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clearly the current model doesn't work well enough. US laws don't stop Nigerian scammers abusing weak telecom systems. Adding a tax paid by the carrier incen

clearly the current model doesn't work well enough. US laws don't stop Nigerian scammers abusing weak telecom systems. Adding a tax paid by the carrier incentivises them to collect it from the upstream chain all the way back to the caller.

MarkMarine 4y ago
Us laws COULD stop these scammers, but the govt has been too scared to actually lock out the carriers that are carrying these spam calls or selling these big blocks of local numbers. It seems like they are starting to play hardball, but we’ll see: “ The Cox/Jones/Sumco Panama operation appears to be responsible for making more than eight billion unlawful prerecorded message calls to American consumers since at least 2018. The robocalls include prerecorded marketing messages which encouraged consumers to follow prompts to speak with a “warranty specialist” about extending or reinstating their car warranty. As announced on July 7, the enforcement bureau issued a notice authorizing all voice service providers to cease carrying any traffic originating from the Cox/Jones/Sumco Panama operation consistent with FCC regulations. At the same time, the Bureau sent cease-and-desist letters to eight voice service provider to warn them to stop carrying this suspicious traffic. The eight service providers have not responded to the letters and so, as provided in the public notice, the bureau is directing all other carriers to refuse to carry this traffic.” Basically what the FCC decided to do was ID this org, tell the carriers who sell to this org to stop, and if they don’t stop, require other carriers to lock out the carriers who sell to the spammer. https://www.mykxlg.com/news/national/fcc-targeting-phone-service-providers-to-stop-robocalls/article_6b039ec9-3c2a-5da9-b774-9725cb9eb32e.html https://www.mykxlg.com/news/national/fcc-targeting-phone-ser...
- thfuran 4y ago
  How many years and millions of dollars does it take for an enforcement action like this? I think a per-call fee that can be cheaply assessed by carriers on callers that renders such spamming unprofitable in the first place is likely to be a far more efficient approach.
hedora 4y ago
Easy solution: The telco automatically credits 75% of the tax to your account. They then attempt to collect 100% of the tax from the caller. At that point, the free market gets to decide if it's cheaper to eat the cost of the call (remember, each subscriber sets the amount of the tax), or secure their infrastructure.

MarkMarine 4y ago

Us laws COULD stop these scammers, but the govt has been too scared to actually lock out the carriers that are carrying these spam calls or selling these big blocks of local numbers. It seems like they are starting to play hardball, but we’ll see: “ The Cox/Jones/Sumco Panama operation appears to be responsible for making more than eight billion unlawful prerecorded message calls to American consumers since at least 2018. The robocalls include prerecorded marketing messages which encouraged consumers to follow prompts to speak with a “warranty specialist” about extending or reinstating their car warranty. As announced on July 7, the enforcement bureau issued a notice authorizing all voice service providers to cease carrying any traffic originating from the Cox/Jones/Sumco Panama operation consistent with FCC regulations. At the same time, the Bureau sent cease-and-desist letters to eight voice service provider to warn them to stop carrying this suspicious traffic. The eight service providers have not responded to the letters and so, as provided in the public notice, the bureau is directing all other carriers to refuse to carry this traffic.” Basically what the FCC decided to do was ID this org, tell the carriers who sell to this org to stop, and if they don’t stop, require other carriers to lock out the carriers who sell to the spammer. https://www.mykxlg.com/news/national/fcc-targeting-phone-service-providers-to-stop-robocalls/article_6b039ec9-3c2a-5da9-b774-9725cb9eb32e.html https://www.mykxlg.com/news/national/fcc-targeting-phone-ser...

thfuran 4y ago
How many years and millions of dollars does it take for an enforcement action like this? I think a per-call fee that can be cheaply assessed by carriers on callers that renders such spamming unprofitable in the first place is likely to be a far more efficient approach.

hedora 4y ago

Easy solution: The telco automatically credits 75% of the tax to your account. They then attempt to collect 100% of the tax from the caller. At that point, the free market gets to decide if it's cheaper to eat the cost of the call (remember, each subscriber sets the amount of the tax), or secure their infrastructure.