Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.
> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.
I've had to do the same. I sometimes get three calls and voicemails per day about business loans. I'm pretty sure they got my number by scraping the LLC filings for my state :\.
I wish I would of used a Google Voice number rather than my cell.
One business that I own has "Lab" in its name. It gets sales calls for lab equipment from Asia at least once/week. It's a data lab, not a chemistry lab... these sales reps haven't done 1 second of research before calling. I assume they're scraping the names from somewhere too, or someone is scraping it and selling them a list.
One approach is to get a new cell number and port your existing cell number to Google Voice (GV). You can then forward calls from the latter to the former, using GV blocking and spam filtering to kill off the noise.
Yep, I know if a number has the same first six digits as mine there's a solid 95% probability it's spam. On rare occasions I'll get a text from a number in my area code with some variation of, "Do I know you?" so clearly other people are getting calls spoofed as my number as well.
It is interesting half the calls I bother to answer, are just instantly disconnected. Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me. It is funny to get a live person and mess with them though..."oh which credit card are you referring to"
I kept one agent on the line for a few minutes and was eventually called some very insulting swear words. If I recall correctly I was called a "bitchass mother fucker"
> Why bother calling if you are not even going to attempt to scam me.
I think it might be something silly like confirming the number has a person on the other end. For selling to other spammers. Not sure why they can't do both at once though, so maybe I'm off.
They call more people than they have available to answer the phone at the other side. Normally, many phones won't answer. When more phones answer, they just hang on the ones they can't handle.
And, obviously, they can save a bit by always having more phones answer than they can handle. This way their employees don't waste any time waiting for a call, instead it's your time that is wasted, what costs them nothing.
It isn't, though. Getting a ringing response is enough to validate a number, and someone who isn't making the effort to check contact lists against do-not-call registries won't be making the effort to track numbers that do not answer, either. In any case, RTNR to such people simply means that there's no-one to answer right now and is no reason to discard a number.
Reminds me of "scam baiting" which is becoming a popular live stream opportunity.
I occasionally watch this guy who calls tech-support scammers or IRS scammers and attempts to waste as much of their time as possible. He will often impersonate an old lady using a voice modulator (or he'll implement other personalities) to make his performance more realistic. It can be quite entertaining.
They're overbooking their calls. Many people are dialed up simultaneously, but there's not enough people to service everyone at all times. As you answer the call, everyone is busy servicing other people that also answered - your call gets hung up.
Yeah, luckily for me my area code for my phone is from where I grew up, and I don’t know anyone who still lives there. That means when I see my own area code in the caller, I know to ignore it because it is spam.
Most of the calls are about getting my ‘business listed with google’
Same exact thing for me. I know three people with the same area code as my number: my wife, brother, and step mother. Their numbers are all in my phone. Any other number is spam and I ignore it. I haven't been wrong yet either.
Yes, amazed at how many local numbers are spam. I get three a lot:
1. Vacation Rewards Center - selling cruises I think
2. Business line of credit - their phrasing make it sound like I called them ("Hey, just getting back to you about that $15k line of credit)
3. Tax scare tactics, trying to settle debt or penalties
I didn't know who feel for this stuff until I talked to an older gentleman who said he got these calls and it took him a long time and encouragement from his friends to know it was a scam.
"this call is in reference to your credit account...there are no current problems with your account, please press 1 to be connected to an operator that can share an amazing opportunity for you $something"
I've never clicked '1', and never felt I've missed out, but I've gotten that same call from local numbers in my same block maybe 50 times already this year.
I started doing the same a few weeks ago. It could be a coincidence but the number of calls seems to decrease. Not that I was getting a lot but now I go for many days without any at all. I just get to the life person and put the phone on mute. As far as my disruption goes it's about the same but I imagine the scammer's cost raises manyfold: they pay a lot more for the time on the line and their operators get disrupted on top of that. If I get a call to last a minute vs 3 seconds it takes to hang up it already makes my number an order of magnitude more expensive to call vs. a number that hangs up/does not answer.
It's not a glitch. This sort of system (which will be some form of predictive dialler) relies upon there being far more in-progress calls than human agents. Sometimes, therefore, there's no available agent to connect a person to. This nature of such systems is why some countries regulate them.
I received a call from a very angry lady in my local exchange who was convinced I was calling her all of the time. I tried to explain number spoofing to her, but not sure she got it. In any case, we've mutually blocked each other now.
> I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.
I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important.
