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Robocalls are overwhelming hospitals and patients
- AnssiH 7y agoRobocalls were in the news a couple of days ago here in Finland as well. The Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority has started receiving reports of marketing robocalls being made, and they issued a notice noting that such robocalls made without the customer's consent are illegal and that they and the Data Protection Ombudsman are currently investigating a case where a company has been using marketing robocalls: https://www.kkv.fi/en/current-issues/press-releases/2019/14.6.2019-robots-cannot-make-telephone-sales-calls-without-consumers-consent/ https://www.kkv.fi/en/current-issues/press-releases/2019/14....
- Scoundreller 7y agoLegality doesn’t matter when the callers don’t care about the law. What I don’t understand is how providers haven’t a clue which providers are even sending the calls. We know of rogue servers or countries, but not phone numbers.
- emiliobumachar 7y ago>Legality doesn’t matter when the callers don’t care about the law. A couple jail sentences would go a long way.
- mr_custard 7y agoThe threat of jail sentences won't always work: The problem is when the calls are made from another country where the law doesn't apply, or else the law is very hard to prosecute across borders.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago>What I don’t understand is how providers haven’t a clue which providers are even sending the calls. // They must know: they're surely not forwarding calls just on the hope that they get paid, they're forwarding calls from providers who are paying them to forward those calls. They get/got more money if they don't bother to check legitimacy in the short term. The phrase is something like "the chickens are coming home to roost" (ie the result of their bad actions are going to return to them). I see no reason that my supplier can't add, say, a "0091" code to calls from India, or wherever. Or send a callerid prefix that indicates a spoofed number if it's a domestic call.
- jcranmer 7y ago> What I don’t understand is how providers haven’t a clue which providers are even sending the calls. This is how it works. The scammers are using $SCUMMY_VOIP_PROVIDER, which is a service that's pretty much marketing to illegal robocallers and making money off of it. The recipient phone companies only know that the calls are coming from $SCUMMY_VOIP_PROVIDER, and are unable to do anything about it because... they don't want to. They're not suffering from it, it costs money to build the systems to work out exactly how scummy $SCUMMY_VOIP_PROVIDER is, and trying to refuse calls from $SCUMMY_VOIP_PROVIDER might land them in legal hot water (which would cost them money even if they won). There is a very effective solution, reputation, which is how spam mail exited the picture (from most users' perspective). Essentially, you rate your counterparty provider based on what fraction of their userbase is spam and make life worse for them the higher it is. The big email providers worked out the technical solution largely because spam is actually rather expensive to deal with (storing all spam email would increase your capacity requirements by ~10×), and the solution of screwing spammers over incrementally is easy to implement (effectively, you can throttle email since retry is builtin).
- amluto 7y agoThis is why my personal preference is to make the telcos more liable. If you get a spam call, I think that your telco should pay up under the TCPA if they can’t collect from the next company in the chain, etc. All these companies will shape up very quickly.
- bredren 7y agoI could barely care a rats ass for telcos. I want internet provider I can trust. I have very little use for a voice phone provider except for authentication. If I could transfer my main number to something that only accepted sms and voicemail I would immediately and move my iCloud account to an email address. I don’t believe in at&t, Verizon it any of them. Something better is coming.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoATT and Verizon (and T-Mobile and Sprint) own all the mobile communications infrastructure. ATT and Verizon own a lot of the wired communications infrastructure. They are not going anywhere.
- viraptor 7y agoBut legality matters for the telco. I keep repeating this, but the solution is fairly simple: either you're responsible (in real money) for the call or you need to point at who sent you the call (and repeat). This would kill almost all domestic spam. The international situation is harder, but if you apply the same rules, local telcos will have to start dropping foreign partners who don't filter their calls. No foreign telco will want to be in a situation where they're dropped so they'll be forced to comply too.
- parasight 7y agoI think the caller would care. I never got a robocall. I think it is because B2C cold calls without customer consent are illegal in Germany.
- lhoff 7y agoYepp, just realized how good this works. Started to work I a company with a landline and we get lots of marketing calls, no robocalls though. I was quite irritated in the beginning and always thought that my company as some kind of a business relationship with the caller. I got used to it and my first question is always if we have an ongoing business relationship of another former point of contact. If not I hang up.
