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I've thought for years that if there were, say, a $20 fine for each robocall, with $10 going to the reporting consumer and $10 going to the phone company, roboc

I've thought for years that if there were, say, a $20 fine for each robocall, with $10 going to the reporting consumer and $10 going to the phone company, robocalls would very soon be a thing of the past.

dahart 6y ago
> $10 going to the phone company That seems like a bad idea. The phone company needs to lose money when they allow robocalls, to finally motivate them to actually start authenticating business callers and actually start respecting the national do not call registry. The carriers are the only group with the ability to prevent robocalls, and they’ve been allowing them precisely because they’re getting money from the whole arrangement by allowing them. * Edit: the FCC order sounds like a good thing as a long overdue very first step, however this part sounds hilariously out of date to me: “Non-commercial, commercial and nonprofit organizations can now only make up to three calls per residential number within 30 days and are required to allow recipients to opt out.” I could be wrong, but I’ve had a lot of spam calls in the last few years, and never have I gotten multiple calls from the same number in a month. They are spoofing and setting up new entities on the fly. Limiting the number of calls sounds like something a politician would do who doesn’t understand what’s already going on (or... maybe a sly move that makes the FCC appear pro-consumer while not actually threatening the business of carriers in any way...). Consumer-visible and actionable call authentication is what we need, not limits on the amount of spam. Limiting each individual company to three spams from my point of view means I experience millions of spams. In fact establishing a limit of an okay number of spams just might increase the amount of spam calls I get...
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  I think it should work where each robocall costs $5. But the carrier that delivers it is insuring against the person it's delivered to. So for example. I get a robo-call, I report it and my carrier pays me $5. They then can collect that $5 from the carrier that delivered that call to them, who can collect it from the carrier that routed it to them who can collect it from the end user. And if at some point you can't collect you're stuck paying the $5.
  - dahart 6y ago
    That could work, though I’d suggest that requiring the recipient to have to report it doesn’t go far enough, especially when they registered on the do not call list a damn decade ago! How about if a robocall is delivered to someone on the do not call list, every carrier in the whole chain is automatically fined?
    - gpm 6y ago
      Combining with the chaining idea: The first carrier is fined $10 going to the end user, they can go after the second carrier who is fined $10, half going to the end user (now at +$15) and half going to the first carrier (now at -$5), they can go after a third carrier who is fined $10, half going to the end user (now at $20), half going to the second carrier (now at $-5) and so on.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  > I could be wrong, but I’ve had a lot of spam calls in the last few years, and never have I gotten multiple calls from the same number in a month. But it doesn't say "from the same number." It says the same entity, which should hold regardless of the number. That said, whoever had my phone number before me (over 3 years ago) owed a lot of people money. I get 3-5 calls per day from debt collectors looking for her. I've never answered any of the calls, and they've rarely left any messages, but the caller ID often says, "such and such credit service", so it's pretty clear what's going on. The same company calls literally every day several times per day. It would be great if they could only call 3x per month. One actually does use the same number every time, so I eventually blocked their number. Another one uses a different number every time, but the callerID is always of the form "V12345678" where the number is just some incrementing integer, so it's obviously the same people.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
If you can trace it to the actual robocaller. (As opposed to, say, a front corporation with no assets.)
- toast0 6y ago
  The terminating carrier pays the call recipient $10, and charges the originating carrier $20. As a recipient, I don't care if the caller paid, I got $10 from my carrier. As a terminating carrier, I don't care if the caller paid, I got paid from the originating carrier. As the originating carrier, I should damn well have a billing relationship with the caller, and they're not getting services if I'm not paid. I'll probably charge a collection fee for each charge I bill the caller, so works for me too. Require a deposit to continue service when calling patterns look robotic. (intermediate carriers can fill in between, they won't make money from the robofees, but will be incentivised to properly pass them through)
jjtheblunt 6y ago
similarly, if junk physical mail had to pay proper postage, i imagine it would vanish.
olliej 6y ago
Who is paying this money? Seriously - the problem is that no one gets the originator, the originator is likely a shell company with "no assets". Charge the phone company $5/robocall, require them to pay that $1 to the consumer in cash, not as a "credit" on their phone bill, and require a $1/incorrectly-blocked-call and suddenly I suspect the carriers will know where the robocalls are coming from.