Me too. The vast majority of my spam calls are on the local exchange for my phone's native number. I use Google Voice on a Pixel2, so nobody should even be using the native number. I've often wished for a way to either:
Block any call for the native, non Google Voice number
or
Block any call claiming to originate from any number in the native number's local prefix. Eg, 604-233-
I haven't found a call blocker that can do this, but it has been a while since I looked.
For those on iOS, you can block wildcard number ranges like this with Number Shield[0].
I have been receiving alot of these spoofed neighbor number calls, and this app saves me a lot of time and stress. You can also prevent it from blocking contacts that fall into your blocked number range.
Most of the junk calls to my cell phone follow this formula. There doesn't seem to be anything to block the whole exchange. I'd be happy to do it. I don't actually live in the same city as my cell number so the odds that I'd be blocking someone who needed to reach me is pretty small.
But will it allow me to block all calls from 604-232 and 604-234 that are not in my contacts? Because I've noticed a similar trend where I get calls from numbers that begin with the same 6 numbers as my phone number.. but I have friends and family with phone numbers similar to mine and I don't want them blocked. Just ones not in my contacts list.
Edit: I read a review of Hiya and it sounds like they're still missing what we're all looking for: "Two things are missing. First, the ability to block all calls not in contacts. I have to download a separate app for that. Second, on inbound calls from the same area code (i.e., spoofed numbers) it does not pre-screen the call."
I have my phone in a permanent "Do Not Disturb" mode with a few break-through rules for "favorite" contacts (not even all contacts). Missed important calls: 0. If someone's calling and doesn't leave the voicemail, then it's not important.
I'm purely whitelist at this point. If I get a call and it's not from a contact I know, I send it straight to voicemail. Probably less than 10% of my phone calls are legitimate. The rest (2-3 calls a day) are vacation timeshare spam, "IRS" spam, solar panel spam, and some Chinese spam that I can't understand because I don't speak Mandarin.
Anyone who's important (including kid's school) is in my contact list, so I'm confident that I'm not missing anything important. And in the off chance it is important but not in my white list they will leave a message.
I get so many robocalls I don't even bother with call notifications anymore. If they're a friend, they'll probably text instead. If it's a business matter, they'll leave a message.
Hiya on android will block calls from known spam numbers, or you can set it to allow the calls but flag them as known spam or telemarketers. It also supports blocking calls based on what the number starts with. So if you have a non local number, and spammers are spoofing a local number it is easy to block them without missing important calls. Lastly, how many calls do you get that are important, but not important enough that they would leave a voicemail?
T-Mobile will sometimes display "Scam Likely" for me in place of the phone number. It's way to conservative though. It would be nice to have a way to report scam phone numbers back. Kinda like Apple's "was this voicemail translation helpful" in voicemail. I'm sure this would weed out scammers phone numbers pretty fast. Although, once a number is flagged its gone for good and phone numbers need to be recyclable.
I haven't answered an unknown number in well over a decade. My voicemail message has for at least that long been along the lines of "I probably chose not to answer you, especially if your number is withheld or not known to me. Leave a message, or better yet text/email me". I don't recall ever missing something important.
I send all calls that block the caller ID automatically to voicemail.
If I get repeated spam voicemails from the same number, I manually add it to a contact called “Block”. The next time they call they get a special voicemail message I recorded telling them the number is no longer in service.
I'd suggest against it. There are important calls that can come in from true unknown sources, people who just legitimately need to contact you out of the blue, especially officials (police, utility companies, etc...). If you feel like ignoring those, there's also the possibility that a contact of yours needs to contact you in an emergency can can't use their normal phone. As an example, assuming you're married, maybe your spouse gets into an accident and calls to you for help from a nearby house?
This happens less often than being killed by lightning, which you do not take proactive measures against.
People can leave a message. Officials can leave a message. When do you ever need to answer a call from a official?
911 is for getting instant help in emergencies. No one needs you to answer your personal phone immediately.
I tend to agree. It's probably in part that I can remember when someone reaching you required you to be at home. I can even remember before answering machines :-) Now, I don't make myself arbitrarily hard to reach. But I also don't buy into the idea that it's unthinkable to not be reachable 24 hours a day.
I do take protective measures against being hit by lightning. I don't take shelter under trees during a lightning storm - I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.
> I do so in a building that has a working lightning rod.
On a serious note, all buildings are different so you can't really do this reliably as it is unlikely you will locate the lightning rod before it is too late to course correct.
You can always just accept the call and wait for the other party to speak. If it's a machine-assisted call, silence doesn't trigger the answer detector, and it hangs up after a few seconds, possibly also marking your number as no-contact. A human caller will eventually ask if anyone is listening.
They called you, after all. They can just say what they wanted to say whether you acknowledge them or not.
