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I see people here saying that spoofed numbers is the problem. Maybe it's a big part of it, but at the end of the day, the phone companies are complicit with th
by ravenstine 7y ago
I see people here saying that spoofed numbers is the problem. Maybe it's a big part of it, but at the end of the day, the phone companies are complicit with the criminals because there's no good reason that these robocalls can't be treated like a DoS attack.
These crooks make millions, of calls every year. My first employer was apparently making robocalls, though none of us were aware of it(there was a call center with actual human beings), and they were cracked down on by the FTC a few years ago.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/01/ftc-announces-crackdown-two-massive-illegal-robocall-operations https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/01/ftc-a...
The way I see it, there's no good technological reason why a system couldn't detect millions of calls coming from one place, compare that with the number of complaints and number-spoofs, and trigger an investigation. The dinosaur phone system needs to either go extinct or be reformed, and the telecom companies don't give a fuck. Every time I've asked either T-mobile or AT&T to block the relentless robocalls, they tell me to install some 3rd party Android app that fails to effectively block calls.
- kyrra 7y agoTelecoms can't block calls. They are not legally allowed to do it.
- yellow_lead 7y agoWe can and do block calls under certain circumstances, i.e from Invalid or Unallocated ANIs.
- Spare_account 7y agoThis doesn't appear to be universal then, because I've been told by Telcos in the UK and France that they will not block calls even when the presented number is impossible. It was made clear that any call that was made to one of my numbers would be delivered irrespective of any faulty components visible to me in the SIP header.
- Marsymars 7y agoWell this is certainly jurisdiction-dependent. e.g. the CRTC has policy 2018-484, Implementation of universal network-level blocking of calls with blatantly illegitimate caller identification: https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2018/2018-484.htm https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2018/2018-484.htm CRTC gave telcos twelve months to implement, and it seems to have largely been implemented within that time frame.
- kovek 7y agoIf I need a phone number (and a phone), I go to T-Mobile, sign up with my credit card and get a phone number. Whoever is giving me this phone number, I think, should be held responsible if I'm doing stupid calls. The companies issuing the ability to robo-callers to do their work are enabling robo-callers to do their work (scams). Last time I tried to trace down a call, I stopped at a company called OnVoy and got distracted with other issues...
- sillysaurusx 7y agoIf I need a phone number (and a phone), I go to T-Mobile, sign up with my credit card and get a phone number. Whoever is giving me this phone number, I think, should be held responsible if I'm doing stupid calls. Not a good idea. I get where you’re coming from, but we don’t hold ISPs accountable for people using the internet badly. That would be a change for the worse. Imagine if Comcast had to terminate your service due to something someone posted while using your wifi.
- xenospn 7y agoI think corporations should not be treated as people. No carrier should be able to block me if I’m being an asshole, but they definitely should if I’m a corporation and harassing their customers for a living.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThat already happens: "AT&T Threatens Persistent Pirates With Account Termination" https://torrentfreak.com/att-threatens-persistent-pirates-with-account-termination-130913/ https://torrentfreak.com/att-threatens-persistent-pirates-wi... The question isn't "can this be done?" It is: can this be done, fairly, effectively, reasonably, and with appropriate safeguards? The fundamental principle of regulation is that it applies methods and actions which can be harmful if misused. The key is to ensure they're not misused. Not to ban the concept of regulation entirely.
- zamalek 7y agoMy phone can, but spoofing obviously circumvents that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cheez 7y agoIt's better this way. Slippery slope and all. Before you think I'm being alarmist, google drag queen storytime. Edit: if you're downvoting, look it up, there are convicted child sex offenders doing this.
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoConvicted child sex offenders doing what? I googled "drag queen story hour" and I have no idea how it connects to call blocking and telecoms.
- cheez 7y agoExample of slippery slope.
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoI'm still not following. What do you consider "drag queen storytime" a slippery slope to/from? For that matter, which end of the slope is it? Are you aware that the "slippery slope argument" is a logical fallacy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
- beerandt 7y agoI'd be happy with at least providing the actual source name and number, in addition to the CNAM. CNAM must still be associated with the same source account (and ideally enforced, somehow). Best of both worlds.
