6 ms·

I got a spam call seemingly “from Verizon” (their main number) on my Verizon phone. I called them and told them and they said “oh yeah that happens all the tim

by habosa 3y ago

I got a spam call seemingly “from Verizon” (their main number) on my Verizon phone. I called them and told them and they said “oh yeah that happens all the time don’t pick up when we call” That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won.

7373737373 3y ago
What an utter technological failure. How and why is this even (still) possible?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Why are ads a thing on cable? On the web? It's literally the same problem, and since this site's audience is likely more familiar with the latter, it should be clear it's not a technological failure, but a social/legal one.
  - sk0g 3y ago
    YouTube ads have no ability to interrupt my day-to-day life out of the blue, and also don't poison a legitimately useful communication medium for personal relationships. Phone spam is much more harmful than ads you kinda-sorta opt into, IMO.
  - stetrain 3y ago
    Ads are not the same thing as impersonation, lying about who you are and where you are calling from. Cable is not full of ads that say they are from AT&T and you need to contact them about your bill at <number> but the ad isn't from AT&T and the number goes to a scam call center.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Yes, but most scam calls aren't impersonations either. I bet if you tallied it up, there's many more people being tricked into taking on bullshit contracts with legitimate companies[0] and losing much more money in total, than there are victims of actual impersonation scams. I firmly believe both schemes are morally equivalent, and that one of them is still considered legal only means we should push firmly for a change in laws. Even the impersonation angle isn't clear-cut. When a telco calls me with their newest scam, it's always via a third-party call centre they outsource this job to. Where I live, it's also historically has been a major source of contact and personal information for scammers - always a "disgruntled employee" leaving and "covertly" taking the customer database with them. -- [0] - Telcos are my go-to examples here, they're notorious for borderline fraud. For example, just under a year ago, a billion-dollar telecommunications corporation named after a color, one of three major telcos in my country, tried to scam my own grandmother hard, after my grandfather passed away, and almost succeeded. More generally, after many years of near-misses and one or two mistakes, most people in my family learned to never talk to phone companies cold-calling with offers.
      - InitialLastName 3y ago
        > Yes, but most scam calls aren't impersonations either. Most of the spam texts I get lately are from non-US numbers claiming to be USPS trying to resolve a delivery exception.
      - stetrain 3y ago
        All of the spam calls that are an annoyance to me are clearly spoofed numbers from my home area code. That’s impersonation. I know they are spoofing numbers because my own numbers gets spoofed as well. Real people call me back and leave voicemails saying I’m the one who called them. None of this is standard advertising.
  - wise_young_man 3y ago
    Ads are not illegal. Spam is regulated by laws like the TCPA for sms and CAN-SPAM for email.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won. It's tough, but it's not helpful that people don't know the face of the enemy. The fight isn't with just some stereotypical "spammers". Advertisers and marketing departments are spammers, and they've destroyed phone as a medium, much like they did it to physical mail, radio, broadcast TV, cable TV, and now streaming and the Web in general. We won't make progress until we realize that most spammers are operating 100% legally, and phone networks both participate in it and make money from it.
- flerchin 3y ago
  Nah. We're talking about spam texts and phone calls. That stuff isn't legal. Yeah what everyone else does is creepy af, and _should be illegal_, but that's not the facts on the ground today.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    The creepy af stuff being legal is one of the cracks that the illegal stuff uses to leak through. Those cracks need to be sealed, but there's enough creepy af industry lobbying that it won't happen because money. There's money in them thar retirement villages.
    - flerchin 3y ago
      I don't really grok this argument. Google's panopticon is not facilitating or causing the Car Warranty calls, or text messages about my package waiting at the 'usps facility'.
      - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