- aaron695 7y ago> Robocalls are overwhelming hospitals and patients This is just piss poor clickbait. It's the last of problems with hospitals and patients. But if you did want to stop it you just have a code that allows a call straight through (Known caller Id for instance) and a captcha (Press 5 to continue) if not, that enters you into a database as safe. If there is 'actually' a pressing issue. OR you could spend your money on improving the communication system in general which would be actually killing patients.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoSo, when are we going to actually take away the ability to spoof your phone number? Whatever utility that feature may have is clearly outweighed by all the harm it's causing. It's past time we get rid of it.
- MiddleEndian 7y agoPhone companies should be required to forward the originator information to the users receiving the calls. Then people can collectively block callers, adblock style.
- DaniloDias 7y agoThis won’t work. VoIP providers would have to be comprehensively banned.
- tialaramex 7y agoYou can pass the fines the other way. Maybe some VoIP providers decide they do want to be good citizens after all and stop spammers using their service, maybe some decide they like the robocall provisioning business and they'll eat the fines. Adjust the fines until the problem is reduced to acceptable levels. "Hi, thanks for your enquiry about VoIP. Yes, we have a No Questions Asked policy and it'll be $5000 pcm plus $0.01 per second calls, we need the first $10 000 up front and you need to stay $1000 in credit or we pause service. OK?" "What! That's crazy, we can't pay 1¢ per second, your competitor is ten times cheaper" "And my competitor doesn't like spam. Either 1¢ per second is fine or you are wasting my time, get off the line. No questions asked is what you need, and that's what it costs. I paid $25 000 in fines just last week, that's a lot of seconds at one cent per second" "I'll have you know we're a market leading direct sales business and every one of our calls is based on a legitimate sales lead, but I see your point, the $10 000 will be in your account first thing tomorrow".
- MiddleEndian 7y agoThey have to provide the IP address of the caller. If it's untrusted it gets blocked. Simple enough. No sympathy here.
- techsupporter 7y agoThere's already work underway to authenticate the actual source phone number of a caller: https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/stir-and-shaken-overview/ https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/stir-and-shaken-overview/ And to make sure the source is set to a value that the caller is allowed to possess. The problem isn't spoofing of numbers--because the utility is quite high for legitimate uses, like PBXes and after-hours doctor return calls for two examples--but the ability to spoof any number, not just numbers a caller is permitted to use.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI suppose it depends on whether a partial restriction is actually effective. As useful as those examples may be, I am very much okay with cutting them off if it means we can greatly cut down on spam calls. People will adapt.
- saidajigumi 7y agoUnsurprisingly, that was one of the many iOS 13 features announced by Apple at WWDC this year: the ability to silence all calls from unknown numbers, sending them directly to voicemail. I'm sure someone running the beta has investigated and published the full details of the feature beyond the sound bite announcement. E.g. is it possible to _categorically_ block these calls, not even sending to voicemail? I wouldn't use such a feature, but some people might. FWIW, I recently took the measure of setting my default ringtone to a "silent" sound file, and setting vibration to "none". Then I reenabled those settings manually for known-IRL contacts. A hassle to do, but absolutely necessary given the uptick in phone spam.
- kencausey 7y agoI'm not that familiar with IOS, but 'Do Not Disturb' mode has been standard on Android for a while and includes a mode where there is only an audio notification if the number calling is one that is in my contact list. I'm surprised if IOS does not have something similar.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI feel bad for the hospitals that replaced their pagers with on-call phones for their staff. Should’ve stuck with the pagers.
- Scoundreller 7y agoWhat I’ve found with the Mandarin calls is if I press a number (usually 0), I get connected to someone. But I don’t speak Mandarin, so all I can let out are some Nihao’s and can only waste up to 15s of their time. I really need a Mandarin soundboard on a webpage to do some It’s Lenny time wasting.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agohmmm, these mandarin calls sound useful for practicing my still developing mandarin. Online, you have to pay platforms to find a native speaker to practice with but it sounds like these guys give it for free. j/k.
- Scoundreller 7y agoJust set up a bunch of Toronto or Vancouver DIDs and let them roll in. Voip.ms charges you less than $1/month/DID.
- mehrdadn 7y agoAnybody know what these calls are even about? I'm curious.
- aatharuv 7y agoHarassing people into giving out their personal details by claiming they're from immigration, at least according to some articles on the subject.
- mehrdadn 7y agoCalling from immigration... in Chinese?! This is supposed to be US immigration?
- jessaustin 7y agoOne must look under the lamppost. This is a sales funnel, and the undocumented Chinese immigrants who fall out because they can't understand English will outnumber those who don't believe immigration can speak Mandarin.
