6 ms·

In today's telecom world where everything is tracked and logged down to the microsecond, it's extremely angering that the only reason we still get robocalls is

In today's telecom world where everything is tracked and logged down to the microsecond, it's extremely angering that the only reason we still get robocalls is because the players in the telecom game are making a lot of money from letting them happen.

tenebrisalietum 5y ago
Phones and snail mail have been supplanted by equivalent Internet services, and both are trying to stay alive/relevant by selling out to annoying commercial interests. Telegrams gave way to phones, but it was never possible to spam someone with telegrams, and they had a cost per word.
- tdeck 5y ago
  If telcos want the phone to be relevant, this is the wrong way to go about it. Just 10 years ago I answered my phone when it rang, even with an unknown number. Does anybody do that anymore? It's become nearly unusable, for example, as a way for businesses to contact customers they have an actual relationship with because of all the spam.
  - thewebcount 5y ago
    > It's become nearly unusable, for example, as a way for businesses to contact customers they have an actual relationship with because of all the spam. On top of that the telcos are joining in on the fun. I am an AT&T cell phone subscriber and in the last month they’ve started robo-calling me non-stop to sign up for their ailing DirecTV service. Who in their right mind would subscribe to that with all the better streaming options available? But the worst part is that they technically aren’t breaking the rules themselves because we do have an existing business relationship (if you can call paying my bill on time and doing everything in my power not to otherwise interact with them a relationship).
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      I'd really like to be able to use my phone for real relationships with natural persons too even if they're not in my contact list.
    - jlarocco 5y ago
      I'm not 100% sure, but that may be a scam. I recently got one of those, and I'm not an AT&T customer.
      - monkpit 5y ago
        A scam or a dodgy 3rd party (or both?). DirecTV has a reseller program where anyone can become a “retailer”.
        thewebcount 5y ago
        OK, fair enough, but in my book it’s still on AT&T because they have to know this is going on. They must be getting complaints about it. Oddly enough I remember DirecTV doing this ~20 years ago. It was the first time I was willing to pay for CallerID. DirecTV (or some representative that had that as their outgoing name) called me several hundred days in a row. I ended up making a game out of it, seeing how many times they’d call back if I never answered.
        GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        What. You mean AT&T being your carrier is the only relationship between AT&T and spam? And how many unanswered calls they made? Here spammers give up after 6 unanswered calls or so. Not sure why they give up though, but eventually it becomes quiet.
      - BoogerDan 5y ago
        Supposedly, some of these are scams. But DirecTV admitted to hiring Telecel Marketing Solutions to place robocalls. There have been multiple class-action lawsuits against AT&T for such things. It's bizarre that AT&T would sabotage the usefulness of their own customers' telephone service, but this is a bizarre world.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Imagine if nobody ever used or knew about traditional phones, and then someone came up with the "Phone app": "Yea, so here is an app you will love! Install it, and it allows anyone, anywhere, anytime, to interrupt whatever you are doing on your device, background whatever app you are running, cause it to ring, buzz, and notify! Further, if you press the green button, it will allow that random person to start talking to you." Even if it managed to get past either of the app stores' rules, who would install such an intrusive app? Yet, every smartphone sold today has that exact annoying app pre-installed!