I could see sending all non-contact calls to voicemail the first time, and letting them ring if they call again.
Anything more restricted would make you unavailable if, say, the police called because a family member was in a crash. I will put up with some inconvenience to be available in rare emergencies.
I've considered it. Important-but-not-emergency calls would theoretically go to voicemail where they can leave a message. I would worry about missing calls that really are emergencies though. This is why I haven't done such a thing.
Perhaps there would be an override if they kept calling back.
> What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder?
If I'm available I don't want to wait to find out a family member was in an accident or something.
> Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?
No, because I'm in the shower for less than 10 minutes. If some kind of emergency unfortunately happens while I'm in the shower then I guess I'll just have to find out after my shower. I can live with that.
You can do it on an iPhone at least using Do Not Disturb. I've resorted to doing that when I travel overseas because otherwise I get woken up in the middle of the night. I don't really like doing it for the reason you say but I really don't have a choice.
We tried that in the UK with BT's service but it was blocking to may calls and as one of the household was on a transplant list that was some what suboptimal.
I agree. I receive at least one a day. It's more frequent than spam mail. I'm sure there is a viable business venture to basically make "spam assassin" for telecom. I've gotten to the point where I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange that isn't returning one of my calls, because for the past 8 months 90% have been scam calls.
I've found some apps/services that do this, but I don't think I should have to pay because the phone companies are sacks of shit. So I'm holding out hoping someone (the FCC, my service provider, or the robocaller's service provider) will do something about it.
I've frequently wondered why, in this day and age, telcos are permitted to provide telephone service without any guarantee whatsoever of the originating phone number being accurate.
I'm baffled that telcos allow this, regardless of regulations.
I get so many robocalls, I stopped answering my phone. But when I get a FaceTime call or an iMessage, I'm on it.
Robocalls dilute the trust consumers have in the phone system. The telcos are rapidly ceding this trust to other forms of communication -- those provided Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. As robocalls proliferate, tech companies win and telcos lose. Unless they fix this, eventually the phone system might go away entirely. Consumers -- especially young people -- won't want or need it.
Telcos are complicit in the crime because they know they're going to make money no matter what. Everyone is paying for 4G LTE and 5G now, and that's not going away. Why bother fixing the legacy phone system when it still brings in extra cash the way it is?
I for one have had calls disabled on my phone for a long time. Couldn't be happier. AT&T, Tmobile, etc... it didn't matter what carrier I had, they would all tell me to install some 3rd party app to block "unknown" calls and robocalls. Absolutely ridiculous.
I don't think they care. Here in Australia at least, unlimited calls/text starts at pretty cheap plan options. It's the data use that's the moneymaker. As long as you're watching videos and snapchatting I don't think they care if you text or not.
I suppose they have even less incentive than internet service providers have to implement BCP 38 spoofing protection.
If it made business sense to do this, it would happen. Until then, it probably won't. Perhaps serving millions of robocalls are more profitable than the number of consumers who will totally cancel their telephone service as a result of them.
Pity there isn't a viable class action plaintiff's bar taking on the provider telcos to make the business case. Until then I'm doing what everyone else seems to be diong, blackholing calls pretending to be from my own exchange, and now trying a device on the landline to filter the ringing (a Lynx).
Part of it is that their are legitimate reasons to spoof CallerID such as when a company wants to set all outgoing calls to show the main company name and number, even when the call originates from a direct inbound dial line. Carriers could block calls from numbers that supposedly don't exist or dial out--and I believe some are starting to offer than as a service. But if they spoof as a real number, that won't work.
I suspect a higher-level issue is that illegal junk calls fall into the mild annoyance category for most people. If the average person was getting a hundred calls a day to the point where they couldn't use their phone service, something would happen.
>"If the average person was getting a hundred calls a day to the point where they couldn't use their phone service, something would happen."
This does seem to be the endgame. The last excuse I heard was "what if a friend of a friend wants to invite you to her party so she gets your number from the shared friend, and she also does the same for a bunch of other friends of friends?"
Do you ever wonder if Zuck has some kind of ghost profile for you anyway? This person that shows up in photos but has no profile...he probably knows your name and where you fit in the social graph.
He probably has numerous ghosts of me. I know that every time anything gets updated about a small business (phone number, address, principals, etc.) FB spins up a new ghost page for that business. They're not only bad at finding dupes, they're also bad at removing dupes once they've been notified of them.
It's not. The PSTN isn't one giant cohesive system. It's a federation of lots of companies in lots of countries. Getting such a system in place requires filtering between carriers as well as everyone filtering what subscribers can do. You may have heard: not every country in the world likes every other country, and not every telephony carrier business likes every other telephony carrier business.
