8 ms·

I've been reporting spam calls and texts to the FCC for a few years now. Does it do anything? I don't know, certainly not immediately, and the problem persists.

• Scoundreller 3y ago
  My own experience is that reporting to Google's Safe Browsing whatever is a waste of time. A lot of scam sites geo-block or redirect to a random news site when visiting from $OutsideTargetArea, so that seems to break a lot of/most automated screening.
• stainablesteel 3y ago
  yeah i don't understand whether the government even does anything or if they treat it like an off and on switch due to attention or negligence there's some impressive anti-scammer youtube content, and it seems to be a growing trend, maybe this is just capitalism doing what it does best? advertisers putting money in front of combative interventions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUHFpfVPUYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUHFpfVPUYc
• jimmydddd 3y ago
  I disagree with the posted page that the telecoms are interested in stopping spam. If they really cared, they would have addressed it by now. I suspect they are somehow making money from the spam callers.
  • BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    I can't see how it can be any other way than you mention. Is it conceivable that they don't have control of who is using their network, and how they're using it? It's not like they've just landed on the planet with this big telecoms network to manage. They created them, they set the rules, they own the gates. It's purely profit driven, no question. In the exact same way that Google and Meta claim to not be able to police advertising on their own fucking networks.
    • jcrawfordor 3y ago
      The architecture of the telephone network was designed by a complex series of historical monopolies (across multiple countries), federal regulators, and state regulators. Because of this history, the providers have a surprisingly small degree of control over the traffic that passes through their network. This is, in a regulatory sense, what it means to be a common carrier.
      • BLKNSLVR 3y ago
        My admittedly cynical view, then, is that the structure has outgrown it's usefulness. Features are being added, which enable phone number spoofing and other shenanigans, at some point deep in the network, such that common carriers, at the tips of the network, have no control over. Thus creating a scammers/spammers paradise.
  • drdaeman 3y ago
    > telecoms are interested in stopping spam. If they really cared, they would have addressed it by now I'm not so sure about this. No one (except for, obviously, spammers) benefits from email spam, every mailhost and network admin is most certainly interested in stopping it (to some extent), and yet my mailbox can prove that spam is still very much alive. Solving spam problems in a highly distributed large federation of networks is not simple. However, I think there are less telecoms than LIRs and mail systems out there, and they typically have better control over who their clients are (less hacking, though I could be wrong), and there's not enough pressure on them (spammy mailhost's gonna get banned by every RDNSBL real quick, telcos - I don't know, but I guess not so much?), so I can certainly agree that telecoms have issues with their incentives. I could be wrong about this, though - I don't really know much about the telephone industry.
    • dylan604 3y ago
      When you consider that most of this stuff originates from places outside of jurisdictions of any place that would ever consider doing something about it, you realize that legislation is worth much less than the paper it's never printed on.
      • viraptor 3y ago
        It's that time I get to repeat: The US is a big enough destination that threatening to drop incoming calls would work. Much like the EU online privacy regulations has international effects, the US can play the game too. It's extremely unlikely that a legit telco anywhere in the world would choose to continue spam and lose the ability to call the US. (Telcos peer to other telcos/interconnects explicitly and can force custom agreements)
        • koolba 3y ago
          > The US is a big enough destination that threatening to drop incoming calls would work. They should threaten to drop outgoing calls too. That’d eliminate all the useless offshore call centers.
  • batch12 3y ago
    A few questions (in good faith) for discussion: - How do you feel about the telcoms reading/filtering your texts? - Where do you feel these controls would be most appropriately applied? Sender or recipient or both? - How would you define SMS spam for filtering? Should the messages be manually reviewed or automatically filtered based on volume/content? - Should recipient telcoms filter potentially malicious or spammy voice calls?
    • mynameisvlad 3y ago
      Texts are not encrypted anyway, your telecom can already read and filter your texts, and there’s been several instances of it happening. Eg: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/17aqv1z/tmobile_linksurls_not_sending_do_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/17aqv1z/tmobile_li...