- mirimir 7y agoAnyone have an archive link?
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThe Washington Post offers a limited number of articles for free, have you tried a private window?
- mirimir 7y ago> You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads But I don't.
- roywiggins 7y agoIf you're worried about tracking, just disable scripts and cookies on that domain. Much less tracking, and as a side effect, the paywall stops working.
- mirimir 7y agoIn Firefox with NoScript, that gives me a black page, headed with their name/logo and (ironically): > Democracy Dies in Darkness
- roywiggins 7y agoWell, there must be some combination of subdomains and assets to block to get it to mostly work, at the expense of running some JavaScript, as it's been stable and working for me for at least a year. It even works on mobile.
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoAs another side effect, the entire site stops working, because it uses JS to serve the content.
- kurthr 7y agoWhat I suspect the phone companies didn't plan on is the complete devaluing of one of their only distinguishing features (over cable/ISP), the ability to deliver phone calls reliably. Nobody wants to get a phone call now... they are 90% spam! I wonder if in the future people will wonder why they are called phone companies? Maybe this is all part if their plan to move us to paid SMS or some other thing, but it seems more like an oops.
- shrimp_emoji 7y agoI no longer use phones to call people except the odd family member through WhatsApp (which is only because they're too old to use something more civilized, like Discord rooms). The telephone network just seems like some vestigial leftover only used by pollsters to scare us with 80-year-olds' candidate picks in midterm elections.
- licebmi__at__ 7y agoIt's pretty weird to see discord rooms being called "civilized".
- slouch 7y agoPeople may be starting to realize it's better than slack
- standardUser 7y agoI'm intrigued by the idea of simply not having a phone number, but it doesn't seem like we've reached that era yet. My grandparents would have no way of contacting me, nor the doctor's office or any number of other businesses. But it's still a nice dream.
- fossuser 7y agoA contact based whitelist would solve this immediately for personal phone use. There was a single throw away line in WWDC that suggested they may have finally added this (depending on what they mean by “unknown” caller). All I want is a contact based whitelist with an API endpoint that allows calls for a small time window (for doordash and Uber to use). This would solve 99% of the spam issue. All other calls can go straight to voicemail. Allow an option for repeated calls to get through if you must. Apple’s current call kit api only allows blacklists which work poorly and are a lot less elegant.
- pessimizer 7y agoOdd thought, but I wonder if the current robocall plague is (and will be) affecting polling during this election cycle? The result of relentless robocalls for me has been that I simply never answer calls from unknown numbers anymore. When unknown numbers were telemarketers and telephone survey people, I'd answer unknown callers because I could politely decline.
- Balgair 7y ago538 did some good analysis and explinations about this exact issue, but the articles that I can quickly google are from a while ago [0][1]. You can look over their analysis of different pollsters that they use and get a feeling for what 538 thinks is bias [2]. Despite some negative press in some circles, they tend to do a very good job of making sense of the maddness that is polling and they are very upfront about their own biases and issues. [0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/study-excluding-cellphones-introduces/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/study-excluding-cellpho... [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/polling-bias/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/polling-bias/ [2] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
- b_tterc_p 7y agoIn previous threads people have mentioned implementing captchas that require users to input a number. This feels like a great solution that should be implemented at the os level.
- Jessie_James 7y agoThis is called an IVR, and any company that uses one blocks 100% of spam calls. The robots simply cannot dial the extension to get through. Almost any company can get one, and any person can get one on a VOIP line. (Yes, ironic.)
- AtomicOrbital 7y agoafter I starting using the Google Fi phone service I have never received a single spam phone call Period. ... evidently Google has mastered art of shunting spam calls ... its an incredibly valuable benefit and my bill is half it was with ATT or similar ... so this problem is solvable given sufficient tech savvy ... Google should peddle this service to land lines too so places like hospitals can benefit
- wetpaws 7y agoThe google is the problem on itself
- SeanLuke 7y agoI'm on Fi and get them all the time.
- tfha 7y agoYeah same. Tons of spam calls on my fi number.
- mbrumlow 7y agoI have been using Fi from the start. I can't say the same. I get spam calls all day long. I always tell Fi it was spam, but it just comes in on a different number the next time. What I am saying is this -- I don't think Google solved the problem. I think you are just lucky.
- jacobsenscott 7y agoEarly FI adopter. I still get a fair amount of spam calls, but the number of calls does seem to have gone down recently. So maybe they are making some progress.
