Twilio, when do they become accountable for enabling robocallers.
I've always been curious how much of this happens through companies like Twilio. Are there any numbers / studies out there that dig into it?
The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
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Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#72Stop allowing spoofed numbers. Period. I'm sorry BigCorp, but this is a public nuisance and trumps your "need" for a single phone number.
Even that wouldn't be necessary. Here's an idea – when receiving a call, the receiving network could separately connect to the claimed number and verify its authenticity. No match? Reject the caller. The owner of a number (and thus its cryptographic identity) could then delegate other agents to use its keys, its phone number, and most importantly, its reputation. Cryptography has come a long way since the days of rotary phones. The entire handshake could happen in under a second. The majority of calls these days are VoIP anyway. In fact, maybe we only implement this for VoIP and finally force the world to upgrade.
I remember the days before HTTPS was widespread. I watched as Google and other players systematically adjusted incentives, slowly but surely over many years, to reach where we are today: 90% of all web traffic is encrypted.[1] There's no reason the same couldn't happen with phone calls, other than perverse incentives.
Someone get me in a room with Ajit Pai and the CTOs of the major US carriers, I could have a system in place in five years, tops. Unfortunately there's no incentive for them to fix this, because (1) upgrading infrastructure costs money, and (2) carriers large and small are making BANK off these robocalls. ITSPs do typically charge to route calls (similar to internet peering), and robocallers are happy to pay because they're making so much money.
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clinton outspent Trump nearly 2:1 in the last election ($768m, $398m respectively) and still lost. Yes she won the popular vote by about 3m votes but that’s hardly a dollar to vote ratio. People vote their emotions, and emotions are surprisingly difficult to buy.
rectang isn't talking about the presidential election
The claim "one dollar is one vote" is directly refuted by tyre's data. It is absolutely relevant to the assertion made.
But keep on downvoting HNers, ignorance is bliss is why we come to this website after all
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone with a heavy background, it would break a fair bit of the PSTN - while moves are in place to change the technical limitations of the PSTN that prevent this kind of verification, they're not complete yet, and will take several more years to implement fully.
Would be super interested in the details if you’re willing to share.
Okay, so the PSTN has two things in it, ANI and Caller ID - and they're not related, the ANI will reflect the actual account that the call comes from (Often its passing the BTN (billing telephone number)), and the Caller ID is either a Telco set, or user set number string (ISDN NI-1 for example you can't send a CID string, NI-2 you can, SIP you also can).
Now, most calls, the BTN/ANI and CID are the same number string, but when you start looking at call center operations, calls from PBX's, anything with backup trunking arrangements - that gets less and less true. Another wrinkle in this whole mess, is that with LNP (local number portability) you can have a number that on paper is owned by carrier Y (by assignment) but has actually been ported to carrier X (there is a database however that carries this information).
The issue as it comes down, is there is no central database to show that Caller ID string X is valid for trunk/line Y, for the most part customers were trusted to not be malicious and follow the rules. Once we got into a world where a SIP trunk could be had for free, and usage was a minor incremental charge, that whole system broke down.
The good news in all of this is that the FCC has mandated a move to authenticated CID (https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication), but much of the equipment in play here is decades old, and will take time to be upgraded - but it's happening and happening pretty quickly for an industry that normally moves at a near glacial pace.
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any chance you can explain what the PSTN is and why it is important? I tried reading the wikipedia article[1] but I still feel like I don't have enough telecom domain knowledge to understand it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_netw...
If you're still making and receiving phone calls (dialed with numbers, using the dialer on your smart phone, etc), then that's the PSTN you're using.
Quite arguably this extends to text messaging too, all rely on the same fundamental systems
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#76I see people here saying that spoofed numbers is the problem. Maybe it's a big part of it, but at the end of the day, the phone companies are complicit with the criminals because there's no good reason that these robocalls can't be treated like a DoS attack. These crooks make millions , of calls every year. My first employer was apparently making robocalls, though none of us were aware of it(there was a call center w…
I'd be happy with at least providing the actual source name and number, in addition to the CNAM. CNAM must still be associated with the same source account (and ideally enforced, somehow). Best of both worlds.
What do you mean the actual number? The number is set by the caller as part of the SIP INVITE
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#77I enabled the Silence Unknown Callers feature [0] in iOS and haven’t answered a spam call since. The downside is that it sends every call from unknown numbers to voicemail, including legitimate ones. It’s a worthwhile trade-off. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099
Same here, and I believe the next natural step is for companies to switch to calling on Whatsapp etc.
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#78I enabled the Silence Unknown Callers feature [0] in iOS and haven’t answered a spam call since. The downside is that it sends every call from unknown numbers to voicemail, including legitimate ones. It’s a worthwhile trade-off. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099
I tried it, and within a week I missed an important call. I was waiting by the phone, and it just never arrived. I realized too late that it had been silenced. It's very frustrating that we can't just get something like a spam filter, rather than a blanket "silence everything unknown."
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#79Stop allowing spoofed numbers. Period. I'm sorry BigCorp, but this is a public nuisance and trumps your "need" for a single phone number.
Even that wouldn't be necessary. Here's an idea – when receiving a call, the receiving network could separately connect to the claimed number and verify its authenticity. No match? Reject the caller. The owner of a number (and thus its cryptographic identity) could then delegate other agents to use its keys, its phone number, and most importantly, its reputation. Cryptography has come a long way since the days of rot…
The FCC s already working on signing Caller ID, which sounds like what you're proposing, or similar to. https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication
Re: The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telecoms can't block calls. They are not legally allowed to do it.
If I need a phone number (and a phone), I go to T-Mobile, sign up with my credit card and get a phone number. Whoever is giving me this phone number, I think, should be held responsible if I'm doing stupid calls. The companies issuing the ability to robo-callers to do their work are enabling robo-callers to do their work (scams). Last time I tried to trace down a call, I stopped at a company called OnVoy and got dist…
If I need a phone number (and a phone), I go to T-Mobile, sign up with my credit card and get a phone number. Whoever is giving me this phone number, I think, should be held responsible if I'm doing stupid calls.
Not a good idea. I get where you’re coming from, but we don’t hold ISPs accountable for people using the internet badly. That would be a change for the worse.
Imagine if Comcast had to terminate your service due to something someone posted while using your wifi.