I actually get a large number of calls from gvoice numbers. I tested this myself. I was able to create a Google account and get a number, manually mind you, in less than one minute. Spoofing is one problem... allowing legit rampant abuse is another.
I am 64 and am approaching the date I can enroll in Medicare. I am getting 30+ robocalls a day at home and a handful at work and on my mobile phone trying to sell me medicare supplemental plans.
We just let the home phone roll to VM now. I don't answer the work phone and only my mobile phone if I know the caller. Grrrr.
Given your age and the fact that you're posting here I'm gonna safely assume you know more things than me, but just in case you haven't given it a shot - I took a custom google voice number and almost never get unsolicited robo calls on it. The only ones I get are from a couple debt collectors that are tossing around an old hospital bill they can't decide if I need to pay or not, i.e. they got my number relatively legitimately.
Not sure if this is because of some sort of built in spam protection, or if because my area code is weird,but, worth considering?
You can request the debt collectors stop calling you and then they have to decide if they will sue you or not. If they keep calling they can be fined and you get the $$.
It's always a different debt collector. None of them have proof of debt so they're all just shitting my debt down the pyramid lol. I'm guessing the value goes down significantly each sell.
I think it's reached the "penny stock" mark by now, I haven't had a call in 8 months.
I'm glad something is being done and it's being reported. But it's only one guy, and there's an epidemic of these annoying calls. My elderly father gets dozens of them a week on his landline, and I get a spoofed number at least once a day, from an exchange very similar to my own.
It's funny how freedom of speech is considered in light of for-profit stuff like this (in the Bloomberg article it was the misleading nature of the calls, not the calls themselves), but not with regards to stuff like hate speech and political speech.
In an ethical world, it would be time for a flip: heavily regulate the commercial elements of speech.
In an ethical world, it would be time for a flip: heavily regulate the commercial elements of speech.
You're lucky: in the US, that's already the case legally. There's no such thing as an hate speech exception to the First Amendment, and political speech in general is mostly untouchable, whereas commercial speech can be much more regulated.
It's gotten to the point where I don't even answer the phone anymore unless the number is in my contact list - it's starting to cause issues at work, because I occasionally get calls from coworkers (or even my boss) from numbers I don't recognize. This is long since past the point where something needs to be done.
"This scheme was particularly abhorrent because, given its breadth, it appears to have substantially
disrupted the operations of an emergency medical paging provider. It did this by slowing down and
potentially disabling its network. Pagers may be low-tech, but for doctors, these devices are simple and
dependable standbys. By overloading this paging network, Mr. Abramovich could have delayed vital
medical care, making the difference between a patient’s life and death."
Imagine that, on average, each robocall wastes 15 seconds of a person's time. Let's round it out to 100M calls. That's 1.5B calls seconds, or over 45 years of times destroyed.
He almost murdered someone, spread out across 100M people.
I can kind of understand his point though. We have the technology to stop this, but the companies don't care enough to try. We face the same problem with DDOS attacks and ISPs. It's too easy to do, and it's easy to stop, but unless people are able to influence companies with their wallets, we won't get anywhere.
We do have the technology to stop this, but it doesn't change what a miserable sack of crap he is. It doesn't absolve him of being the ONE PERSON ultimately responsible for his behavior. And you can't tell me if a simple blocking method was put in place, that he wouldn't try to work around it. In fact, why do you think they don't dial from the same phone number every time? He's already trying to work around the (very rudimentary) methods people and providers use to stop this garbage.
So reading through the article, his main argument seems to be
"There are bigger fish in the sea so why are you even going after me?"
In the US there is a real problem with selective enforcement in general but this is BS, the fact that someone else is breaking the law worse doesn't make your crime not a thing.
1. He's right, biased enforcement is a crime against society.
It encourages increased criminality by those who are "above the law", and unfairly harms the personal social networks of prosecuted criminals, while the personal social networks on non-prosecuted criminals thrive and have relatively more social power.
2. Random(ish) enforcement is a cost-effective deterrent. Convict 10% of the crooks, make them pay 11x their gains, and the expected value of the scam goes negative, deterring rational scammers.
Reminds me of the time I was walking around New Orleans around 3am, passed a disheveled partier up against a wall being cuffed. In the brief moment of passing, I heard him say to the cop, in that paradoxical clarity only the uber-drunk possess, "You know serial killers exist, right?"
This guy and other slimeballs helped changed the telephone landscape.
The population of those who do not answer unknown numbers possibly has risen to 60% of the US population. I bet all of us here don't answer unknown numbers.