- alexwennerberg 7y agoAnecdotal, but I have Google Fi and I receive about 5 to 10 spam calls a day.
- S_A_P 7y agoI just looked at my call log. It ranges from around 90% real calls to 90% spam. The net effect of all of this is that I never answer a call that isn’t a contact anymore. It’s kind of hilarious that my Smartphone is now mainly an answering machine.
- albeebe1 7y agoyou'd love ios13
- S_A_P 7y agoI know the proof is the simple fact that the robocalls exist, but I can’t imagine a situation where people gather in a meeting and say “I know how we can make money! We will set up a call center and sell fake car warranties!!!” When I think about it I hear Brian Regan’s voice. Probably the bit he did about kidnapping Russell Crowe.
- fnord77 7y ago> For most Americans, such robocalls represent an unavoidable digital-age nuisance, No, I'm pretty sure this is very avoidable if phone companies put some effort into it.
- Barrin92 7y agoOr if the practice was simply banned. In Germany companies cold calling private individuals carries a heavy fine (up to several hundred k), and I haven't had a robocall in 20 years.
- paradoja 7y agoHaving a German (as parent poster) and Spanish phone for many years, I have never had a robocall. It's really surprising to me that this is a problem at all.
- frankydp 7y agoWhile the desire to enable carrier level and carrier determined blocking of calls seems appealing for functionality, make sure to strongly consider the significant power that such authority would create. As a change would revert a base requirement of being a carrier which is connect all calls, in the same vein as net neutrality.
- m463 7y agoI wouldn't mind if each call had a connection fee, such as a penny to try to connect to a number. That would (might?) align the carriers with the changes necessary. I also find it really annoying how cellphone and smartphone companies don't give individuals the tools to redirect unknown callers to voicemail or do some sort of basic algorithmic/call screening things. On iphone the most beginning programmer could come up with something better than do not disturb.
- briandear 7y agoiOS 13 does have this. You can silence unknown callers or callers not in your contacts. This is independent of Do Not Disturb.
- test6554 7y agoI would mostly disable my inbound calling capability altogether if I could. There is just ever so slightly more than zero benefit to receiving voice phone calls.
- oceanghost 7y agoIn its current state the telephone system is unusable. Whatever emerges from the ashes of our current system, we will have to judge on its own merrits.
- andrewstuart 7y agoThere needs to be ReCaptcha for inbound calls.
- jacobsenscott 7y agoGoogle rolled out a call screening service for android that is basically that. But I don't use it much. If it happens to be a legit call it is a fairly awkward interaction - just letting it go to voicemail and calling back seems nicer, and less surprising to the caller. If it is a robocall it really isn't better than voicemail.
- caymanjim 7y agoI'm not sure why they singled out hospitals (and particularly patients) for this article. This is a problem for any business and indeed anyone with a phone. I get the calls constantly. While a hospital emergency line getting one of these calls is annoying, and perhaps more detrimental than another business getting calls, it still doesn't stand out enough to warrant any specific focus like this. Police, fire, and ambulance services are all affected as well. Aside from the hospital's emergency number, they're just a big business, and the disruption to their administrative staff is no more harmful to society than the disruption of any office's administrative staff. And the patients are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The FCC just last week started tackling this. They're working on allowing telco providers to implement blocking and also whitelisting. I haven't read all the details, but it seems like there were regulations preventing them from acting, and they're trying to remove those regulations. In the end, this is a technical problem. It simply shouldn't be possible to spoof phone numbers this way. Surely the major telcos know where these calls are originating, at least on a network level. If they're all coming from China, clearly they're not going to block all of China, but they could ensure that calls coming from China's telco(s) are not routed if their source caller ID info is spoofed to indicate a US network. That might not stop the calls, but at least they wouldn't show up as coming from US numbers. If you've never been a recipient of one of these calls, one of the hallmarks is that the caller ID will show it coming from the same area code and exchange as your number. So if your phone number is 917-555-1212, the calls will usually appear to come from 917-555-XXXX. Surely the phone company has a way to identify and handle this situation, at least better than they do now. Mobile phones probably complicate this. Maybe someone who knows how the networks operate can speak about the technical barriers? [1]: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-51A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-51A1.pdf
- bredren 7y agoIt isn’t that I disbelieve you. But why do you think they originate from China? Almost all of mine are related to health insurance or small business loans. Is this what you think comes from China?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jeffdubin 7y agoLegitimate use for spoofing: A call from outside the office comes into the company phone system and my extension is set to ring multiple phones simultaneously, some external to the phone system (e.g. mobile phone). I want the caller ID info coming into my mobile to be that of the original caller, not that of my phone system. If I couldn't spoof the caller's number, I would see the phone number of my office.