  • callalex 3y ago
    Carriers could solve the spam problem overnight by disconnecting about 3 or 4 countries from the rest of the world. However popular that action may be, it would not be legal.
    • grecy 3y ago
      The world has already decided to disconnect 5 countries from the global banking system, effectively keeping them locked in the dark ages....
    • pennybanks 3y ago
      ya but now they are the racist carrier. racism hunts. witch hunts. in the far future these 2 events will look no different
  • lostlogin 3y ago
    With booking systems that use texts for appointment confirmation, several companies end up using the same group of phone numbers due to the service that sends the text having limited phone numbers. Some of the companies are quite spammy. It’s frustrating as blocking the number risks blocking real ‘you have an appointment at xxx’ type messages.
  • naravara 3y ago
    I think you underestimate how ineptly run a lot of these highly-regulated, legacy industries actually are. They care, but in the way most people care about not being fat. They still can’t make the necessary lifestyle changes to do anything about it even if it is their most ardent wish.
    • pbj1968 3y ago
      [flagged]
  • gwbas1c 3y ago
    (This is a US-based response response about the US phone system.) Because it's a political problem, not an engineering or business problem. In order to prevent monopolies, we have very strict requirements about carrying all calls that enter the network. Otherwise, phone companies would randomly block each other as part of anti-competitive tactics to push each other out of business. The telephone spammers take advantage of these laws, because it is very difficult to legally block a spam call. Your phone provider must carry all phone calls without any prejudice! (So I'm about to get very close to the line about hacker news's "no politics" guideline. Please consider that spammers "hack the law" and "hack politics" before you flag me. Instead, I would appreciate it if you take a minute or two to fact check my opinion disguised as fact.) The primary way out of this is by a legal change, not by an engineering change or culture change: We must update our laws so that it is very difficult to make and carry spam calls on the telephone network. I personally believe that one way to do this is to require that all phone calls provide rich metadata to the phone that is ringing. I really should know who is calling me, and the phone company that originates that call should be responsible for verifying it. I would even consider a requirement that makes it trivial, or automatic, to "lift the corporate veil" on who owns the company that is calling me. Otherwise there should be strict penalties for a phone network that allows originating calls with phony or spoofed metadata. (I also don't think anyone has a right to make a 100% anonymous phone call. I think we can figure out how to allow people who need to make anonymous phone calls to make them, without exposing the entire phone network to SPAM.) Ultimately, every phone call that enters the phone network needs to have a strict and auditable chain of liability. In reality, if our laws included a requirement for strict metadata, and then a requirement to make an "abusive phone call" button really obvious, we could figure this out pretty quickly: at this point it becomes a simple reputation system. Finally, we need laws that prohibit co-opting the phone network for marketing. We may want to start with prohibiting unsolicited commercial and political calls. We need to make sure that there are no loopholes, where the company you bought something from 2 years ago is still free to call you as if you have an ongoing relationship. We need to recognize that pulling out one's phone and looking at who is calling is really a significant burden to us, and that our government should protect us from companies and politicians who think that they have the right to interrupt our day at any moment to listen to a sales pitch. If you really care and want to put time into this, advocate politically. (And remember that hacker news is not supposed to be political.) Don't waste your time reading instructions about how to report spam.
  • pbj1968 3y ago
    All the responses to this post have been an amusing read. Apparently this forum is too young to remember all the Guyana phone sex scam numbers from the 80s and 90s…
  • cortesoft 3y ago
    > If they really cared, they would have addressed it by now. They care, but not enough to spend what is required to address it.
