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There already is a proposed technological solution to this: https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/stir-and-shaken-overview/ https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/stir

• StudentStuff 8y ago
  Until there is a regulation requiring stir & shaken to be implemented, you won't be able to trust your caller ID. Most of the telecom industry is stuck on legacy tech stacks that they actively resist upgrading, thus why calls are slung bareback over the web with no encryption on the metadata or the audio stream for nearly all providers.
• amluto 8y ago
  I prefer an economic solution. Currently, you can sue a robocaller under the TCPA, but good luck collecting. Make each carrier liable for judgments against robocallers routed through their network. So, if I sue John Doe for robocalling me and I can’t collect, and I’m a Verizon customer, the make Verizon liable for those damages. This should come with some limits, but they should be large (say 10% of nationwide annual revenue, and there could plausibly be a limit per carrier that routes to Verizon). This liability should be unaffected by any terms in Verizon’s contracts with its customers (e.g. arbitration clauses), and telcos should not be able to penalize their customers in any way for collecting. I bet that a law like this would get the problem fixed fast.
  • tonydiv 8y ago
    Love it
  • extra88 8y ago
    How is adding a burden to the courts with suits you know will be unfruitful than a simple regulatory requirement that carriers must do what is clearly the righ thing to do?
    • amluto 8y ago
      I am far from convinced that the FCC is capable of picking a technological solution by fiat that will actually solve the problem, especially since, like almost all crypto, it will surely be easy for the telcos to be lazy and mess up the implementation in a way that robocalls get through. Instead, I think the regulation should focus on the outcome: if a telco allows an illegal call through and cannot trace it back to a responsible party who can pay the fine, then the telco messed up and should pay for it. Then they’ll have a financial incentive to solve the problem in a way that works.
  • ReptileMan 8y ago
    We have hard enough time imposing net neutrality. Why do you want to kill it in a place where it exists.
  • abakker 8y ago
    i bet that instead, you'd just get a new contract in which verizon decided that it was only free to talk to other verizon numbers, and would require you to pay extra to call outside the network. Then, they'd ask you to provide a birth certificate, SSN, CC number, and pay via direct deposit to have an account. if you want to penalize rob dialers, don't penalize companies that are not robodialing, or push the burden of law enforcement on them.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      Eh. They do all of what you said in Europe and noone complains. Except it's not even free to call your own network.
    • amluto 8y ago
      Huh? Those robocalls are not originated on Verizon cellphones. A contract like that would do nothing to reduce Verizon’s liability, but it would certainly help drive customers elsewhere.
      • abakker 8y ago
        The point is that they would not do anything to reduce the calls, instead, they would erode your freedoms and charge you more to pay the fines.
  • eigenvector 8y ago
    So by 'economic solution', you mean requiring litigation in the courts at tremendous cost to all parties (including the taxpayer) to create an outcome that could easily be enforced proactively by the FCC?
  • Tsubasachan 8y ago
    Ofcourse this can be fixed. Other countries did it. The problem is that consumer protection is... lacking in the US and big business is God.
  • dzhiurgis 8y ago
    There probably is a market for MVNO that requires to solve voice captcha before being able to reach callee.
• njarboe 8y ago
  How about people in your contact list get to call and text you for free and everyone else has to pay 10 cents? Telecoms definitely have the tech to do such billing. They could even take a cut. 9 cents for me and 1 cent for the telecom. This would solve almost all spam immediately and would be a long term solution.
  • infogulch 8y ago
    This is my favorite solution. Time is money, if a caller is willing to pay me for it, I'd be ok with it. Make spam directly uneconomical, and spin the customer/vendor/3rd-party dynamic back to where it's supposed to be.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • justinator 8y ago
    Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (x) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats (x) Jurisdictional problems (x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (x) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email (x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: (x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!