15 ms·

Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls

128 points by petethomas 9y ago

rco8786 9y ago
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.
- rudedogg 9y ago
  > 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.
  - bonestamp2 9y ago
    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.
  - abawany 9y ago
    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.
    - Skunkleton 9y ago
      I tried this once. Now I have debt collectors after me because of my numbers previous owner.
      - xapata 9y ago
        If you have GVoice, you can change your forwarding number easily.
- fosco 9y ago
  > 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. Any thoughts on this?
  - danielecook 9y ago
    Please do - but how would you go about doing that?
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    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.
    - gowld 9y ago
      What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder? Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?
      - nkrisc 9y ago
        > 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.
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Set default ring tone to silence. Create separate ring tones for people in a contact list or people for whom you must pick up a phone. I have been using this for 3 years. No issues at all.
- jrobn 9y ago
  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.
  - rudedogg 9y ago
    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.
  - gowld 9y ago
    > "spam assassin" for telecom. https://www.asterisk.org/ https://www.asterisk.org/ > I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange Modern telecom scammers spoof your local exchange when they call you.
- gowld 9y ago
  Wait at least 3-7 years until the pro-freedom-to-pursue-life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-property FCC & FTC are out of power.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  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"
  - jonknee 9y ago
    > 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.
    - apotheothesomai 9y ago
      Pretty sure that is the reason. It's the phone equivalent of verifying an email. They ping, you pong, it goes on a list of verified numbers.
      - JdeBP 9y ago
        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. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 for what's actually happening.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      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.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  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’
  - rhcom2 9y ago
    Me too. You don't pay to hide your whois data once and you pay in robocalls for the rest of eternity.
  - dopamean 9y ago
    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.
- ransom1538 9y ago
  Not me. I always put my fiends phone number into the “win a car” boxes at street fairs. I never get calls.
- MrMember 9y ago
  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.
  - greenyoda 9y ago
    I've also been getting lots of "same first six digits" spam, but yesterday I saw a new variation: only the first five digits were the same.
- everdev 9y ago
  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.
  - abakker 9y ago
    "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.
    - noonespecial 9y ago
      I always punch 1. I feel its my civic duty to waste 10 minutes of their time (usually while speaking in my best Monty Python accents). The interesting thing is that I usually only get a person 1/2 the time. The system just glitches to hangup the rest of the time.
      - macawfish 9y ago
        I get these things multiple times per day.
      - JdeBP 9y ago
        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.
      - pandaman 9y ago
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  It's actually wrecking the utility of the telephone.
mancerayder 9y ago
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.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  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.
- icebraining 9y ago
  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. Which is why this man is facing a $120M fine.
- gowld 9y ago
  ? hate speech in USA is protected unless it directly triggers violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States#Supreme_Court_case_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... political speech in USA is also highly protected -- political calls are even exempt from anti-telemarketing laws that exist today. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0717.htm https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0717.htm Current law explicitly says that commercial speech is less protected than non-commerical speech.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
inetknght 9y ago
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.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
  Their lobby is powerful, and the ideology of many in tech leans to libertarian and away from regulation.
  - cimmanom 9y ago
    You can guarantee that if phone companies shut down this sort of spam calling, someone on HN would complain about "censorship!"
  - jonhendry18 9y ago
    The ideology of many in marketing certainly tends away from regulation.
- no_protocol 9y ago
  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.
  - howard941 9y ago
    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).
- ghaff 9y ago
  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.
rubicon33 9y ago
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. https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga
- nemacol 9y ago
  That is very entertaining. Thank you for the link.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    There's also https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/, though that one only answers calls, doesn't make them.
- Clubber 9y ago
  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.
  - fossuser 9y ago
    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). My spam calls went from one to two a day to zero.
epalmer 9y ago
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.
- komali2 9y ago
  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?
  - epalmer 9y ago
    Thanks. I will have to look into that.
  - ada1981 9y ago
    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 $$.
    - komali2 9y ago
      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.
      - ada1981 9y ago
        Hmm... if you make the no-contact request you can also ask them to attach that to the file if they sell it. Is it still on your credit report? You can challenge it. If it goes to court you can most likely have it ruled invalid as well.
jdfreefly 9y ago
I'm against the death penalty, but I'm willing to re-evaluate the position.
jakewins 9y ago
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 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?
- gowld 9y ago
  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. http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-item-still-available-craigslist-scams.html http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-item-still-avail... Gem of a line on that page: "In reality, only poor people use Western Union, so don't be a poor person and just stop using it. "
blang 9y ago
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.
- randomerr 9y ago
  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.
  - froindt 9y ago
    > 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!"
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      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.)
  - ayyjohn 9y ago
    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!
munk-a 9y ago
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.
- gowld 9y ago
  Answers to his question. 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.
  - jonhendry18 9y ago
    It'd be easier to enforce the law if they'd use their own damn caller ID.
- komali2 9y ago
  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?"
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  "There are bigger fish in the sea so why are you even going after me?" Because he's still a fish.
jpindar 9y ago
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.
- gowld 9y ago
  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.
- delinka 9y ago
  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.
jchrisa 9y ago
It's like the final scene in The Lawnmower Man but instead it's Florida Man.
paulie_a 9y ago
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.
- komali2 9y ago
  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.
scarmig 9y ago
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.
arosier 9y ago
"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." https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-80A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-80A1.pd...
- chris_wot 9y ago
  A denial of service attack?
rb808 9y ago
I gave up my home phone because of this. Now my cell is starting to get a few a day. I'm going to be Viber/Skype/Messenger/Facetime only soon.
mmanfrin 9y ago
I got THREE spam calls this morning before I intended to wake up. I hope they throw the book at these jerks.
- CNJ7654 9y ago
  ^^^ Also set your Do Not Disturb on a schedule. One of the best lifestyle improvements you can make from your phone settings.
vsviridov 9y ago
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).
pcunite 9y ago
Wish Apple would make it so that, if a number is not in my contacts, it goes straight to voicemail (without turning on Do Not Disturb).
esfandia 9y ago
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.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  Not many. And they make enough money that the fines aren't much of an obstacle.
chris_wot 9y ago
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.
lordnacho 9y ago
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?
- Willson50 9y ago
  These apps exist. Here's a rather funny one: http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/ http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/
jimhefferon 9y ago
Death penalty.
us0r 9y ago
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.
- djangowithme 9y ago
  I HATE these calls too. Godaddy does the same thing, but uses local numbers so that they might trick me to answer.
rconti 9y ago
What an asshole. His whole line of logic seems to be: * Open source software and long distance companies make it too easy * Why didn't they stop me? * They should have regulated me. * Other people do it worse.
- enzanki_ars 9y ago
  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.
  - rconti 9y ago
    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.
- afo 9y ago
  This is the case of the arsonist that just burned down your house, matches in hand, saying, "Clearly, you need a better fire department."
sol_remmy 9y ago
That's 1 robocall for every married couple in the U.S... It's a shame Mr. Abramovich did not learn respect at yeshiva, if he was raised in my orthodox community he would not be acting like this..
paul7986 9y ago
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.
- klenwell 9y ago
  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.
asdsa5325 9y ago
All the robocalls near me spoof the area code AND the next 3 digits to match mine.
DanAndersen 9y ago
>“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.
skate22 9y ago
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.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  What would longer phone numbers accomplish?
  - skate22 9y ago
    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.
makecheck 9y ago
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.
- nichtich 9y ago
  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.
rak00n 9y ago
I wonder if Project Fi has a good spam detecting system. I don't remember when I last got a spam call.
afo 9y ago
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.