Text or email me and if it's important or you are important to me then I'll respond. Don't bother to leave a voicemail either unless you are going to give me money, a new job or there's a situation that desperately needs my attention.
Before my grandparents passed away, I considered it extremely dangerous for them to answer their phone and did everything in my power to discourage them from doing so unless they recognized the number. Even then, with number spoofing, it made me nervous.
One wrong call from a motivated scammer and I feared it could end in bankruptcy for them. On one occasion, a telemarketing scam ended up costing an elderly relative a couple thousand dollars that required other family members to help cover for her.
I was wondering aloud at work the other day if robocalls could actually spell the end of the phone number. It is extremely rare that I actually make a telephone call to talk to someone, it's been replaced with facetime and google hangouts, and it's very rare that someone calls me on my phone number that isn't a scam call. Pretty much the only time I get calls that I need to pick up are when my kid's day care is calling to tell me that my kid is running a fever and I need to pick them up, in this case they could probably text or email me.
I think phones are stilled needed. They're still the most reliable form of communication. But I see most people switching to white lists. Anyone not in your address book will get sent to voicemail right away.
> But I see most people switching to white lists. Anyone not in your address book will get sent to voicemail right away.
Imagine the future of mobile adware...where they get access to your contact list, generate generic names of similar ethnicity to your real contacts, and add fake contacts. Or they add additional numbers to contacts you already have.
"Oh, my friend Stan is calling. DANGIT NO I DON'T WANT A MEDICARE SUPPLEMENT PLAN!"
Given what a lot of people now know (or should know) about what Facebook and Google record about everyone, this is not the future any longer. It is achievable right now, and I would not be shocked to find that someone is doing it already. (I'd be disappointed and irate.)
this is off topic but a friend linked me a comment you made a few months ago about the IBM dress code and "work being for work" and he can't find the article so I was hoping you might have it somewhere or remember the title or anything!
That would be great. At my company at least there's a lot of legacy infrastructure and complexity around phones and it's always seemed pointless to me, since obviously we already have a network. And like you, I don't even use the damn thing.
And on a related note, I much prefer interacting with customer service through a well designed website or app, rather than having to call, figure out the menu, sit on hold forever, and finally talk to someone who can't help me. It boggles my mind that a phone number is the main way to get service from so many companies.
The phone number won't die -- it's your primary account id with your mobile ISP, and it's your login id for many internet services. Legacy phone calls are overdue for death, though.
Ugh, this guy calls me several times a week. I'm on the no-call list, I report them to the FTC every time they call, and twice I've waited to get patched through to the "travel rep" to ask them to remove me. It's infuriating.
On a related note, I'm curious about a scam that popped up when I added a Craigslist ad the other day; I normally include my number, because I live in the midwest and people buying construction material don't have email; that's never been an issue.
But this time, I've gotten two separate robo text-messages asking I reply via email to magalife3@gmail.com. Googling highlights this person is spamming a few public places as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=+magalife3%40gmail.com
Curious if anyone else has come across something like that - is it just a way to get past spam filters by having me make an outbound email to the scammer?
Google search is amazing. #4 result for me is this article, which predates the popular usage of "MAGA" and doesn't include "magalife3" in the page content, but exactly answers your question.
>“Clearly regulation needs to address the carriers and providers and require the major carriers to detect robocalls activity,” Abramovich said in testimony submitted in advance to the Senate Commerce Committee.
It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the sheer chutzpah needed to say something like that. "The issue isn't that I did it, the issue is that you didn't make other people stop me." Textbook sociopathic behavior.
In the US we just had congressional hearings over Facebook.
While Zuckerberg walked a fine line and performed as well as anyone could under such situation, I was left disappointed.
He (more or less) took a beating from congress without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA, or anyone else who is breaking trust and downright abusing existing platforms and ignoring privacy.
Robo calls are straight up scams. They're on the rise, and they're not being given any attention. This is indeed hopefully the first domino to fall, that will bring this to an end.
For those interested in these these scam calls, there's a guy on Twitch (live right now) who streams reverse scamming
these centers and taking up their time.
>Congressional hearings are show trials, not courts of justice.
Exactly, given the fact that most of the senators were donated to by FB prior, and the fact that they all had met days before the "hearing" and had conversations about FB etc, I am pretty sure it was bunch of congressional dinosaurs attempting to be sycophants in the private pre-meetings/dinners...
Its a farce. And given that FB tracks even physical people without their permission, or consent - FB is a social cancer just waiting to metastasize.
