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Ideally they would give us every single hop, and we could just block anything we don't like. I don't want to receive any calls, texts, voicemails from any VOIP

Ideally they would give us every single hop, and we could just block anything we don't like. I don't want to receive any calls, texts, voicemails from any VOIP number or any number that has a hop outside of the US (or maybe Canada). I have family outside the US, but we communicate using other technology. If there is any provider at any point that drops any of the info, they should be blocked as well. Just as I am able to subscribe to uBlock Origin lists to automatically online ads, I should be able to subscribe to lists of malicious providers to automatically stop spammers But even using the current tech, why is anything less than A-grade attestation reaching my phone? As a user of a phone, I do not care if some sketchy phone company can't get their shit together; in fact I consider that to be a good indicator that such a company is a source of spam. Why let them contact me at all?

from 4y ago
See https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt. There is a debate to be had over every spam mitigation technique. For instance banning VOIP numbers would prevent most 2fa codes from being delivered and has a high false positive rate in general. What you are talking about with the hops is called "traceback" but is generally rather complicated due to the ways call routing works in practice and is often done manually.
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  I think email and phone spam differ, in part because there is a semi-centralized authority setup for phone calls, as the FCC and other govt organizations sort of control it along with a small handful of real consumer phone companies (in the US that's just Verizon, ATT, T-mobile). And I think email spam is basically a non-issue for most users nowadays, it's super easy to filter and ignore emails in aggregate. Your 2FA thing is a good point, but perhaps they could be allowed to do SMS and nothing else. Or I could temporarily deactivate it. The point is, users have no control now. Tracebacks are definitely something phone companies are attempting (or claim to be able to do so). If some companies don't cooperate, ideally those calls would never complete. If they make phone calls more expensive, I consider that to be a good thing at this point.

from 4y ago

See https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt. There is a debate to be had over every spam mitigation technique. For instance banning VOIP numbers would prevent most 2fa codes from being delivered and has a high false positive rate in general. What you are talking about with the hops is called "traceback" but is generally rather complicated due to the ways call routing works in practice and is often done manually.

MiddleEndian 4y ago
I think email and phone spam differ, in part because there is a semi-centralized authority setup for phone calls, as the FCC and other govt organizations sort of control it along with a small handful of real consumer phone companies (in the US that's just Verizon, ATT, T-mobile). And I think email spam is basically a non-issue for most users nowadays, it's super easy to filter and ignore emails in aggregate. Your 2FA thing is a good point, but perhaps they could be allowed to do SMS and nothing else. Or I could temporarily deactivate it. The point is, users have no control now. Tracebacks are definitely something phone companies are attempting (or claim to be able to do so). If some companies don't cooperate, ideally those calls would never complete. If they make phone calls more expensive, I consider that to be a good thing at this point.