128 points by petethomas 9y ago

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.

rudedogg 9y ago
> 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.
- bonestamp2 9y ago
  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.
- abawany 9y ago
  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.
  - Skunkleton 9y ago
    I tried this once. Now I have debt collectors after me because of my numbers previous owner.
    - xapata 9y ago
      If you have GVoice, you can change your forwarding number easily.
fosco 9y ago
> 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. Any thoughts on this?
- danielecook 9y ago
  Please do - but how would you go about doing that?
- nkrisc 9y ago
  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.
  - gowld 9y ago
    What's wrong with emergency calls going to voicemail, for your personal line when you aren't an onduty first-responder? Would you also take your phone into the shower with you so you don't miss a potential call?
    - nkrisc 9y ago
      > 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.
- notyourday 9y ago
  Set default ring tone to silence. Create separate ring tones for people in a contact list or people for whom you must pick up a phone. I have been using this for 3 years. No issues at all.
jrobn 9y ago
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.
- rudedogg 9y ago
  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.
- gowld 9y ago
  > "spam assassin" for telecom. https://www.asterisk.org/ https://www.asterisk.org/ > I don't trust anyone calling from a non-local exchange Modern telecom scammers spoof your local exchange when they call you.
gowld 9y ago
Wait at least 3-7 years until the pro-freedom-to-pursue-life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-property FCC & FTC are out of power.
paulie_a 9y ago
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"
- jonknee 9y ago
  > 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.
  - apotheothesomai 9y ago
    Pretty sure that is the reason. It's the phone equivalent of verifying an email. They ping, you pong, it goes on a list of verified numbers.
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      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. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871131 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873537 for what's actually happening.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    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.
cortesoft 9y ago
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’
- rhcom2 9y ago
  Me too. You don't pay to hide your whois data once and you pay in robocalls for the rest of eternity.
- dopamean 9y ago
  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.
ransom1538 9y ago
Not me. I always put my fiends phone number into the “win a car” boxes at street fairs. I never get calls.
MrMember 9y ago
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.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  I've also been getting lots of "same first six digits" spam, but yesterday I saw a new variation: only the first five digits were the same.
everdev 9y ago
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.
- abakker 9y ago
  "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.
  - noonespecial 9y ago
    I always punch 1. I feel its my civic duty to waste 10 minutes of their time (usually while speaking in my best Monty Python accents). The interesting thing is that I usually only get a person 1/2 the time. The system just glitches to hangup the rest of the time.
    - macawfish 9y ago
      I get these things multiple times per day.
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      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.
    - pandaman 9y ago
jonhendry18 9y ago
It's actually wrecking the utility of the telephone.

mancerayder 9y ago

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.

commandlinefan 9y ago
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.
icebraining 9y ago
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. Which is why this man is facing a $120M fine.
gowld 9y ago
? hate speech in USA is protected unless it directly triggers violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States#Supreme_Court_case_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... political speech in USA is also highly protected -- political calls are even exempt from anti-telemarketing laws that exist today. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0717.htm https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0717.htm Current law explicitly says that commercial speech is less protected than non-commerical speech.
jonhendry18 9y ago

inetknght 9y ago

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.

DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
Their lobby is powerful, and the ideology of many in tech leans to libertarian and away from regulation.
- cimmanom 9y ago
  You can guarantee that if phone companies shut down this sort of spam calling, someone on HN would complain about "censorship!"
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  The ideology of many in marketing certainly tends away from regulation.
no_protocol 9y ago
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.
- howard941 9y ago
  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).
ghaff 9y ago
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.

rubicon33 9y ago

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. https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga

nemacol 9y ago
That is very entertaining. Thank you for the link.
- icebraining 9y ago
  There's also https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/, though that one only answers calls, doesn't make them.
Clubber 9y ago
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.
- fossuser 9y ago
  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). My spam calls went from one to two a day to zero.

epalmer 9y ago

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.

komali2 9y ago
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?
- epalmer 9y ago
  Thanks. I will have to look into that.
- ada1981 9y ago
  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 $$.
  - komali2 9y ago
    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.
    - ada1981 9y ago
      Hmm... if you make the no-contact request you can also ask them to attach that to the file if they sell it. Is it still on your credit report? You can challenge it. If it goes to court you can most likely have it ruled invalid as well.

jdfreefly 9y ago

I'm against the death penalty, but I'm willing to re-evaluate the position.

jakewins 9y ago

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 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?

gowld 9y ago
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. http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-item-still-available-craigslist-scams.html http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-item-still-avail... Gem of a line on that page: "In reality, only poor people use Western Union, so don't be a poor person and just stop using it. "

blang 9y ago

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.

randomerr 9y ago
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.
- froindt 9y ago
  > 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!"
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    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.)
- ayyjohn 9y ago
  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!

munk-a 9y ago

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.

gowld 9y ago
Answers to his question. 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.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  It'd be easier to enforce the law if they'd use their own damn caller ID.
komali2 9y ago
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?"
jonhendry18 9y ago
"There are bigger fish in the sea so why are you even going after me?" Because he's still a fish.

jpindar 9y ago

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.

gowld 9y ago
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.
delinka 9y ago
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.

jchrisa 9y ago

It's like the final scene in The Lawnmower Man but instead it's Florida Man.

paulie_a 9y ago

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.

komali2 9y ago
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.

scarmig 9y ago

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.

arosier 9y ago

"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." https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-80A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-80A1.pd...

chris_wot 9y ago
A denial of service attack?

rb808 9y ago

I gave up my home phone because of this. Now my cell is starting to get a few a day. I'm going to be Viber/Skype/Messenger/Facetime only soon.

mmanfrin 9y ago

I got THREE spam calls this morning before I intended to wake up. I hope they throw the book at these jerks.

CNJ7654 9y ago
^^^ Also set your Do Not Disturb on a schedule. One of the best lifestyle improvements you can make from your phone settings.

vsviridov 9y ago

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).

pcunite 9y ago

Wish Apple would make it so that, if a number is not in my contacts, it goes straight to voicemail (without turning on Do Not Disturb).

esfandia 9y ago

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.

jonhendry18 9y ago
Not many. And they make enough money that the fines aren't much of an obstacle.

chris_wot 9y ago

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.

lordnacho 9y ago

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?

Willson50 9y ago
These apps exist. Here's a rather funny one: http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/ http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/

jimhefferon 9y ago

Death penalty.

us0r 9y ago

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.

djangowithme 9y ago
I HATE these calls too. Godaddy does the same thing, but uses local numbers so that they might trick me to answer.

rconti 9y ago

What an asshole. His whole line of logic seems to be: * Open source software and long distance companies make it too easy * Why didn't they stop me? * They should have regulated me. * Other people do it worse.

enzanki_ars 9y ago
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.
- rconti 9y ago
  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.
afo 9y ago
This is the case of the arsonist that just burned down your house, matches in hand, saying, "Clearly, you need a better fire department."

sol_remmy 9y ago

That's 1 robocall for every married couple in the U.S... It's a shame Mr. Abramovich did not learn respect at yeshiva, if he was raised in my orthodox community he would not be acting like this..

paul7986 9y ago

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.

klenwell 9y ago
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.

asdsa5325 9y ago

All the robocalls near me spoof the area code AND the next 3 digits to match mine.

DanAndersen 9y ago

>“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.

skate22 9y ago

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.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jonhendry18 9y ago
What would longer phone numbers accomplish?
- skate22 9y ago
  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.

makecheck 9y ago

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.

nichtich 9y ago
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.

rak00n 9y ago

I wonder if Project Fi has a good spam detecting system. I don't remember when I last got a spam call.

afo 9y ago

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.