POTS-based phone systems in the country, many of which were purchased/installed in the early-2000's. You can have…

I have to side with the GP here. The options are completely losing the telephone system because nobody trusts anything coming from it anymore, or having those pre-2000 systems upgraded. It's a no-brainier.

Yet, we seem to be committed into destroying the entire system.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#69

Post by msla »

londons_explore wrote: post #5
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.

The solution doesn't have to be at the phone network level either. It would be easy enough for a regulator to simply fine any company whose products are advertised or sold through telemarketing. Make it the companies problem that some of their marketing contractors or affiliate schemes lead to illegal calling.

It would also be easy enough for the organization to budget for fines or to have numerous front/shell organizations which get started, do the calls and take the money, and then don't exist when the regulators come around. We need jail time for the executives.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#70

Post by avivo »

This is nice and perhaps actually useful for going after international organized criminals...but still doesn't prevent anything. We need actual authentication for Caller ID. Urgently.

Fake voices are already being used to steal millions (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48908736). I co-authored the paper linked here, which goes into some detail about why this all matters, particularly for voice cloning... https://medium.com/@aviv/reducing-malicious-use-of-synthetic...

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