5 ms·

> 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

> 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.
    - freeone3000 3y ago
      Some sort of quite tall wall, perhaps made of fire…
      - dylan604 3y ago
        i don't know about being tall. by any definition i'm familiar within context, 1RU is about the smallest possible.
calamari4065 3y ago
The analogy doesn't hold because anyone can send an email to anyone else on any service at any time. You can't exactly just climb up a telephone pole and tap off a few phone numbers for yourself. You have to explicitly enter into a contract with a service provider to use their infrastructure. Spammers and scammers are wasting infrastructure resources that the telcos could be allocating to users. The telco can just cut your access off if you abuse it. If I spin up an email server, no one entity can stop me sending email to anyone else. Gmail or Outlook or other services can block me individually, but there is no centralized network and no central authority that can refuse my connection. [0] I suspect that telcos don't want to do anything about abuse because it's a very large fraction of their total traffic. The artificially higher utilization of the network gives them more justification for their prices or gives them some sort of good boy points for having x number of users. I don't really know how any of that works, just a wild guess. [0] There are centralized blacklists and other ways to communicate that a sender should be widely blocked, but that's not the same as a telco refusing to physically connect you
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  > You have to explicitly enter into a contract with a service provider to use their infrastructure Sounds like you’ve never used Twilio before - or any other API-based SMS system
  - selcuka 3y ago
    Isn't Twilio your service provider in that case?
  - callalex 3y ago
    Have you tried recently? There’s a ton of regulation mandated paperwork and registration required these days.
  - axelthegerman 3y ago
    Ehm you need to create an account, accept their TOS, enter billing information and then some. They can easily disable your account should you break the TOS (or for any reason really) Not quite the same as hosting an email server somewhere
lelanthran 3y ago
> Solving spam problems in a highly distributed large federation of networks is not simple. I agree and disagree with this statement: 1. The distributed system can't solve the spam problem, because it's not a technical problem. 2. The population can immediately solve the spam problem by responding in the affirmative to every single request they get. What makes spam profitable is the quality of the responses - right now only the marks respond, so every response is valuable to the spammer as it is a lead that will almost certainly result in money. If the spammer sends out 3m SMS/robocall messages, and gets 5 responses, those responses are worth actual money! OTOH, if the spammer sent out 3m SMS/robocall messages, and got 3m responses (of which only 5 are worth money), then the spam would quickly stop. IOW, by self-selecting into one of two groups (will give you money/won't give you money) we are making spam profitable. This is the only way to stop spam of any kind - poison the database.
- pogue 3y ago
  When you say 'poison the database' in the case if sms/robocalls what exactly would that involve?
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > When you say 'poison the database' in the case if sms/robocalls what exactly would that involve? It involves never blocking any SMS/robocall: for SMS always reply in the affirmative (i.e. you want an agent to phone you), for robocalls, keep the call active for as long as you can, and reply in the affirmative for future contact. You do that, knowing full-well that you aren't going to be buying anything. If even half the population did that, spam SMS and robocalls would become too expensive to do anymore.
- rwmj 3y ago
  I usually answer the spam calls and then try to keep a human on the line as long as possible. I get almost no spam calls on my phone now (although I'm not necessarily claiming this is a direct result).

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.
  - freeone3000 3y ago
    Some sort of quite tall wall, perhaps made of fire…
    - dylan604 3y ago
      i don't know about being tall. by any definition i'm familiar within context, 1RU is about the smallest possible.

calamari4065 3y ago

The analogy doesn't hold because anyone can send an email to anyone else on any service at any time. You can't exactly just climb up a telephone pole and tap off a few phone numbers for yourself. You have to explicitly enter into a contract with a service provider to use their infrastructure. Spammers and scammers are wasting infrastructure resources that the telcos could be allocating to users. The telco can just cut your access off if you abuse it. If I spin up an email server, no one entity can stop me sending email to anyone else. Gmail or Outlook or other services can block me individually, but there is no centralized network and no central authority that can refuse my connection. [0] I suspect that telcos don't want to do anything about abuse because it's a very large fraction of their total traffic. The artificially higher utilization of the network gives them more justification for their prices or gives them some sort of good boy points for having x number of users. I don't really know how any of that works, just a wild guess. [0] There are centralized blacklists and other ways to communicate that a sender should be widely blocked, but that's not the same as a telco refusing to physically connect you

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
> You have to explicitly enter into a contract with a service provider to use their infrastructure Sounds like you’ve never used Twilio before - or any other API-based SMS system
- selcuka 3y ago
  Isn't Twilio your service provider in that case?
- callalex 3y ago
  Have you tried recently? There’s a ton of regulation mandated paperwork and registration required these days.
- axelthegerman 3y ago
  Ehm you need to create an account, accept their TOS, enter billing information and then some. They can easily disable your account should you break the TOS (or for any reason really) Not quite the same as hosting an email server somewhere

lelanthran 3y ago

> Solving spam problems in a highly distributed large federation of networks is not simple. I agree and disagree with this statement: 1. The distributed system can't solve the spam problem, because it's not a technical problem. 2. The population can immediately solve the spam problem by responding in the affirmative to every single request they get. What makes spam profitable is the quality of the responses - right now only the marks respond, so every response is valuable to the spammer as it is a lead that will almost certainly result in money. If the spammer sends out 3m SMS/robocall messages, and gets 5 responses, those responses are worth actual money! OTOH, if the spammer sent out 3m SMS/robocall messages, and got 3m responses (of which only 5 are worth money), then the spam would quickly stop. IOW, by self-selecting into one of two groups (will give you money/won't give you money) we are making spam profitable. This is the only way to stop spam of any kind - poison the database.

pogue 3y ago
When you say 'poison the database' in the case if sms/robocalls what exactly would that involve?
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > When you say 'poison the database' in the case if sms/robocalls what exactly would that involve? It involves never blocking any SMS/robocall: for SMS always reply in the affirmative (i.e. you want an agent to phone you), for robocalls, keep the call active for as long as you can, and reply in the affirmative for future contact. You do that, knowing full-well that you aren't going to be buying anything. If even half the population did that, spam SMS and robocalls would become too expensive to do anymore.
rwmj 3y ago
I usually answer the spam calls and then try to keep a human on the line as long as possible. I get almost no spam calls on my phone now (although I'm not necessarily claiming this is a direct result).