I've recently had a bunch of calls and it seems like the callers are spoofing other people's numbers. I came to this conclusion when I didn't answer and called back. It was just a regular person who didn't know anything about it. A few days later, someone called me thinking I was robo calling them.
Yeah this is called 'neighborhood' spoofing - they do it to get numbers similar to yours (sometimes they'll even appear as a known contact).
I use an app called nomorobo ($2/month) that's basically a blacklist that gets continually updated to block these calls prior to ringing my phone. The way they deal with the neighborhood spoofing is having local access to your contacts so they don't accidentally block any real numbers (though those that happen to be an exact match will go through).
Yes. I called a number back one time when I saw that it had a Facetime option. I figured it must be a real person. Somebody answered my video call and they weren't very happy with me.
They've been spoofing numbers for quite some time. It only stands to reason that randomly generated spoofed numbers will be numbers belonging to other owners of phones. They think they're being clever about it: use the same area code and exchange numbers as the target, and randomly generate the final digits, hoping you'll think you know the caller and will answer.
I actually use this to screen calls because my exchange and area code are from T-mobile in Pierce County WA circa 2003 and I've long since moved away from that area.
The strategy falls flat when calling a cell phone, but seems to make a lot of sense when targeting landlines. A call from "someone around town" seems worthwhile to pickup.
Add in the fact that people with landlines are more likely to be older people whose priors expect a human to be calling, and the only real question is why don't the spammers catalog and then exclusively target landline prefixes with this method.
It seems like ILECs could start offering a service based on ingress filtering source addrs based on numbers they know haven't been ported out, but Ma Bell is the antithesis of innovation.
I get robocalls "from Quincy, Mass" on my iPhone which has a Quincy number. I haven't lived there in 7 years and have no genuine interaction with anyone there.
This works fine for calls from your landline or cellphone. It doesn't work as well go businesses which may legitimately split incoming and outgoing service, so the outgoing carrier really has no way to know what source numbers are legitimate. There's also a pretty big business in traffic resale, and none of those guys have any idea.
What would be more useful is accessible path information, so I can complain to my carrier about a call, and they can find out where it came from and throw people or companies off the network.
"so the outgoing carrier really has no way to know what source numbers are legitimate."
It shouldn't be difficult to get a single number that is legitimate and limit the caller id to that number. Any telecom carrier whose customer is requesting a wide variety of phone numbers ought to know that something sketchy is going on.
Let's say I'm a not entirely small company, with employees with phones on their desks who call customers and have direct numbers to be called. When they call out, the caller id should be their desk number so the people they're calling know it's them and answer the phone.
But the carrier that handles inbound calling charges an arm and a leg for outbound, so I'd like to use another carrier for outbound; I don't want to change my inbound carrier.
In that case there should still be some similarity among the numbers (area code, exchange, etc), and it wouldn't be difficult to tell the outgoing provider that you're going to be using a particular block of numbers. At a minimum, the outgoing calls shouldn't have numbers from different area codes every day.
I feel like I've read the exact same HN comment, comparing Facebook to the NSA, five times in the past couple days. Here it's barely tangentially related to the topic at hand. Is there some sort of mini PR push going on to mitigate FB's recent reputational damage?
Please don't post comments insinuating astroturfing or shillage unless you have some more substantive reason for it—in which case you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. All this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
It's natural for things to seem this way, but that's because there's enough data on HN to produce seeming patterns of all kinds. Overwhelmingly, it's just users being users. Unfortunately the internet habit of leaping to "shill!" or "PR!" as an explanation for $annoying_view does more damage, because it's more widespread. That's why we ask people to inhibit the reflex.
The thing is, it appears that data was accessible. Perhaps they didn't sell it, as such. Perhaps companies paid to put a game or quiz on Facebook and they were given info on the users who used the game or quiz.
Or maybe Facebook put the games/apps up for free and just gave the data away?
I dunno, but "We aren't in the business of selling your data. We just gave it away." isn't a great message.
The point is that companies like Tesla can change their business model at anytime and start selling something new, like they did when they started selling battery packs in addition to cars.
I am wondering why I do not know of an app that can take over a call and keep the person occupied with an AI. It wouldn't have to be particularly smart, just a plausible synthetic voice (randomized) that holds up the call for a bit.
The robocallers are already using NLP to call me, so why doesn't someone use it to waste their time?
Ive literally called my cell phone company to ask if I could block entire area codes...in one case I actually asked them to block Texas. Unfortunately that feature is not available.
Hah, the phone equivalent to when Hiroyuki / 4chan banned all Russian IPs during a DDOS attack.
