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Why is it so easy to spoof caller id phone numbers for these scammers? I use Verizon’s call filter app and it seems to help. I haven’t gotten robocall spam in

Why is it so easy to spoof caller id phone numbers for these scammers? I use Verizon’s call filter app and it seems to help. I haven’t gotten robocall spam in a while.

edgyquant 3y ago
I’m also curious about this. I’ve gotten calls from people saying I’ve been calling them all night (although not since I’ve switched from android tk iOS) and once I called a number back and the lady on the other side began crying because apparently her phone had been spoofed for awhile and she was getting tons of calls.
sbarre 3y ago
The simplified answer is that phone networks were designed and built 100 years ago and have a fundamental assumption of trust built into the interoperability model between telcos. Back when every telco was a quasi-governmental national operation, they could all more or less trust each other to do the right thing, so when one network operator receives information from another (for example, caller ID info) it just blindly trusts it as correct. We've layered tons of modern digital services on top in the last decades but fundamentally there's still that very old network with very basic capabilities underpinning it all. And so in today's world where every telco offers wholesale access to resellers (who then have sub-resellers and sub-sub-resellers) it's almost impossible to police this stuff. There's so much traffic going through these networks, it would be very expensive to stop and validate/verify every call's metadata, even though there have been proposals on how to do that put on the table by various parties for years. But telcos are competitors, and getting them together to agree on how to handle this kind of thing is hard. No one can agree on who should pay for it, and no one wants to go first. Every telco basically passes the buck. So if you are on Verizon and you get a fake caller ID spam call, Verizon will say "we're just forwarding the call from X, go complain to X". There has been some legislation passed in the last few years as the problem has gotten worse, but don't expect telcos to move on any of this until forced to by law. source: I work for a telco.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  > But telcos are competitors, and getting them together to agree on how to handle this kind of thing is hard. No one can agree on who should pay for it, and no one wants to go first. Every telco basically passes the buck. So if you are on Verizon and you get a fake caller ID spam call, Verizon will say "we're just forwarding the call from X, go complain to X". This is why making telcos explicitly, legally, financially responsible for the forwarding garbage calls would fix this really, really fast. The telcos would figure it out, no need to dictate a system.
  - sbarre 3y ago
    Sure, and how do you plan to do that globally, all at once, in a fair manner, and with everyone (regulators and telcos) on the same page? If you think no one has proposed this or tried this before, you'd be incorrect. :-) Don't get me wrong, you're right that would work, but getting it to work is near impossible. Don't forget that every telco would lobby against this, and they are some of the most well-connected enterprises around.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      >how do you plan to do that globally, all at once, in a fair manner, and with everyone (regulators and telcos) on the same page? That's the trick, you don't. The US has enough influence that its telcos should be forced to say "from date X international peers that send spam will be disconnected, because we're directly liable for it". There's no serious telco in the world that would say "ok, so our customers won't be able to call the US anymore". It's a bit like the Brussels effect.
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      Applying it only to the ones in US jurisdiction would fix it. Telcos in other important markets would comply with the demands of the US telcos, or get cut off (and lose business to other telcos in those markets that did comply). Regardless of which option the foreign telcos pick, US robocall volume would plummet. Give it a 1-2 year notice before enforcement starts. I would expect little or no disruption by the time the deadline hit.

Why is it so easy to spoof caller id phone numbers for these scammers? I use Verizon’s call filter app and it seems to help. I haven’t gotten robocall spam in a while.

edgyquant 3y ago

I’m also curious about this. I’ve gotten calls from people saying I’ve been calling them all night (although not since I’ve switched from android tk iOS) and once I called a number back and the lady on the other side began crying because apparently her phone had been spoofed for awhile and she was getting tons of calls.

sbarre 3y ago

The simplified answer is that phone networks were designed and built 100 years ago and have a fundamental assumption of trust built into the interoperability model between telcos. Back when every telco was a quasi-governmental national operation, they could all more or less trust each other to do the right thing, so when one network operator receives information from another (for example, caller ID info) it just blindly trusts it as correct. We've layered tons of modern digital services on top in the last decades but fundamentally there's still that very old network with very basic capabilities underpinning it all. And so in today's world where every telco offers wholesale access to resellers (who then have sub-resellers and sub-sub-resellers) it's almost impossible to police this stuff. There's so much traffic going through these networks, it would be very expensive to stop and validate/verify every call's metadata, even though there have been proposals on how to do that put on the table by various parties for years. But telcos are competitors, and getting them together to agree on how to handle this kind of thing is hard. No one can agree on who should pay for it, and no one wants to go first. Every telco basically passes the buck. So if you are on Verizon and you get a fake caller ID spam call, Verizon will say "we're just forwarding the call from X, go complain to X". There has been some legislation passed in the last few years as the problem has gotten worse, but don't expect telcos to move on any of this until forced to by law. source: I work for a telco.

yamtaddle 3y ago
> But telcos are competitors, and getting them together to agree on how to handle this kind of thing is hard. No one can agree on who should pay for it, and no one wants to go first. Every telco basically passes the buck. So if you are on Verizon and you get a fake caller ID spam call, Verizon will say "we're just forwarding the call from X, go complain to X". This is why making telcos explicitly, legally, financially responsible for the forwarding garbage calls would fix this really, really fast. The telcos would figure it out, no need to dictate a system.
- sbarre 3y ago
  Sure, and how do you plan to do that globally, all at once, in a fair manner, and with everyone (regulators and telcos) on the same page? If you think no one has proposed this or tried this before, you'd be incorrect. :-) Don't get me wrong, you're right that would work, but getting it to work is near impossible. Don't forget that every telco would lobby against this, and they are some of the most well-connected enterprises around.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    >how do you plan to do that globally, all at once, in a fair manner, and with everyone (regulators and telcos) on the same page? That's the trick, you don't. The US has enough influence that its telcos should be forced to say "from date X international peers that send spam will be disconnected, because we're directly liable for it". There's no serious telco in the world that would say "ok, so our customers won't be able to call the US anymore". It's a bit like the Brussels effect.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Applying it only to the ones in US jurisdiction would fix it. Telcos in other important markets would comply with the demands of the US telcos, or get cut off (and lose business to other telcos in those markets that did comply). Regardless of which option the foreign telcos pick, US robocall volume would plummet. Give it a 1-2 year notice before enforcement starts. I would expect little or no disruption by the time the deadline hit.