  • mock-possum 3y ago
    Less that spam makes them money, more than doing nothing about spam doesn’t cost them money.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Reason077 3y ago
    In some cases it definitely seems to be the carriers making money. I’ve never really had any issues at all with SMS spam in the UK and Europe - but I’m currently in Thailand where it’s awful! When you buy a new SIM card at the airport, the spamming starts within an hour or so. I count 18 sent yesterday alone, once every hour or so during the day. I believe it is actually the carrier (true.th) sending them as they all follow a similar format and seem to arrive with a somewhat predictable regularity. They even have an automated number (*137) you can call and supposedly turn off spam, but it doesn’t work: “System will cancel spam SMS within 24 hour. Thank you for using!”. Yeah right. Only solution on iOS seems to be to disable notifications for SMS from unknown senders in System Settings. Then, at least, they only annoy you when you actually look at the messages app.
• mcpackieh 3y ago
  > USPS package texts Try reporting it directly to the US Postal Inspector. From: https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/smishing-package-tracking-text-scams https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/smishing-package-tra... > Have you received unsolicited mobile text messages with an unfamiliar or strange web link that indicates a USPS delivery requires a response from you? If you never signed up for a USPS tracking request for a specific package, then don’t click the link! This type of text message is a scam called smishing. > To report USPS related smishing, send an email to spam@uspis.gov. > Without clicking on the web link, copy the body of the suspicious text message and paste into a new email.* > Provide your name in the email, and also attach a screenshot of the text message showing the phone number of the sender and the date sent.* > Include any relevant details in your email, for example: if you clicked the link, if you lost money, if you provided any personal information, or if you experienced any impacts to your credit or person. > The Postal Inspection Service will contact you if more information is needed. > Forward the smishing/text message to 7726 (this will assist with reporting the scam phone number).
  • pbj1968 3y ago
    lol. They will do absolutely nothing.
• demosthanos 3y ago
  I've had some luck with reporting phishing domains to their registrars. It doesn't always work, but I have gotten a few taken down that way.
  • sentientslug 3y ago
    Yeah, I too noticed the similarity in approaches. Generally I've not had good luck with reporting spam domains because the registrars are sketchy. Makes me wonder if reporting spam calls is going to have the same lack of success.
• troydavis 3y ago
  > example: +63 936 631 6676 It’s unlikely to work for phone numbers outside the US. Sorry :( For typical 10-digit US numbers, the carrier search sites work well, as does Twilio’s carrier lookup API.
  • aimor 3y ago
    Thank you for putting together this resource! I read the rest of the FAQ, signed up for Twilio, and their API worked to identify the number.
• furyg3 3y ago
  Like others, I'm confused about how there's so much variation between countries on this one. In the US, the calls and texts are a plague. If you've had a phone number for a few years you're probably getting multiple texts and calls a day, even if you are on the Do Not Call registry, from advertisers of every type and scammers alike. Lots of people have apps for blocking spam and they still get through. In the Netherlands I'm also on a do not call registry, and I get nearly zero spam calls or texts. There is the occasional scammer SMS, and I get a spam call maybe once every 2-3 months, usually for nonprofit fundraising. In developing countries you're spammed by both the telco and third party advertisers within minutes of activating a prepaid SIM card. The telco is almost certainly delivering the advertisements. My guess is that the penalties and enforcement behind violating do-not-call registry in the Netherlands (EU?) are just much stronger than in the US. It still does not explain the lack of low-quality spam / scam messages from people who are unlikely to be dissuaded by regulation. The only thing I can think of is that there is better authentication for accessing the Dutch telephone network (and better incentives for the telcos) which allow the providers to prevent or shut down spam numbers quickly.
  • abirch 3y ago
    Could the percentage of occupied Dutch phone codes be lower than the USA? There may be a smaller pay off.
    • furyg3 3y ago
      You mean area codes (all Dutch mobiles are on one area code - 06) or do you mean the proportion of available phone numbers to phone users? The latter would imply that spammers are 'wardialing' phone numbers but that seems really unlikely to me as it would be incredibly easy for telcos to detect and prevent.
      • abirch 3y ago
        I meant the second. The hypothesis of with a few smart tweaks such as valid area codes, etc. I've yet to have text spam use my name, whereas email spam is around 10% for me.
• dogman1050 3y ago
  I used to report spam calls, but quit when I received one from my own number, the number of the phone on which I received the call.