- nostrebored 7y agoWhat do you mean the actual number? The number is set by the caller as part of the SIP INVITE
- beerandt 7y agoThe phone company has a source number for calls coming from outside their system for billing purposes. I want that number. Edit: At a minimum, an out of system call should display what system / exchange it originates from. That at least helps solve neighbor spoofing.
- Rapzid 7y agoYeah it's bonkers they allow this still. No good actor ISP is going to knowingly let improperly sourced traffic transit networks...
- xorcist 7y agoOh how I wish that was actually true.
- elif 7y agoI mean, yes there are bad actor ISP's that allow it, but his statement is accurate due to the caveat.
- kitteh 7y agoThe middle (ntt, gtt, tata, etc) of the internet doesn't know what is or isn't spoofed. The folks at the edge own that responsibility and most colo/hosting shops allow their customers to spoof. Their upstreams are powerless against them since they'll take their money elsewhere.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt’s possible, but telcos won’t do anything without a regulation, and because a few politically influential companies in tiny states make a lot of money, that won’t happen.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoI don't know how Google Voice did it, but I rarely if ever got a robocall when I had Google Voice. After leaving Sprint (and losing Google Voice after years of having it) I get them all the time. T-Mobile catches a few here and there, but I get so many damn spam calls. I just have my phone on mute.
- JaRail 7y agoGV's block of phone numbers is probably considered low-value targets. Scammers get more value by talking to customers from big telcos. It's the whole "you don't have to outrun the bear, just your friend" kind of thing.
- axus 7y agoI'd say I get an equal number of robo-calls to my cell phone number, and my Google Voice number which forwards to it. Might have something to do with the area code.
- beerandt 7y agoThat's changed- I get calls all the time on my GV number. I think the initial "success" might have been due to the number blocks being previously flagged as unused. Especially when the minimum block size was still 10,000.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nobodyandproud 7y agoYup. It’s amusing to see people think there is some hard technical problem here. Tie the problem of robocalls to the telcos losing money, and this problem will solve itself in months.
- bksenior 7y agoIt would literally be a day. They pass the legislation and they would stop.
- nobodyandproud 7y agoThe lack of political will and the form of legislation are the questions. If the rule is that telcos must eat the cost of a scam, they will drag it out in court and the consumer must still prove it. If the rule is that each robocall that makes it through must be paid by the telcos (take the consumer out of this), then telcos will battle each other to try and insist that the other party is responsible. At some point they may even come to a consensus and protocol that protects the customer. I prefer this option. There may be other options. Just don’t put the burden on the individual customer. Edit: Even better, allow bounties so that lawyers can start hunting for robocalls that went through.
- Marsymars 7y agoSet up a government department with a dozen people and a thousand phone lines distributed around the country and with different telcos. Record every call received. Fine telco $100k for every robocall. Increase fines steeply over time.
- rhizome 7y agoWay too complicated. Much easier would be to get a warrant for a trap and trace on the line known to be receiving these calls. Then disconnect the robocall lines.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
- moron4hire 7y agoIsn't modern phone infrastructure all over IP for the backbone, anyway? I was under the impression that it was only the line to the house that was analog.
- pwg 7y agoDigital, yes. IP, unlikely. Given that most of these companies are traditional phone carriers, it is more likely to be ATM (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_transfer_mode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_transfer_mode)
- rhizome 7y agoNo, not all. You can still get copper-wire POTS lines.
- ikiris 7y agoThe short version is the ani/ALI is totally traceable, they don't want to be on the hook for it, and the FTC/FCC don't try very hard at all to deal with the problem.
- 9dl 7y agoSo you just saying that telecoms has to kill hen that laid a golden egg What a nonsense
- ChuckMcM 7y agoThis is exactly correct. The phone companies could charge $9/minute to any call originator who wasn't showing the actual number on the call, and this activity would stop. Conversely, the FCC could make any telco that carries a robo call 50% liable for any fines associated with that robo call. That too would stop this crap in its tracks.