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      Why would you frame it like that? It's all about how you market it.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      Imagine if it also reliably indicated who was calling you and had super easy blocking capability. Also, what if you could set time and day for availability - i.e. for work related numbers.
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        Be nice if you didn't actually have a phone number and you exchanged cryptographic keys with someone touchlessly when you were in physical contact. Then you'd have two-way ID verification, and if a merchant abused that by leaking their key material (or if it leaked in a hack) you could revoke that key's permission. A large weakness with existing communication systems (phone, e-mail, physical mail) is that its a pipe where anyone in the world can blast at you, often anonymously.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Yeah, why would anyone want an app like Facebook or Discord or Skype or Teams or Google Meet or Zoom or the littany of other apps that have some version of the functionality you just described?
  - ridaj 5y ago
    US telcos know at best two things at this point: keep the network up and collect rent. They cannot solve complicated social problems like spam or internet security. They just don't have the skills or the willingness to invest. We will all continue to pay them if only for internet access, and for a good price too thanks to countless mergers leaving consumers with few choices, but they are otherwise transforming into dumber and dumber pipes at a pretty fast clip. There's more profit to be made for them being a dumb pipe while device and OS manufacturers pick up the security / spam slack for free (eg, how much is anyone actually willing to pay for spam filtering) because it lets them provide a trusted environment to sell apps and ads in.
  - zipswitch 5y ago
mrjin 5y ago
Nope, the problem is not what you thought of. The low level communication protocols did not consider security issues when they were designed as at which time every peer could be trusted, and thus no Authentication & Authorization mechanisms were incorporated at all. That was not really a problem until VoIP became a thing. Before VoIP it would be extremely hard if not totally impossible to fake a caller id, but with VoIP there is no longer a physical port associated with a caller, so technically everyone can claim to be anyone as long as they have the service end point details as there is no way to validate if you really are who you claim to be, so don't be surprised when picking up a call from your own number. Doesn't look good, isn't it? Unfortunately, there is no easy fix without an overhaul of the telecom infrastructure by replacing all legacy equipment that does not support A&A. I'm wondering if that is ever going to happen. But you were right about one thing, telecoms do profit a lot from the robocalls.
- heartbeats 5y ago
  Can't you just impose chained liability? If I get a robocall, my carrier owes me $100. They can then collect $100 from the peer they got it from, etc. This will cause carriers to only peer with good carriers, not fly-by-night VoIP clown shows.
  - tasty_freeze 5y ago
    OK, let's say your plan is put into effect. I will set up a front company, and create thousands of phone customers that are hard to track back to me. Then I'll have my front company call all of my 1000 fake customers repeatedly. Those customers collect $100 each for every call from the phone carrier, and when the phone carrier tries to collect from the originator, poof, they don't exist anymore.
    - supertrope 5y ago
      The carrier will soon require a security deposit or guarantor.
    - cogman10 5y ago
dehrmann 5y ago
> the players in the telecom game are making a lot of money from letting them happen I don't think my cell carrier is making anything on the spam text I get. At this point, it's also a negligible cost to them.

