4 ms·

There’s something I clearly don’t understand that hopefully someone can explain: If some customer of a phone company is making tens of thousands of ID-altered

There’s something I clearly don’t understand that hopefully someone can explain: If some customer of a phone company is making tens of thousands of ID-altered calls every day, shouldn’t that be glaringly obvious to said phone company that the customer is abusing their system?

doingmything 8y ago
I always thought this was VOIP calls, no phone company required.
- crag 8y ago
  They are VOIP calls. And many are outside the US. And it's not just the robocalls- but I can't tell you how many calls I get a week about extending the maintenance plan on my car. And frankly, someone is buying this shit. Else they wouldn't call. I mean if 1 sale is made for every 5,000 calls they've made their money. Same with scammers. Who the hell is going to fall for a robocall from the IRS? A call that's barely in English, and comes from a local number? Obviously, somebody does.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    > Who the hell is going to fall for a robocall from the IRS? Old folks.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - roywiggins 8y ago
      And, I imagine, recent immigrants who are from countries where being shaken down for cash by governmental figures is not so unusual.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    > 1 sale is made for every 5,000 calls they've made their money To stop this, the phone company should charge 10 cents to place a call. That would destroy the economics of spamming. The same goes for email. Charge a penny to the originator to receive an email.
    - fapjacks 8y ago
      There was also a push in the 90s to make a kind of "postage stamp" where the cost of sending an email was CPU, which would have had the same effect of prohibiting spam by making email too expensive to spam with. ISTR the guy who came up with that idea (or one of the guys) has had an interesting series of projects since. Can't remember much beyond that, though.
      - dpc_pw 8y ago
        Hashcash. The idea is used in Bitcoin as Proof of Work.
    - pfranz 8y ago
      Too bad that didn't work out for snail mail. The post office got addicted to the income, gives them super sweet deals, so users are maximally annoyed while the post office grabs maximum profit. It's just ridiculous that every shared mailbox (like an apartment) has a giant recycle bin next to it full of mailers.
      - theonemind 8y ago
        https://www.linns.com/news/postal-updates/2017/april/congress-raid-usps-coffers-30-years.html https://www.linns.com/news/postal-updates/2017/april/congres... I feel like more of that blame lies with the government as a whole than the post office in particular. They have to get innovative when they don't take Federal dollars, get dollars taken from them, have to fund retirement of their employees out further than other agencies, and can't close offices. It surprises me that it stays afloat despite active hindrance from the government at large.
bcheung 8y ago
Unfortunately once you're on the network there isn't much security to prevent spoofing. It's pretty easy to get access as well. I had a personal VoIP gateway and was able to just set the caller ID to whatever I wanted. It's so bad that you can get into someone else's voicemail just by calling a number and spoofing the caller id to be that same number. No security whatsoever. It's pathetic. I think the old telephone network is beyond saving and we just need to abandon it and move to VoIP services that provide better controls.
- fapjacks 8y ago
  Everything already is VOIP. You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years. The problem is these behemoth telecommunication companies. There's no reason at all for the phone system not to be exactly like using any sane video messenger software of the last twenty years, except for those big ass phone companies that will do anything to keep from becoming "dumb pipes" of this kind of telephony.
  - rascul 8y ago
    > You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years. I was using a dialup modem in 2013. There are also a bunch of dialup ISPs that still exist today and provide service over phone lines to people with dialup modems. Maybe what you say is true in some areas but it certainly is false as a blanket statement.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      I believe you can use a modem over G711... I know for sure you can send faxes over it (I’ve done it) despite it being VoIP.
      - fapjacks 8y ago
        Yes, faxing is done with T.38, and faxing is actually more reliable than using a modem. I spent some years running a fax system over VOIP and trying to get it to work. It's doable (as in some special cases of using a modem over VOIP lines) but it's absolutely not doable in most other contexts on VOIP for various reasons including signal compression and packet loss, and the parent is dreaming if they think they can hook their 14.4 modem up and dump that signal onto a "telephone" line to (for example) a BBS in another timezone and have it work. The key here is non-local, not the copper lines the parent commenter is still using to dial up a local ISP. This is obviously a special case of the telephone company local to their area maintaining the copper lines for whatever purposes, keeping the copper from their house to a local ISP gateway. But Comcast and Verizon have been actively ripping copper lines out wherever they buy up local phone companies that still have them. I have asked the phone companies for an actual copper landline in every major city I've lived in over the last ten years and couldn't get one, specifically trying to make my life easier running this system I mentioned earlier. The special edge case exception is actually having a copper line to your local ISP. It's definitely not the rule. Don't believe me? Take a few minutes to call up the phone companies in cities around the country and ask for a copper phone line. Almost all of them won't have copper. And I'm telling you from years of experience that using a modem across a non-copper VOIP line is flaky in exceptionally good circumstances and impossible in most cases.
mrep 8y ago
Well, presumably the phone companies make money from each call so I would assume they like these spam calls as it makes them money.
- bcheung 8y ago
  You pay to access the network, but once on the network it's a bit like Internet peering. You don't pay Verizon if you call a Verizon customer from your AT&T phone. I doubt cell phone companies see anything.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    They do. They get revenue from inbound calls received from other carriers. It’s peanuts per-call but when you add up all the spam calls together in a year it’s still a hefty bag of cash.