I spent a solid couple minutes trying to find the screencap, but it went down in 4chan history for the distinct Hiroyuki-style response, that went something like
>Many DDOS IPs were from Russia. So, we block Russian IPs. Now, DDOS ended.
I too have mostly stopped answering calls from numbers I don't recognize.
What I get are not spam calls, but silent calls. When I answer them there is no sound at all from the other end. If I let calls go to voice mail they leave long silent voicemails.
I also get calls which ring for only a couple of seconds, hardly long enough to reach for my phone before they hang up.
I've heard that these may be scammers trying to trick me into calling back, so they could charge me however many dollars per minute.
They might be attempting to get you to call back, but likely they're calling more numbers than they can actually connect. It increases the odds of getting answers on particular attempt, but they can also keep track of those that answered even if their talking robot can't service every connection. Now they know they've got a live number and will try you again.
Unless you are unfortunate enough to have a legacy home phone line, you should configure your (personal) phone to not ring for unknown numbers; maybe to let it ring if the same caller calls back twice in your succession.
New contacts can leave a message, and you can call back and add them to contact book if desired.
> trick me into calling back, so they could charge me however many dollars per minute.
Yup. Bitcoin scammers and dark-pattern website builders have got nothing on classic telecom scammers, exploiting fundamental flaws in the trust model.
Frankly, unwanted calls could be much less aggravating if phones had a proper UI.
In 2007, when the iPhone was first released, maybe the “phone” part was an important app. Now though, I can’t believe the phone app is still allowed to immediately interrupt anything I am doing and take over the entire screen!
What’s worse is that the Answer and Hang Up buttons could easily appear right under your fingers while you’re in the middle of using a definitely-not-phone app, causing you to do things you don’t want.
And why are my only options to “Do Not Disturb” (blocking everything, including stuff I don’t want to block), or to just sit and wait for the ringing to end? If I answer or hang up immediately, the spammer knows I’m a real person with a valid phone number and I probably end up on a list for more spam.
Here’s what I want: a checkbox that says “do not ever ring my phone, allow voicemail”, with an option to use a standard notification if a call comes in. Period. Tired of the full-screen-screw-whatever-you-were-doing-here’s-some-spam interface.
I think 'do not disturb' has an option for only allow people from your contacts? and there are crowdsourced blacklist apps for scammer/harassment phone numbers.
He wants his fine reduced? I believe it should be increased! This is taking a property used for the common good (the phone system) and abusing it in such a way that it becomes worthless. These sort of people need to be made an example of, lowering the fine would definitely be sending the wrong signal.
How many of these people get prosecuted every year? Is there some sort of Interpol of spam/scam/phishing to coordinate efforts against these guys? They should be easy enough to catch. It seems that right now there's not enough disincentive for these people to stop what they're doing. If the decentralized web wants to have a chance to succeed, we'll need to find a solution against spammers and scammers.
I really wish Google would step up and put some of its power to use and stop Stephanie (My Google listing expert) from calling me (and probably thousands of others) 3 times a day. I have given them plenty of info and even offered to buy their bullshit so they can follow the money. Google couldn't be any less interested.
Whats stopping us from having longer phone numbers. Everyone i care about talking to can scan a QR code or something. Also it would be awesome to have seperate outgoing and incoming numbers so i cant get added to a call list when i contact a business.
The reason you get calls from similar phone numbers is because they crawl from their own number. If we change up the way numbers are assigned so your number +- 1 isnt valid, this technique will no longer work.
I usually pick up the phone, but stay silent. Robocalls use voice detection to start playing their spiel, so if they don't hear anything for a few seconds they disconnect (and hopefully mark the number as inactive).
Nomorobo founder here. I'm the "robocall guy" that everyone quotes in the news.
Instead of just popping my head into every comment, I wanted to give some insight into what's actually happening out there.
Background: I won the FTC Robocall Challenge back in 2013. I turned my prototype/idea into Nomorobo, which is the leading robocall blocker out there. In 4 years, we've stopped over 630 million robocalls from reaching people.
I'll actually be testifying at next week's House subcommittee hearing on robocalls.
# Not picking up unknown numbers
Unfortunately, this is what people think is the best solution. Even the government gives this advice. #1 is to use a robocall blocker and #2 is to not answer numbers that you don't recognize.
That frustrates me to no end. That's not a good answer.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do 'this'. Then don't do 'that'."
I really get worried when people say they turn on Do Not Disturb. What if there's an emergency? You have no idea who needs to call you.
This is especially important for people with kids. Is it a school? Is it a neighbor?
This is an actual story that happened to me - no BS.
My Uncle wound up in the hospital last month. Ambulance had to come pick him up off the bathroom floor and everything. No one in the family knew it was happening.