        I see the lack of any kind of privacy controls or regulation as facilitating the selling of personal information (= legal). This information is, in turn, bought and used by companies behind these scams. Google's panopticon started this desperate grab for personal contact information (see recent discussions here on HN around Smart TVs as another one of the outgrowths of this) in it's ability to turn it into advertising profit on a previously unprecedented scale. This is separate to telecomms companies seeming lack of ability to control or monitor what's on their networks. Which is also a regulation / enforcement problem. However, there are functions that are 'allowed' on telecomms networks to facilitate 'business' (eg. overseas companies being able to spoof local numbers so that people actually answer their calls), such that this 'feature' is then exploited by scammers - when, arguably, the whole 'feature' is a scam in the first place. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/mobiles-and-landlines-targetted-by-international-phone-scammers/9719820 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/mobiles-and-landlines... (I'm sure I read an article somewhere that described the ability to spoof local numbers as a business decision to allow overseas marketers to sell their wares locally without fear of their calls not being answered. Trying to find it. I may be mistaken.) Edit: services such as virtual phone numbers, such as these: https://callhippo.com/blog/country/virtual-phone-number-providers-in-australia https://callhippo.com/blog/country/virtual-phone-number-prov... https://www.numeroesim.com/how-to-get-an-australian-phone-number-in-no-time/ https://www.numeroesim.com/how-to-get-an-australian-phone-nu... https://virtual-local-numbers.com/countries/65-australia.html https://virtual-local-numbers.com/countries/65-australia.htm... This is likely coming from the purely 'if it can be abused it shouldn't exist' bias, which may mean I've taken a step closer to becoming an old luddite, but it feels as if, if this is possible, then the entire infrastructure can't be trusted any more - and people consciously choosing to just not answer their phones for any unrecognised number feels like confirmation of this stance.
johnbatch 3y ago
That’s bad. I do know T-Mobile blocks calls to their phones spoofing the 1-800-TMOBILE number as of a few years ago.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  damn, sometimes tricks like that let you receive free calls from your tech-savvy friends while roaming ;)
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    Again, spammers are the reason we can't have nice things.
MiddleEndian 3y ago
The spammers have won only because the phone system (in which the phone companies are complicit) is designed to let them win. When you get a call from Verizon's number, they know the actual originator of the call (or perhaps they know it up to some known-to-be-not-so-trustworthy-source). They know that the number is not Verizon's phone number. But the phone company chooses to blindly display the spoofed caller ID. Note that T-Mobile will block their equivalent of these calls (not that T-Mobile isn't to be blamed for other things, such as sending their own spam texts). So it is Verizon's choice to lie to you on behalf of these scammers, and the FCC allows them to do it.
- tiborsaas 3y ago
  What systems rely on spoofed called ID-s? I would assume carriers don't like this too much, but so much legacy crap is built on this that they are just rolling with it and just accepting the bad rep for spam.
  - immibis 3y ago
    AFAIK, just about any time you get a call from a business - the specific desk phone that you were called from has a number, but they prefer to ID as the receptionist or the menu system so you'll get that when you call back.
    - account42 3y ago
      Is that really caller ID spoofing though? Presumably the desk phone does not have an individual external line and it all goes trought a central phone exchange. If that exchange is responsible for both the public phone number and the internal phones then it using the public number for outgoing calls is not really the same as a third party claiming to be calling from a number that they don't own.
      - MiddleEndian 3y ago
        The point is that there is no validation of these numbers. I can call you and list my caller ID as your own number, and when you get a call from me, it will show up on your phone as being from your number. And the phone company will say "Oh no there's nothing we can do about this!"
baby 3y ago
Just disable all calls. That’s what I do. Real people call you on whatsapp or other similar apps.
- s1mon 3y ago
  Not in my experience. I’ve used WhatsApp while in China on one business trip because other things were blocked/less reliable, but so many people I know or interact with don’t even know what WhatsApp is. Voice call, text, email, Facebook messenger, Slack, Teams, LinkedIn, sure, but not WhatsApp. I can’t trade WhatsApp messages with most of my friends, family, bank, mechanic, doctor, or hairdresser. The more traditional of those are going to call or email, the younger ones will text or facebook messenger, and work stuff is currently mostly Slack.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  my parents would probably say something along the lines of 'what is whatsapp'. My sister would say 'i dont use that' my wife would say 'yet another freeking app?!' my tech friends would say 'no i am not signing up for yet another account'
  - stetrain 3y ago
    On iOS at least you can block calls from outside your contact list. Which is what I do. Anyone outside my contact list can leave a voicemail.
- habosa 3y ago
  Not sure where you are in the world but in the US having a phone number and receiving voice calls is pretty much required to participate in society. And using WhatsApp or other similar solutions is not very common.
  - baby 3y ago
    I live in SF so not sure what you're talking about

by habosa 3y ago

7373737373 3y ago

What an utter technological failure. How and why is this even (still) possible?