- caymanjim 7y agoThis is something that is already easily be handled by the office PBX system. The call coming into the PBX from the phone company should be unspoofable to the extent possible.
- llukas 7y agoYou can do whatever you want with your non-public phone system.
- dredmorbius 7y agoAn "on behalf of" feature would be far more robust.
- themagician 7y agoI think it’s interesting just reading this thread how everyone gets different types of calls. Mine are almost exclusively either: 1) Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt scam calls from Mexico trying to get me to give up a credit card for a “free vacation”, or 2) lower your interest rate on your credit card scams from India. Every now and then there’s a social security scam from I’m not sure where. Sometimes I just google “test credit card numbers” and read them off the dev documents for various processors. They almost always hang up the second it validates. I wonder if they realize the transaction won’t actually go through.
- TheLuddite 7y agoHow about we separate the phone network from the Internet. I see no reason why VoIP should exist to be honest.
- test6554 7y agoHow about we make phone calls a whitelist-driven system with cryptographic tokens and use software to give your phone number to others. When this exchange happens, it comes with a token, and your phone does not ring if the token is not included. So when someone calls you and you expect it to be bob, but it is steve the scammer, you can revoke bob's token and text him with WTF bob? How much did steve pay you?
- dotancohen 7y agoI already do this with email. Anything send to @mydomain.com gets to my catch-all, and the token is whatever is to the left of the @ sign. I've caught so many companies either breached or selling data that it is not funny.
- thebooglebooski 7y agoIs this not just an alternate form of DDOS? Imagine if you're operating emergency services, and your phone rings non-stop. When someone actually has a legitimate emergency, the emergency service provider is essentially overwhelmed by the volume.
- OskarS 7y agoI'm surprised this isn't a bigger issue in the election, actually. I realize that there are bigger issues at stake, but robocalling seems like a tangible thing that basically all Americans deal with every day and absolutely loathe, across all party, class and racial lines. It's also something that politicians actually can do something about. I figure the first candidate that goes up on a stage and says "I will end robocalls" will get massive applause.
- fearface 7y agoI live in a central European country and receive 0-2 spam calls per month. And that's because my phone number was used by someone else before (it's a company phone). Why is this such a big problem in the US?
- sdoering 7y agoRules, regulations and fines. In the end - so called cold calling is forbidden by law (at least in Germany) and it more or less works okayish to fine.
- 05 7y agoUS has a lot of rich old gullible people speaking the same language. Central Europe doesn't, so it's not as cost effective to target. It doesn't help that you can hire a lot of English speaking people for pennies in India to staff the call centers.
- dredmorbius 7y agoLegibility-as-weakness. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...
- islon 7y agoIf someone creates an adBlock/uBlock for phones (s)he will get rich. Imagine having a community-curated whitelist of numbers (plus the ones from your friends/family).
- hollerith 7y agoHow would the adBlock-like software obtain the real phone number of the caller? Serious question.
- dredmorbius 7y agoWrong problem. Only needs to determin intent and spamminess. Most calls are known. Good calls can be classed at aggregate (for crowdsourced tools). Bad or suspect calls are either known or unknown and can be subjected to workfactor remedies.
- mifreewil 7y agoI recently just created an iPhone app that basically does this. It only allows calls through from your contacts, all other calls go directly to voicemail that you can review later. Most other apps out there attempt to use a blacklist, which is basically useless as it's trivial to recycle phone numbers or just spoof phone numbers. Imagine if social media worked the same way phone calls do, where anyone's effortless contact is treated the same way, regardless of their degree of connection. I think for a lot of people, this is a great solution, and pretty much eliminates the constant distraction of spam calls. https://www.myhumansapp.com https://www.myhumansapp.com
- mdrzn 7y agoNow I can't even use Incognito to surf the WP or I get blocked? Man, this website may as well die.
- dredmorbius 7y agoDisable JS.
- tomcam 7y agoBecause of robocalls I normally ignore caller IDs I don’t recognize, which is a disaster when my home alarm goes off and they notify me. The alarm company has some numbers I haven’t noted yet.