- m463 7y agoThey could charge 0.01 per call and it would stop.
- rahimnathwani 7y ago"The phone companies could charge $9/minute to any call originator who wasn't showing the actual number on the call" How could this work in the current environment, given that: - termination rates (the rates paid to the recipient's phone company for delivering the call) are regulated, and can't be set arbitrarily high - phone companies have no way to check whether the outbound caller ID I present is also a valid inbound number for me - even if they did, it's cheap to get a number in every area code (maybe $1/month/number) and cheap (1 cent per minute) to have calls to that number to delivered to me via VoIP (so I can rightly claim that the outbound caller ID matches my 'actual number')
- nneonneo 7y agoIf you could enforce that the outbound caller ID matched a valid inbound number, that would solve a lot of problems. (1) if a number is used for spam a lot it’s gonna get blocked; rotating through a bunch of numbers per area code does get somewhat more expensive over time (and they could probably enforce a fee for connecting/transferring a number). (2) it solves the problem where regular people get accused of spamming because they were spoofed, (3) it solves the problem of fake law enforcement or government agencies “calling” you from legit LE phone numbers. Sure, spammers could still get tons of numbers, but straight up spoofing would vanish, and that’s a big enough win.
- codexon 7y ago> because there's no good reason that these robocalls can't be treated like a DoS attack The problem here is that the origin can be spoofed. You are imagining a system where a telco like T-Mobile connects the caller directly to you. That's not how it works. The connection chain could look like this. bad caller 111-1111 -> A -> B -> C -> T-Mobile -> you 999-9999 All T-Mobile knows is that 111-1111 is calling 999-9999 and that the call was routed from C, it does not know about A, B, or the true identity of the bad caller. That's also why spoofed attacks are also a problem on the Internet. These systems were not made with spoofing in mind, and it will cost a lot of money to get these companies to switch over to a new system seamlessly that can detect spoofing.
- gowld 7y agoHow much is "a lot", though? We already have $billions sloshing around in telecom.
- codexon 7y agoI don't know but I would imagine it would be as annoying as getting everyone to switch from ipv4 to ipv6 in 1 or 2 years.
- Scoundreller 7y agoSo then T-Mob calls the NOC at C. Tells them to get this stopped and they have 24 hours, or they'll depeer. 6 hour later, C's NOC calls B's NOC, saying to knock it off, and they have 18 hours or they're getting booted. 6 hours later, B's NOC calls A's NOC, saying to knock it off, and they have 12 hours to figure it out or they're getting booted. In under 12 more hours, A cuts off 111-1111. If peeringDB is to be believed, big providers all require their peers to have a 24/7 NOC number to call.
- EB66 7y agoI agree completely. I work for a small ISP and we sometimes do the same thing for significant bad actors abusing our network. A phone call to the NOC of the ISP hosting the abuser or the NOC of their upstream transit providers usually gets the ball rolling pretty quickly. That approach is obviously not very effective in a DDoS scenario, but as I understand it these robocalls typically originate from a handful of different VoIP termination services -- as opposed to tens of thousands of hosts in a DDoS scenario.
- gowld 7y agoWhat's wrong with relying on your terminal device to decide whether to ring the call? That's the definition of a smartphone. In fact, Android has native spam blocking: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2018/12/30/in-2019-heres-how-to-stop-robocalls-scammers-on-iphone-android-verizon-att/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2018/12/30/in-20... but it's quite reasonable for you to install whatever filtering app you choose. If you don't feel safe installing software on your phone, that's a problem with your phone OS.
- davidmurdoch 7y agoI use Android's built-in spam blocking and have received 7 spam calls since Nov 1. It only blocked 1 of these.
- Nursie 7y agoWhat's wrong is I shouldn't have to, the fact that incoming crap-calls with spoofed IDs get through at all is a problem with the network.
- rhizome 7y agoNow pretend that you're providing solutions for devices that aren't cellphones.
- rhizome 7y agoHiding the originating number/account is the entire profit center for the LECs. My impression is that they're not going to give it up without legislation.