dahart 6y ago

> $10 going to the phone company That seems like a bad idea. The phone company needs to lose money when they allow robocalls, to finally motivate them to actually start authenticating business callers and actually start respecting the national do not call registry. The carriers are the only group with the ability to prevent robocalls, and they’ve been allowing them precisely because they’re getting money from the whole arrangement by allowing them. * Edit: the FCC order sounds like a good thing as a long overdue very first step, however this part sounds hilariously out of date to me: “Non-commercial, commercial and nonprofit organizations can now only make up to three calls per residential number within 30 days and are required to allow recipients to opt out.” I could be wrong, but I’ve had a lot of spam calls in the last few years, and never have I gotten multiple calls from the same number in a month. They are spoofing and setting up new entities on the fly. Limiting the number of calls sounds like something a politician would do who doesn’t understand what’s already going on (or... maybe a sly move that makes the FCC appear pro-consumer while not actually threatening the business of carriers in any way...). Consumer-visible and actionable call authentication is what we need, not limits on the amount of spam. Limiting each individual company to three spams from my point of view means I experience millions of spams. In fact establishing a limit of an okay number of spams just might increase the amount of spam calls I get...

JamesBarney 6y ago
I think it should work where each robocall costs $5. But the carrier that delivers it is insuring against the person it's delivered to. So for example. I get a robo-call, I report it and my carrier pays me $5. They then can collect that $5 from the carrier that delivered that call to them, who can collect it from the carrier that routed it to them who can collect it from the end user. And if at some point you can't collect you're stuck paying the $5.
- dahart 6y ago
  That could work, though I’d suggest that requiring the recipient to have to report it doesn’t go far enough, especially when they registered on the do not call list a damn decade ago! How about if a robocall is delivered to someone on the do not call list, every carrier in the whole chain is automatically fined?
  - gpm 6y ago
    Combining with the chaining idea: The first carrier is fined $10 going to the end user, they can go after the second carrier who is fined $10, half going to the end user (now at +$15) and half going to the first carrier (now at -$5), they can go after a third carrier who is fined $10, half going to the end user (now at $20), half going to the second carrier (now at $-5) and so on.
thewebcount 6y ago
> I could be wrong, but I’ve had a lot of spam calls in the last few years, and never have I gotten multiple calls from the same number in a month. But it doesn't say "from the same number." It says the same entity, which should hold regardless of the number. That said, whoever had my phone number before me (over 3 years ago) owed a lot of people money. I get 3-5 calls per day from debt collectors looking for her. I've never answered any of the calls, and they've rarely left any messages, but the caller ID often says, "such and such credit service", so it's pretty clear what's going on. The same company calls literally every day several times per day. It would be great if they could only call 3x per month. One actually does use the same number every time, so I eventually blocked their number. Another one uses a different number every time, but the callerID is always of the form "V12345678" where the number is just some incrementing integer, so it's obviously the same people.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

If you can trace it to the actual robocaller. (As opposed to, say, a front corporation with no assets.)

toast0 6y ago
The terminating carrier pays the call recipient $10, and charges the originating carrier $20. As a recipient, I don't care if the caller paid, I got $10 from my carrier. As a terminating carrier, I don't care if the caller paid, I got paid from the originating carrier. As the originating carrier, I should damn well have a billing relationship with the caller, and they're not getting services if I'm not paid. I'll probably charge a collection fee for each charge I bill the caller, so works for me too. Require a deposit to continue service when calling patterns look robotic. (intermediate carriers can fill in between, they won't make money from the robofees, but will be incentivised to properly pass them through)

jjtheblunt 6y ago

similarly, if junk physical mail had to pay proper postage, i imagine it would vanish.

olliej 6y ago

Who is paying this money? Seriously - the problem is that no one gets the originator, the originator is likely a shell company with "no assets". Charge the phone company $5/robocall, require them to pay that $1 to the consumer in cash, not as a "credit" on their phone bill, and require a $1/incorrectly-blocked-call and suddenly I suspect the carriers will know where the robocalls are coming from.