doingmything 8y ago

I always thought this was VOIP calls, no phone company required.

crag 8y ago
They are VOIP calls. And many are outside the US. And it's not just the robocalls- but I can't tell you how many calls I get a week about extending the maintenance plan on my car. And frankly, someone is buying this shit. Else they wouldn't call. I mean if 1 sale is made for every 5,000 calls they've made their money. Same with scammers. Who the hell is going to fall for a robocall from the IRS? A call that's barely in English, and comes from a local number? Obviously, somebody does.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > Who the hell is going to fall for a robocall from the IRS? Old folks.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    And, I imagine, recent immigrants who are from countries where being shaken down for cash by governmental figures is not so unusual.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > 1 sale is made for every 5,000 calls they've made their money To stop this, the phone company should charge 10 cents to place a call. That would destroy the economics of spamming. The same goes for email. Charge a penny to the originator to receive an email.
  - fapjacks 8y ago
    There was also a push in the 90s to make a kind of "postage stamp" where the cost of sending an email was CPU, which would have had the same effect of prohibiting spam by making email too expensive to spam with. ISTR the guy who came up with that idea (or one of the guys) has had an interesting series of projects since. Can't remember much beyond that, though.
    - dpc_pw 8y ago
      Hashcash. The idea is used in Bitcoin as Proof of Work.
  - pfranz 8y ago
    Too bad that didn't work out for snail mail. The post office got addicted to the income, gives them super sweet deals, so users are maximally annoyed while the post office grabs maximum profit. It's just ridiculous that every shared mailbox (like an apartment) has a giant recycle bin next to it full of mailers.
    - theonemind 8y ago
      https://www.linns.com/news/postal-updates/2017/april/congress-raid-usps-coffers-30-years.html https://www.linns.com/news/postal-updates/2017/april/congres... I feel like more of that blame lies with the government as a whole than the post office in particular. They have to get innovative when they don't take Federal dollars, get dollars taken from them, have to fund retirement of their employees out further than other agencies, and can't close offices. It surprises me that it stays afloat despite active hindrance from the government at large.

bcheung 8y ago

Unfortunately once you're on the network there isn't much security to prevent spoofing. It's pretty easy to get access as well. I had a personal VoIP gateway and was able to just set the caller ID to whatever I wanted. It's so bad that you can get into someone else's voicemail just by calling a number and spoofing the caller id to be that same number. No security whatsoever. It's pathetic. I think the old telephone network is beyond saving and we just need to abandon it and move to VoIP services that provide better controls.

fapjacks 8y ago
Everything already is VOIP. You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years. The problem is these behemoth telecommunication companies. There's no reason at all for the phone system not to be exactly like using any sane video messenger software of the last twenty years, except for those big ass phone companies that will do anything to keep from becoming "dumb pipes" of this kind of telephony.
- rascul 8y ago
  > You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years. I was using a dialup modem in 2013. There are also a bunch of dialup ISPs that still exist today and provide service over phone lines to people with dialup modems. Maybe what you say is true in some areas but it certainly is false as a blanket statement.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    I believe you can use a modem over G711... I know for sure you can send faxes over it (I’ve done it) despite it being VoIP.
    - fapjacks 8y ago
      Yes, faxing is done with T.38, and faxing is actually more reliable than using a modem. I spent some years running a fax system over VOIP and trying to get it to work. It's doable (as in some special cases of using a modem over VOIP lines) but it's absolutely not doable in most other contexts on VOIP for various reasons including signal compression and packet loss, and the parent is dreaming if they think they can hook their 14.4 modem up and dump that signal onto a "telephone" line to (for example) a BBS in another timezone and have it work. The key here is non-local, not the copper lines the parent commenter is still using to dial up a local ISP. This is obviously a special case of the telephone company local to their area maintaining the copper lines for whatever purposes, keeping the copper from their house to a local ISP gateway. But Comcast and Verizon have been actively ripping copper lines out wherever they buy up local phone companies that still have them. I have asked the phone companies for an actual copper landline in every major city I've lived in over the last ten years and couldn't get one, specifically trying to make my life easier running this system I mentioned earlier. The special edge case exception is actually having a copper line to your local ISP. It's definitely not the rule. Don't believe me? Take a few minutes to call up the phone companies in cities around the country and ask for a copper phone line. Almost all of them won't have copper. And I'm telling you from years of experience that using a modem across a non-copper VOIP line is flaky in exceptionally good circumstances and impossible in most cases.

mrep 8y ago

Well, presumably the phone companies make money from each call so I would assume they like these spam calls as it makes them money.

bcheung 8y ago
You pay to access the network, but once on the network it's a bit like Internet peering. You don't pay Verizon if you call a Verizon customer from your AT&T phone. I doubt cell phone companies see anything.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  They do. They get revenue from inbound calls received from other carriers. It’s peanuts per-call but when you add up all the spam calls together in a year it’s still a hefty bag of cash.