3 ms·

That isn't an easy problem to solve. What do you do when a company has a large set of numbers on a single trunk? Do you maintain a list of authorized CID sour

by subway 10y ago

That isn't an easy problem to solve. What do you do when a company has a large set of numbers on a single trunk? Do you maintain a list of authorized CID source numbers? How do you enable 3rd parties to make calls on your behalf?

ralfd 10y ago
> How do you enable 3rd parties to make calls on your behalf? Why should that be possible? If anything the disadvantages of nuisance or even scamming obviously far outweigh the benefits.
- dangrossman 10y ago
  Few companies over a certain size run their own call centers. It's no different from a software startup using AWS or Rackspace instead of building a server room in their rented office space. I think it is both acceptable and desirable for my phone to tell me Comcast is calling me (as they currently do), even though it's technically an outsourced call center that makes/takes calls for several different companies from the same building and same set of phone numbers. Requiring caller ID match the billing address for the phone number would be like requiring Hacker News be hosted on a cloudflare.com subdomain because the IP space we're talking to isn't actually owned by YC.
  - bkruse 10y ago
    You can set the CallerID name to whatever you want. We once had a customer that set their callerID name to "DEAD" to signal that the phone number was no longer in use. People thought they were issuing threads on their outbound calls.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - jonknee 10y ago
    SPF records are reasonably simple to set up and something similar would solve this issue completely.
    - superuser2 10y ago
      To build SPF for the PSTN you'd first have to build DNS for the PSTN, then convince the manufacturers of carrier-grade switches to implement it, then convince telcos to buy new switches, then convince every single telco on Earth to throw out its last remaining equipment that doesn't enforce "SPF" for caller ID (or spammers would just use those companies).
      - toast0 10y ago
        DNS for the PSTN exists, e164.arpa; mostly not public though. It would be a slog to get it implemented, but if spammers are limited to spoofing international numbers or from rural carriers, that's still a win because I can ignore calls from out of the area.
        spc476 10y ago
        More specifically (in case anyone wants to know more---I know it surprised me to learn that caller name information is sent via DNS) NAPTR records.
viraptor 10y ago
Not sure what the US situation is here, but in the UK end users (of an ITSP provider I worked at) who could originate non-local numbers had to sign a "we have reasons and we won't abuse this feature, you're free to disconnect us if we do" contract. I see how it's a hard problem to solve in 100% of cases, but I don't see why it's not solved for most of them. Carriers have their own interconnects, pricing, and contracts. I believe 99.99% of call spam can be solved in a few months by major telcos coming up with a definition of spam callers and updating contracts to say: if you route more than N such calls within M days, and don't report who you disconnected because of it, we're disconnecting you instead. Real small telcos would have to drop misbehaving lines immediately. Fake telcos selling services only to spammers could not continue to do business.

by subway 10y ago

ralfd 10y ago

> How do you enable 3rd parties to make calls on your behalf? Why should that be possible? If anything the disadvantages of nuisance or even scamming obviously far outweigh the benefits.

dangrossman 10y ago
Few companies over a certain size run their own call centers. It's no different from a software startup using AWS or Rackspace instead of building a server room in their rented office space. I think it is both acceptable and desirable for my phone to tell me Comcast is calling me (as they currently do), even though it's technically an outsourced call center that makes/takes calls for several different companies from the same building and same set of phone numbers. Requiring caller ID match the billing address for the phone number would be like requiring Hacker News be hosted on a cloudflare.com subdomain because the IP space we're talking to isn't actually owned by YC.
- bkruse 10y ago
  You can set the CallerID name to whatever you want. We once had a customer that set their callerID name to "DEAD" to signal that the phone number was no longer in use. People thought they were issuing threads on their outbound calls.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- jonknee 10y ago
  SPF records are reasonably simple to set up and something similar would solve this issue completely.
  - superuser2 10y ago
    To build SPF for the PSTN you'd first have to build DNS for the PSTN, then convince the manufacturers of carrier-grade switches to implement it, then convince telcos to buy new switches, then convince every single telco on Earth to throw out its last remaining equipment that doesn't enforce "SPF" for caller ID (or spammers would just use those companies).
    - toast0 10y ago
      DNS for the PSTN exists, e164.arpa; mostly not public though. It would be a slog to get it implemented, but if spammers are limited to spoofing international numbers or from rural carriers, that's still a win because I can ignore calls from out of the area.
      - spc476 10y ago
        More specifically (in case anyone wants to know more---I know it surprised me to learn that caller name information is sent via DNS) NAPTR records.

viraptor 10y ago

Not sure what the US situation is here, but in the UK end users (of an ITSP provider I worked at) who could originate non-local numbers had to sign a "we have reasons and we won't abuse this feature, you're free to disconnect us if we do" contract. I see how it's a hard problem to solve in 100% of cases, but I don't see why it's not solved for most of them. Carriers have their own interconnects, pricing, and contracts. I believe 99.99% of call spam can be solved in a few months by major telcos coming up with a definition of spam callers and updating contracts to say: if you route more than N such calls within M days, and don't report who you disconnected because of it, we're disconnecting you instead. Real small telcos would have to drop misbehaving lines immediately. Fake telcos selling services only to spammers could not continue to do business.