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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

#71

Post by catacombs »

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…

> 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 friend

The problem is scammers spoof numbers. So, even if you share the number and try to call it, the number will be dead.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#72

Post by adrianmonk »

ipython wrote: post #13

I get a ton of calls offering to lower my interest rate. Im surprised that the card issuing companies mentioned by name in the call- visa, MasterCard, etc. don’t take the same tactic that Microsoft used to take down botnets. Microsoft used trademark law to sue the botnet operators and have their domain names seized. Why can’t the same happen here with any US based voip operator they may be using?

Here's a minor technical correction about payments lingo. Visa and Mastercard aren't issuers.

Payments are kind of a world of their own, but basically there are 5 parties involved in a credit card purchase:

1. The party that receives the payment. For example, a retailer like Amazon or Target. In payments lingo: "merchant".

2. The merchant's bank. This is where funds are going to end up. In payments lingo: "acquiring bank" or "acquirer" (because they're acquiring funds I guess).

3. The customer's bank. This is where funds are going to come from. Usually on credit. For example, Citi, Capital One, Chase, HSBC, Bank of America. In payments lingo: "issuing bank" or "issuer" (because the customer has an account with them and they issue the actual card).

4. The customer, the person who makes the purchase. This person's name is printed on the credit card. In payments lingo: "cardholder".

5. A payments network. These arrange payments (including operating computer networks as well as defining rules and policies) and facilitate the purchase. For example, Visa, Mastercard, American Express. In payments lingo: "credit card association".

Back to something vaguely relevant, one way you can instantly detect these scams is that they always seem to claim they're from Visa or Mastercard, then try to talk about lowering your interest rate. Your interest rate is between you (the customer) and your issuing bank (Citi, Capital One, etc.), not between you and the card association. Visa or Mastercard doesn't care about your interest rate. The scammers are not even claiming to be from the right type of organization!

I assume they do this because they get a higher hit rate. If they claimed to be from, say, Chase, then lots of people would think "I don't have an account with them" and hang up. If they say Visa or Mastercard, odds are good that you'll think "yes, I have one of those".

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#73

Post by sq_ »

marcosdumay wrote: post #68
lemcoe9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's really amazing how little trust people have in the telephone system now.

At least on personal devices/lines, everyone I've talked about it with now refuses to pick up any call from a number they don't recognize, which is really the only option when 2/3 of the calls you get daily are spam. Most just assume that if it's important, the caller will leave a message.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#74

Post by Steltek »

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…

Internet-wise, we blocked pop-ups and installed adblockers when we lost trust in the platform. I see no difference in applying that to telephony. Amputate or lose the patient.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#75

Post by kd0amg »

tantalor wrote: post #64
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.

Doesn't the article say such "features" will be banned under new FCC rules? Isn't "call forwarding" another name for "caller ID spoofing"?

Does it spoof? If X calls Y and gets forwarded to Z, does caller ID at Z show X or Y? As a possibly naive user, showing X seems like the right thing to do, since that's the number Z will be connected to if someone answers.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#76

Post by Steltek »

MBCook wrote: post #53
e40 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

You’d be surprised. Maybe YOU don’t get calls from the same number (though I do at times) but it seems like scammers will use one number to call 100,000 people then switch to a second number and call again. So as long as someone reports it lots of people will benefit. It’s not a random number per call, which would make this approach unfeasible. This shared block list is basically how Nomorobo works and it’s quite eff…

It seems like you don't need to have a complicated hashing and sharing network for that. A braindead scoring algorithm would cut the scammers off at the ankles.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#77

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

viraptor wrote: post #14
mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There is, at least for foreign calls: assuming US provider A gets an incoming call from the country B's operator C, then A has to verify if the phone number supplied by C is in…

It's not that easy. You can get a call from X with a prefix from B and it's just how routing sometimes works. In the same way an internet connection from Germany to the UK may actually arrive from an interconnect in Amsterdam. But it doesn't matter. What matters is the responsibility of each party to point out who sent the call to them. (And that's not even mentioning the issue of how you'd map providers to prefixes.…

It should really be more like how the internet works with IP addresses.

Its easy to send an IP packet with a source address that is whatever you want, but if you do that the receiver is going to reply to someone else and you won't be able to establish two way communication.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#78

Post by reaperducer »

sq_ wrote: post #73
marcosdumay wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's really amazing how little trust people have in the telephone system now. At least on personal devices/lines, everyone I've talked about it with now refuses to pick up any call from a number they don't recognize, which is really the only option when 2/3 of the calls you get daily are spam. Most just assume that if it's important, the caller will leave a message.

everyone I've talked about it with now refuses to pick up any call from a number they don't recognize

I wish this was the case where I work. My boss answers every single call that comes in to her cell phone. Sometimes 15 a day. Then everyone in the office has to listen as she tries to interrupt the sales pitch and tell them "take me off your mailing (!) list."

And she's a millennial. I thought millennials didn't use voice.

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#79

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #20
paulie_a wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget fines. Everyone in the company needs to be charged with felonies under Rico Spoofing numbers could be considered a criminal organization Take down every single person

>Take down every single person Management/c-suite? Sure. Your typical telemarketer working at minimum wage? No.

[deleted]

Re: FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

#80

Post by reaperducer »

Steltek wrote: post #74
lemcoe9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Internet-wise, we blocked pop-ups and installed adblockers when we lost trust in the platform. I see no difference in applying that to telephony. Amputate or lose the patient.

Internet-wise, we blocked pop-ups and installed adblockers when we lost trust in the platform

And then pop-ups were replaced by divs, and adblockers got blocked by paywalls.

I don't think either problem has been solved yet.

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