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It's great that the DNC has worked for you, unfortunately it's not much help for me since all my robocallers are criminals trying to steal from me. Naturally, p

It's great that the DNC has worked for you, unfortunately it's not much help for me since all my robocallers are criminals trying to steal from me. Naturally, people unafraid of being arrested for fraud are unafraid of DNC fines. I've been on the DNC for years, and a couple years ago I decided to change my number, since my old one was getting 4-5 robocalls per day, always from different numbers.

tareqak 8y ago
That sounds horrible. I wonder if there is a way to surrender that number to the FBI, so that they could investigate further. Even one call every other day would be too much to report manually for me in terms of effort.
- cheerlessbog 8y ago
  Judging by these comments and my own experience, their investigations are not being held up by lack of suitable victims.
- masonic 8y ago
  Because "that number" is generally fake. Caller ID became meaningless once VOIP was allowed to spoof it. Can we build a new system atop ANI?
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > Because "that number" is generally fake. I'm not really convinced this is true, because there are numbers that are categorized as robocallers, and there are others that aren't. You'd think that if they were fake then they'd be random/uniform.
    - masonic 8y ago
      Robocalls I get typically assign a caller ID of my area code (and sometimes prefix) with random other digits. Most 408-73x prefixes were originally specific to Sunnyvale CA and are therefore easy to distinguish.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        Yeah but I'm not sure they're genuinely random. If you try Googling them you see that they're generally listed as robocallers. Whereas if you Google people you know, I don't think you'll see them being listed as robocallers (at least it hasn't been the case when I've tried). That suggests they don't just randomly pick numbers.
        JohnFen 8y ago
        > If you try Googling them you see that they're generally listed as robocallers. I just did a quick check of the last 10 or so I received. None of them were listed as robocallers. They were all legit phone numbers of innocent people who live in my area.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        Thanks for checking, I stand corrected then. Whenever I've tried they've usually been listed as robocallers so I guess it's just your luck.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      > You'd think that if they were fake then they'd be random/uniform. They're arbitrary, not random. They switched to that from the old system of just spoofing 000-000-0000 or similar, as people blocked those.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > I wonder if there is a way to surrender that number to the FBI The number reported by caller ID is entirely meaningless and not useful in terms of investigation. They just spoof random ones from your area arbitrarily.

tareqak 8y ago

That sounds horrible. I wonder if there is a way to surrender that number to the FBI, so that they could investigate further. Even one call every other day would be too much to report manually for me in terms of effort.

cheerlessbog 8y ago
Judging by these comments and my own experience, their investigations are not being held up by lack of suitable victims.
masonic 8y ago
Because "that number" is generally fake. Caller ID became meaningless once VOIP was allowed to spoof it. Can we build a new system atop ANI?
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > Because "that number" is generally fake. I'm not really convinced this is true, because there are numbers that are categorized as robocallers, and there are others that aren't. You'd think that if they were fake then they'd be random/uniform.
  - masonic 8y ago
    Robocalls I get typically assign a caller ID of my area code (and sometimes prefix) with random other digits. Most 408-73x prefixes were originally specific to Sunnyvale CA and are therefore easy to distinguish.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Yeah but I'm not sure they're genuinely random. If you try Googling them you see that they're generally listed as robocallers. Whereas if you Google people you know, I don't think you'll see them being listed as robocallers (at least it hasn't been the case when I've tried). That suggests they don't just randomly pick numbers.
      - JohnFen 8y ago
        > If you try Googling them you see that they're generally listed as robocallers. I just did a quick check of the last 10 or so I received. None of them were listed as robocallers. They were all legit phone numbers of innocent people who live in my area.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        Thanks for checking, I stand corrected then. Whenever I've tried they've usually been listed as robocallers so I guess it's just your luck.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > You'd think that if they were fake then they'd be random/uniform. They're arbitrary, not random. They switched to that from the old system of just spoofing 000-000-0000 or similar, as people blocked those.
JohnFen 8y ago
> I wonder if there is a way to surrender that number to the FBI The number reported by caller ID is entirely meaningless and not useful in terms of investigation. They just spoof random ones from your area arbitrarily.