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Robocalls 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 market

by AnssiH 7y ago

Robocalls 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 ago
Legality 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 ago
    The 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 ago
    This 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 ago
      I 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 ago
        ATT 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 ago
  But 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Yepp, 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.

by AnssiH 7y ago

Scoundreller 7y ago

Legality 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 ago
  The 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 ago
  This 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      ATT 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 ago
But 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Yepp, 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.