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Why are ads a thing on cable? On the web? It's literally the same problem, and since this site's audience is likely more familiar with the latter, it should be clear it's not a technological failure, but a social/legal one.
- sk0g 3y ago
  YouTube ads have no ability to interrupt my day-to-day life out of the blue, and also don't poison a legitimately useful communication medium for personal relationships. Phone spam is much more harmful than ads you kinda-sorta opt into, IMO.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Ads are not the same thing as impersonation, lying about who you are and where you are calling from. Cable is not full of ads that say they are from AT&T and you need to contact them about your bill at <number> but the ad isn't from AT&T and the number goes to a scam call center.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Yes, but most scam calls aren't impersonations either. I bet if you tallied it up, there's many more people being tricked into taking on bullshit contracts with legitimate companies[0] and losing much more money in total, than there are victims of actual impersonation scams. I firmly believe both schemes are morally equivalent, and that one of them is still considered legal only means we should push firmly for a change in laws. Even the impersonation angle isn't clear-cut. When a telco calls me with their newest scam, it's always via a third-party call centre they outsource this job to. Where I live, it's also historically has been a major source of contact and personal information for scammers - always a "disgruntled employee" leaving and "covertly" taking the customer database with them. -- [0] - Telcos are my go-to examples here, they're notorious for borderline fraud. For example, just under a year ago, a billion-dollar telecommunications corporation named after a color, one of three major telcos in my country, tried to scam my own grandmother hard, after my grandfather passed away, and almost succeeded. More generally, after many years of near-misses and one or two mistakes, most people in my family learned to never talk to phone companies cold-calling with offers.
    - InitialLastName 3y ago
      > Yes, but most scam calls aren't impersonations either. Most of the spam texts I get lately are from non-US numbers claiming to be USPS trying to resolve a delivery exception.
    - stetrain 3y ago
      All of the spam calls that are an annoyance to me are clearly spoofed numbers from my home area code. That’s impersonation. I know they are spoofing numbers because my own numbers gets spoofed as well. Real people call me back and leave voicemails saying I’m the one who called them. None of this is standard advertising.
- wise_young_man 3y ago
  Ads are not illegal. Spam is regulated by laws like the TCPA for sms and CAN-SPAM for email.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> That’s when I realized we’ll never win. The spammers have won. It's tough, but it's not helpful that people don't know the face of the enemy. The fight isn't with just some stereotypical "spammers". Advertisers and marketing departments are spammers, and they've destroyed phone as a medium, much like they did it to physical mail, radio, broadcast TV, cable TV, and now streaming and the Web in general. We won't make progress until we realize that most spammers are operating 100% legally, and phone networks both participate in it and make money from it.

flerchin 3y ago
Nah. We're talking about spam texts and phone calls. That stuff isn't legal. Yeah what everyone else does is creepy af, and _should be illegal_, but that's not the facts on the ground today.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  The creepy af stuff being legal is one of the cracks that the illegal stuff uses to leak through. Those cracks need to be sealed, but there's enough creepy af industry lobbying that it won't happen because money. There's money in them thar retirement villages.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    I don't really grok this argument. Google's panopticon is not facilitating or causing the Car Warranty calls, or text messages about my package waiting at the 'usps facility'.
    - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
      I see the lack of any kind of privacy controls or regulation as facilitating the selling of personal information (= legal). This information is, in turn, bought and used by companies behind these scams. Google's panopticon started this desperate grab for personal contact information (see recent discussions here on HN around Smart TVs as another one of the outgrowths of this) in it's ability to turn it into advertising profit on a previously unprecedented scale. This is separate to telecomms companies seeming lack of ability to control or monitor what's on their networks. Which is also a regulation / enforcement problem. However, there are functions that are 'allowed' on telecomms networks to facilitate 'business' (eg. overseas companies being able to spoof local numbers so that people actually answer their calls), such that this 'feature' is then exploited by scammers - when, arguably, the whole 'feature' is a scam in the first place. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/mobiles-and-landlines-targetted-by-international-phone-scammers/9719820 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/mobiles-and-landlines... (I'm sure I read an article somewhere that described the ability to spoof local numbers as a business decision to allow overseas marketers to sell their wares locally without fear of their calls not being answered. Trying to find it. I may be mistaken.) Edit: services such as virtual phone numbers, such as these: https://callhippo.com/blog/country/virtual-phone-number-providers-in-australia https://callhippo.com/blog/country/virtual-phone-number-prov... https://www.numeroesim.com/how-to-get-an-australian-phone-number-in-no-time/ https://www.numeroesim.com/how-to-get-an-australian-phone-nu... https://virtual-local-numbers.com/countries/65-australia.html https://virtual-local-numbers.com/countries/65-australia.htm... This is likely coming from the purely 'if it can be abused it shouldn't exist' bias, which may mean I've taken a step closer to becoming an old luddite, but it feels as if, if this is possible, then the entire infrastructure can't be trusted any more - and people consciously choosing to just not answer their phones for any unrecognised number feels like confirmation of this stance.