I got a call from a number that I didn't recognize but, since I trust Nomorobo, I answered it. It was my Uncle telling me what happened, what hospital he was in, etc.
Damn good thing that I answered that call.
But the fun doesn't stop there.
A few hours later, I go over to his house to pick up a bunch of his stuff and bring it over to the hospital for him. While I'm getting things together, his old flip-style cell phone starts ringing. I figure it's one of his friends that's worried about him.
I answer it.
"Congratulations! You've won a free cruise."
# Neighbor Spoofing
Yep - if the number shown is close to yours and it's not in your contacts, it's probably a robocaller. But spoofing is the norm with robocall scams.
Our algorithm detects over 1300 new robocalling numbers every day and they're basically all spoofed.
Whatever number is shown usually can't be called back. It usually doesn't belong to the actual robocaller. And they usually try to make the call take a confusing journey through "the tubes" that's impossible to trace back.
Neighbor spoofing is really hard for carriers to stop because a lot of people have sequential numbers and they don't want to accidentally block good calls.
It's especially confusing when people don't understand what's going on and they call back the unknown number:
Person A: Why did you call me?
Person B: I didn't call you. Why are you calling me?
Person A: Because you called me.
Person B: No, I didn't.
Person A: Yes, you did.
Person B: Leave me alone, crazy person. [blocked]
But, as an app on your phone, it's really easy for us to stop.
If you give us permission to look at your contact list (they never leave your phone and are never stored by us), then we can fully block all neighbor spoofed calls. If you don't give us that permission, we simply identify them as "Robocaller" whenever they call.
# Wasting their time
Don't waste YOUR time. It will not help. You are trying to warm up the ocean by pissing into it.
The scale that these automated callers work at is unbelievable.
According to our stats, 40% of all calls in the US are spam robocalls.
Someone mentioned Jolly Roger Telco. We worked with them this holiday season to make www.DoNotCallChristmas.com. It was fun and it makes people feel good but that's about the only impact it has on the problem.
# So...why don't the carriers just make the calls stop?
There are a lot of tech people here on HN. You know TFW someone says to you, "Oh, that's easy - you just hook up a database to a web page, right?"
"And put some that blockchains in there while you're at it."
Well, it's the same way with the phone system. It's not as easy as it looks.
The phone system has a birth defect. Call it one of the worst cases of technical debt, ever.
When it was first created, it was a closed, trusted system (with AT&T running the whole shebang). No one could imagine a situation where someone would lie about the caller ID so they didn't require it to be verified.
But then the system changed. Deregulation. The rise of VoIP. Interconnectivity.
Whoops. Toothpaste is out of the tube. It's tough to put it back in.
So, yes, secure and verified caller ID systems are being worked on (STIR/SHAKEN) but it's years off.
Will it reduce voice spam? Of course. But, this problem will NEVER go away.
People still get ripped off every day by thinking that the Nigerian Price is going to make them rich.
# What about the Do Not Call list?
The laws that govern automated calling were written back in the early 90's.
I was using a 14.4k baud modem and connecting to BBSes at that time. The internet as we know it didn't exist. People were still paying by-the-minute for long distance phone service. Then technology rocketed past regulations.
Today, the Do Not Call list is virtually useless against modern robocalling scammers.
At the House subcommittee hearing next week, I'm actually going to advocate that the government scrap all the existing laws and rewrite them with a simple, plain thought:
High frequency, automated phone soliciting should be opt-IN, not opt-out.
You must have the express written permission of the person that you are calling. Period. Full stop.
It doesn't matter if your number is on the Do Not Call Registry or not.
It doesn't matter if you're calling a landline or a cell phone.
It doesn't matter if it's a business or a residential line.
Got permission? OK. Don't have permission? Nope.
Note: If you're sending a purely informational message, this doesn't apply. I'm only talking about commercial solicitations here. Think of it like preventing modern day door-to-door salespeople. Ride hailing notification, doctor's office reminders, schools closing, etc. just aren't the same type of thing.
# Closing thoughts
So, in 2018, the best way to stop these types of scams is by using a robocall blocker. I'm highly biased here but I think Nomorobo is the best one out there. We understand the problem and the solution better than anyone else. It's completely free on landlines and has a 14-day free trial on mobile. On top of all that, we're extremely privacy friendly.
And, while I never blame the victims, there is a bit of a shared responsibility that we all have here. The more people that use robocall blocking technology, the less effective these scams will be. The less effective they are, the less of them there will be. It's a virtuous cycle.
Let me know if there's anything else that you'd like to dig into. I'm all ears.