tenebrisalietum 5y ago

Phones and snail mail have been supplanted by equivalent Internet services, and both are trying to stay alive/relevant by selling out to annoying commercial interests. Telegrams gave way to phones, but it was never possible to spam someone with telegrams, and they had a cost per word.

tdeck 5y ago
If telcos want the phone to be relevant, this is the wrong way to go about it. Just 10 years ago I answered my phone when it rang, even with an unknown number. Does anybody do that anymore? It's become nearly unusable, for example, as a way for businesses to contact customers they have an actual relationship with because of all the spam.
- thewebcount 5y ago
  > It's become nearly unusable, for example, as a way for businesses to contact customers they have an actual relationship with because of all the spam. On top of that the telcos are joining in on the fun. I am an AT&T cell phone subscriber and in the last month they’ve started robo-calling me non-stop to sign up for their ailing DirecTV service. Who in their right mind would subscribe to that with all the better streaming options available? But the worst part is that they technically aren’t breaking the rules themselves because we do have an existing business relationship (if you can call paying my bill on time and doing everything in my power not to otherwise interact with them a relationship).
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    I'd really like to be able to use my phone for real relationships with natural persons too even if they're not in my contact list.
  - jlarocco 5y ago
    I'm not 100% sure, but that may be a scam. I recently got one of those, and I'm not an AT&T customer.
    - monkpit 5y ago
      A scam or a dodgy 3rd party (or both?). DirecTV has a reseller program where anyone can become a “retailer”.
      - thewebcount 5y ago
        OK, fair enough, but in my book it’s still on AT&T because they have to know this is going on. They must be getting complaints about it. Oddly enough I remember DirecTV doing this ~20 years ago. It was the first time I was willing to pay for CallerID. DirecTV (or some representative that had that as their outgoing name) called me several hundred days in a row. I ended up making a game out of it, seeing how many times they’d call back if I never answered.
        GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        What. You mean AT&T being your carrier is the only relationship between AT&T and spam? And how many unanswered calls they made? Here spammers give up after 6 unanswered calls or so. Not sure why they give up though, but eventually it becomes quiet.
    - BoogerDan 5y ago
      Supposedly, some of these are scams. But DirecTV admitted to hiring Telecel Marketing Solutions to place robocalls. There have been multiple class-action lawsuits against AT&T for such things. It's bizarre that AT&T would sabotage the usefulness of their own customers' telephone service, but this is a bizarre world.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Imagine if nobody ever used or knew about traditional phones, and then someone came up with the "Phone app": "Yea, so here is an app you will love! Install it, and it allows anyone, anywhere, anytime, to interrupt whatever you are doing on your device, background whatever app you are running, cause it to ring, buzz, and notify! Further, if you press the green button, it will allow that random person to start talking to you." Even if it managed to get past either of the app stores' rules, who would install such an intrusive app? Yet, every smartphone sold today has that exact annoying app pre-installed!
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    Why would you frame it like that? It's all about how you market it.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    Imagine if it also reliably indicated who was calling you and had super easy blocking capability. Also, what if you could set time and day for availability - i.e. for work related numbers.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      Be nice if you didn't actually have a phone number and you exchanged cryptographic keys with someone touchlessly when you were in physical contact. Then you'd have two-way ID verification, and if a merchant abused that by leaking their key material (or if it leaked in a hack) you could revoke that key's permission. A large weakness with existing communication systems (phone, e-mail, physical mail) is that its a pipe where anyone in the world can blast at you, often anonymously.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Yeah, why would anyone want an app like Facebook or Discord or Skype or Teams or Google Meet or Zoom or the littany of other apps that have some version of the functionality you just described?
- ridaj 5y ago
  US telcos know at best two things at this point: keep the network up and collect rent. They cannot solve complicated social problems like spam or internet security. They just don't have the skills or the willingness to invest. We will all continue to pay them if only for internet access, and for a good price too thanks to countless mergers leaving consumers with few choices, but they are otherwise transforming into dumber and dumber pipes at a pretty fast clip. There's more profit to be made for them being a dumb pipe while device and OS manufacturers pick up the security / spam slack for free (eg, how much is anyone actually willing to pay for spam filtering) because it lets them provide a trusted environment to sell apps and ads in.
- zipswitch 5y ago

mrjin 5y ago

Nope, the problem is not what you thought of. The low level communication protocols did not consider security issues when they were designed as at which time every peer could be trusted, and thus no Authentication & Authorization mechanisms were incorporated at all. That was not really a problem until VoIP became a thing. Before VoIP it would be extremely hard if not totally impossible to fake a caller id, but with VoIP there is no longer a physical port associated with a caller, so technically everyone can claim to be anyone as long as they have the service end point details as there is no way to validate if you really are who you claim to be, so don't be surprised when picking up a call from your own number. Doesn't look good, isn't it? Unfortunately, there is no easy fix without an overhaul of the telecom infrastructure by replacing all legacy equipment that does not support A&A. I'm wondering if that is ever going to happen. But you were right about one thing, telecoms do profit a lot from the robocalls.

heartbeats 5y ago
Can't you just impose chained liability? If I get a robocall, my carrier owes me $100. They can then collect $100 from the peer they got it from, etc. This will cause carriers to only peer with good carriers, not fly-by-night VoIP clown shows.
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  OK, let's say your plan is put into effect. I will set up a front company, and create thousands of phone customers that are hard to track back to me. Then I'll have my front company call all of my 1000 fake customers repeatedly. Those customers collect $100 each for every call from the phone carrier, and when the phone carrier tries to collect from the originator, poof, they don't exist anymore.
  - supertrope 5y ago
    The carrier will soon require a security deposit or guarantor.
  - cogman10 5y ago

dehrmann 5y ago

> the players in the telecom game are making a lot of money from letting them happen I don't think my cell carrier is making anything on the spam text I get. At this point, it's also a negligible cost to them.