4 ms·

FCC to require anti-robocall tech after “voluntary” plan didn’t work out

21 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

jpistell 7y ago
> Pai framed it as his own decision, with his announcement saying the chairman "proposed a major step forward... to protect consumers against spoofed robocalls." But in reality the FCC was ordered by Congress and President Trump to implement this new rule. This process should have begun years ago. What the hell is Ajit pai doing?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > What the hell is Ajit pai doing? Everything he can to protect the telecoms and their profits.
- bediger4000 7y ago
  I suspect there's a certain amount of... emoluments... changing hands over robocalls. There's no way something the scale of call-every-North American-number sequentially robocallers aren't noticeable, trackable and stopable. I get between 2 and 7 robocalls a day, and I have for more than 5 years. The robocallers are on the verge of ruining the phone system for human communication, the same way Sanford Wallace ruined faxing, and spammers ruined email. Someone's getting paid off. And it's not on the scale of a couple of rounds of bikini golf with 20-something junior marketers, either.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
I built and run a popular prank-calling website (with spin-offs for wake-up calls and call-my-phone-because-I-lost-it amongst others) and the prank calling site allows for caller ID spoofing (disclosure: the site only lets you use a number you’ve verified ownership of) and this “just works” because there’s nothing in SIP and SS7 that’s equivalent to SPF/DKIM/PKI/TLS. Any and all anti-spoofing measures take place between my upstream SIP trunking carrier and the recipients’ service provider. Such as it is, the entire PSTN/SIP/SS7 ecosystem and infrastructure was designed without any notion of authentication or verification of Caller IDs (just like SMTP’s From: header); I suppose everyone assumed back in the days of landlines that because there’s physical links and an accounting paper-trail then _surely_ the phone companies would dutifully investigate reports of spoofed numbers and disconnect/disable abusers. I’m unsure how this will pan-out. I’d wager the majority of on-prem PBX and Asterisk boxes are sitting there unmaintained for possibly decades - and many of those systems (e.g. legitimate call-centers) will be entirely dependent on Caller ID “spoofing” to work as-intended. What’s frustrating to me is how mobile phone networks live in their own separate bubble with minimal interoperability. I’m sure we’re familiar with VoLTE/Wideband-audio on our smartphones - but that’s only supported for calls to recipients in the same network. If you have a fancy on-prem all-IP SIP infrastructure that supports every Wideband audio codec ever made - and have a great trunking provider - you’ll still get nasty analog phone quality if you try to call someone on T-Mobile. If we can’t get things like preserving call quality right then I’m very doubtful we’ll get Caller ID authentication working.
londons_explore 7y ago
In many parts of the world, calling through traditional phone numbers has dropped to nearly zero. As well as giving up my landline years ago, all the calls I care about go via WhatsApp/Facebook, and my carriers phone services are now relegated to outgoing calls only. I checked my phone logs, and in the last 3 months, I have received 8 spam calls and 0 wanted calls. I've just switched off incoming calls entirely. Phone networks doing voice are going out of fashion. Anti-robocall tech isn't going to save them. If just a few percent of people like me switch off incoming calls, the entire phone system becomes less useful for everyone else, leading to a cascade of people doing the same.

21 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

> Pai framed it as his own decision, with his announcement saying the chairman "proposed a major step forward... to protect consumers against spoofed robocalls." But in reality the FCC was ordered by Congress and President Trump to implement this new rule. This process should have begun years ago. What the hell is Ajit pai doing?

JohnFen 7y ago
> What the hell is Ajit pai doing? Everything he can to protect the telecoms and their profits.
bediger4000 7y ago
I suspect there's a certain amount of... emoluments... changing hands over robocalls. There's no way something the scale of call-every-North American-number sequentially robocallers aren't noticeable, trackable and stopable. I get between 2 and 7 robocalls a day, and I have for more than 5 years. The robocallers are on the verge of ruining the phone system for human communication, the same way Sanford Wallace ruined faxing, and spammers ruined email. Someone's getting paid off. And it's not on the scale of a couple of rounds of bikini golf with 20-something junior marketers, either.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

I built and run a popular prank-calling website (with spin-offs for wake-up calls and call-my-phone-because-I-lost-it amongst others) and the prank calling site allows for caller ID spoofing (disclosure: the site only lets you use a number you’ve verified ownership of) and this “just works” because there’s nothing in SIP and SS7 that’s equivalent to SPF/DKIM/PKI/TLS. Any and all anti-spoofing measures take place between my upstream SIP trunking carrier and the recipients’ service provider. Such as it is, the entire PSTN/SIP/SS7 ecosystem and infrastructure was designed without any notion of authentication or verification of Caller IDs (just like SMTP’s From: header); I suppose everyone assumed back in the days of landlines that because there’s physical links and an accounting paper-trail then _surely_ the phone companies would dutifully investigate reports of spoofed numbers and disconnect/disable abusers. I’m unsure how this will pan-out. I’d wager the majority of on-prem PBX and Asterisk boxes are sitting there unmaintained for possibly decades - and many of those systems (e.g. legitimate call-centers) will be entirely dependent on Caller ID “spoofing” to work as-intended. What’s frustrating to me is how mobile phone networks live in their own separate bubble with minimal interoperability. I’m sure we’re familiar with VoLTE/Wideband-audio on our smartphones - but that’s only supported for calls to recipients in the same network. If you have a fancy on-prem all-IP SIP infrastructure that supports every Wideband audio codec ever made - and have a great trunking provider - you’ll still get nasty analog phone quality if you try to call someone on T-Mobile. If we can’t get things like preserving call quality right then I’m very doubtful we’ll get Caller ID authentication working.

londons_explore 7y ago

In many parts of the world, calling through traditional phone numbers has dropped to nearly zero. As well as giving up my landline years ago, all the calls I care about go via WhatsApp/Facebook, and my carriers phone services are now relegated to outgoing calls only. I checked my phone logs, and in the last 3 months, I have received 8 spam calls and 0 wanted calls. I've just switched off incoming calls entirely. Phone networks doing voice are going out of fashion. Anti-robocall tech isn't going to save them. If just a few percent of people like me switch off incoming calls, the entire phone system becomes less useful for everyone else, leading to a cascade of people doing the same.