johnbatch 3y ago

That’s bad. I do know T-Mobile blocks calls to their phones spoofing the 1-800-TMOBILE number as of a few years ago.

Scoundreller 3y ago
damn, sometimes tricks like that let you receive free calls from your tech-savvy friends while roaming ;)
- joshmanders 3y ago
  Again, spammers are the reason we can't have nice things.

MiddleEndian 3y ago

The spammers have won only because the phone system (in which the phone companies are complicit) is designed to let them win. When you get a call from Verizon's number, they know the actual originator of the call (or perhaps they know it up to some known-to-be-not-so-trustworthy-source). They know that the number is not Verizon's phone number. But the phone company chooses to blindly display the spoofed caller ID. Note that T-Mobile will block their equivalent of these calls (not that T-Mobile isn't to be blamed for other things, such as sending their own spam texts). So it is Verizon's choice to lie to you on behalf of these scammers, and the FCC allows them to do it.

tiborsaas 3y ago
What systems rely on spoofed called ID-s? I would assume carriers don't like this too much, but so much legacy crap is built on this that they are just rolling with it and just accepting the bad rep for spam.
- immibis 3y ago
  AFAIK, just about any time you get a call from a business - the specific desk phone that you were called from has a number, but they prefer to ID as the receptionist or the menu system so you'll get that when you call back.
  - account42 3y ago
    Is that really caller ID spoofing though? Presumably the desk phone does not have an individual external line and it all goes trought a central phone exchange. If that exchange is responsible for both the public phone number and the internal phones then it using the public number for outgoing calls is not really the same as a third party claiming to be calling from a number that they don't own.
    - MiddleEndian 3y ago
      The point is that there is no validation of these numbers. I can call you and list my caller ID as your own number, and when you get a call from me, it will show up on your phone as being from your number. And the phone company will say "Oh no there's nothing we can do about this!"

baby 3y ago

Just disable all calls. That’s what I do. Real people call you on whatsapp or other similar apps.

s1mon 3y ago
Not in my experience. I’ve used WhatsApp while in China on one business trip because other things were blocked/less reliable, but so many people I know or interact with don’t even know what WhatsApp is. Voice call, text, email, Facebook messenger, Slack, Teams, LinkedIn, sure, but not WhatsApp. I can’t trade WhatsApp messages with most of my friends, family, bank, mechanic, doctor, or hairdresser. The more traditional of those are going to call or email, the younger ones will text or facebook messenger, and work stuff is currently mostly Slack.
sumtechguy 3y ago
my parents would probably say something along the lines of 'what is whatsapp'. My sister would say 'i dont use that' my wife would say 'yet another freeking app?!' my tech friends would say 'no i am not signing up for yet another account'
- stetrain 3y ago
  On iOS at least you can block calls from outside your contact list. Which is what I do. Anyone outside my contact list can leave a voicemail.
habosa 3y ago
Not sure where you are in the world but in the US having a phone number and receiving voice calls is pretty much required to participate in society. And using WhatsApp or other similar solutions is not very common.
- baby 3y ago
  I live in SF so not sure what you're talking about