5 ms·

What they should have done is enforce Caller ID identification labels for robocalls. For example, "Police Officers Benevolent Association [Robocall]".

bongodongobob 3y ago
Who is "they" and how do they know which calls aren't legitimate?
- ranger_danger 3y ago
  cryptographic signatures are going to have to start becoming necessary for all kinds of things, like even your average JPG image, otherwise nobody can tell what is "fake" or not, court evidence will start to become useless.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    You'd have to completely redo the way telephony works. There is no way to enforce numbers or caller IDs.
    - ranger_danger 3y ago
      perhaps, but the alternative is that whatever doesn't support it, just cannot be admissable as evidence anymore.
    - luma 3y ago
      STIR/SHAKEN is already required for VOIP providers and intermediate carriers. The FCC is working it's way through the system to implement this, there is in fact a way but it takes a while.
      - larvaetron 3y ago
        > STIR/SHAKEN is already required for VOIP providers I'm not convinced that STIR/SHAKEN even works properly. Recently, I migrated a DID from one VOIP provider to another. I set the outbound caller ID on the new provider, and it was showing up Verified with a checkmark to mobile devices before I had even submitted the port request to the old provider.
        nsporillo 3y ago
        Depending on your new provider, they might just see that they have a contract with you and sign the call on your behalf with B level attestation - indicating that they "know" the end user, but not that they have the right to use the number. As long as they managed to attach the identity header to the sip invite correctly, and are not considered to be a shady actor - downstream providers such as carriers probably have no reason to label it as spam. Spam labeling is typically done via analytics, outsourced to third parties like First Orion. Attest levels are not in themselves proper tools for spam detection. The real meat of stir shaken is the origid in the identity JWT claim which is an opaque identifier that can be traced back to a particular user/customer/network equipment. STIR/SHAKEN being sold as the one and only solution for spam calls was a mistake as it is only one iteration in the right direction. You have a handful of RFCs and ATIS specs that the FCC told operators to implement in a phased approach, and ultimately some gaps were uncovered in practice that reduced its effectiveness.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- aw49r59aw 3y ago
  Yes. Completely redesigning how phones work is exactly what we need. This problem is only going to get worse.
  - asah 3y ago
    consumers have an easier solution: they just don't answer the phone unless it's a someone they know.
    - dymk 3y ago
      This isn't a solution. I need to accept legitimate calls from numbers who've never called me before all the time.
      - SirMaster 3y ago
        Don't accept them until they start talking. IDK, my iPhone will show me the live transcription of the callers message without me answering it. And then if I want to speak to them, I can answer the call in the middle of the message being left and talk to them. Sounds cool, but this concept isn't at all new. Anyone who used answering machines did exactly this. You would listen to the message being left in real-time and pick up if you actually wanted to talk to them. If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then that's their problem.
        dymk 3y ago
        > Don't accept them until they start talking. Not professional, not an option for some calls. > If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then that's their problem. It's actually my problem if I miss an important call. A message is great, sure, but I still missed the call.
        SirMaster 3y ago
        My phone shows a live transcription of the message being left. If I see that it's an important call, then I can pick up and answer right there mid-voicemail. That's what I was referring to. They start talking when they leave the voicemail. This is how we did it for a long time with home answering machines too. Except instead of reading a live transcription, you listened to their live recording, and could interrupt it and answer if you wanted to talk to them. It's not a new idea.
paxys 3y ago
That would require upgrading literally 50-70 years worth of telecommunications infrastructure across the country, which isn't happening.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  for landlines, do you mean?
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    No, it's not a one or the other thing. Phone calls don't work like web apps. Hell, most land lines aren't actually copper either , they're essentially VoIP. A phone call is not just a socket connection. Look up SS7 and PSTN. It's quite literally impossible to change any of this stuff, it's far too embedded.
- standardUser 3y ago
  Better to abandon that technology all together (for normal phone calls). It should be used exclusively for emergency calls and similarly vital functions. Let everything else operate over cell networks and require explicit opt-ins before party A can call party B. A man can dream.
- IamLoading 3y ago
  Where is all the money going? You're saying we cant get some billions from 36 Trillion dollars? WTH
  - renegade-otter 3y ago
    That's not the priority. The priority is tax cuts for the rich. I know it sounds snarky, but I don't see how, since I've said the actual truth (TM).
  - lenerdenator 3y ago
    It's privately-owned infrastructure, for the most part. And if the companies could, they'd charge you simply for the privilege of existing in the same universe as the infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send that money to their shareholders.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
What should be done is something else entirely. Apple and Google should offer, as part of their standard software, a personal "phone robot". When you get a new phone, you spend 15 minutes recording various phrases, and from that point on you just have the robot answer for you. When the robot talks to these spammers and telemarketers, it will try to keep them on the phone as long as possible. A minute would be good, 10 minutes would be better. As the spammers tried to avoid this, Apple and Google could improve the robots to counter. And, within a few months of this, at most, that industry would just be dead. It can't afford to spend a half hour on each call trying to determine if they've got a real live knucklehead who will start sending cash to Nigerian princes, or just bad software tricking operators who don't speak English as a first language. Their margins would drop, their need for more sophisticated AI to try to determine if they were talking to a real person or not would skyrocket, etc. It just wouldn't be economically viable to continue.
- imzadi 3y ago
  Not sure why this would come from Google or Apple. You basically just described RoboKiller, which already exists.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    So that it would be standard, and could tap into the "setting up my new phone". Just looked up Robokiller... >Robokiller is a phone app that blocks 99% of spam calls and texts with predictive analytics and audio fingerprinting. Doesn't look like what I'm talking about at all. We don't want the calls to be blocked, we want them to linger on forever. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand.
    - imzadi 3y ago
      RoboKiller has "answer bots" that do what you said. They just keep saying things like "hello? I'm sorry, I don't understand" etc.
      - 3y ago

bongodongobob 3y ago

Who is "they" and how do they know which calls aren't legitimate?

ranger_danger 3y ago
cryptographic signatures are going to have to start becoming necessary for all kinds of things, like even your average JPG image, otherwise nobody can tell what is "fake" or not, court evidence will start to become useless.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  You'd have to completely redo the way telephony works. There is no way to enforce numbers or caller IDs.
  - ranger_danger 3y ago
    perhaps, but the alternative is that whatever doesn't support it, just cannot be admissable as evidence anymore.
  - luma 3y ago
    STIR/SHAKEN is already required for VOIP providers and intermediate carriers. The FCC is working it's way through the system to implement this, there is in fact a way but it takes a while.
    - larvaetron 3y ago
      > STIR/SHAKEN is already required for VOIP providers I'm not convinced that STIR/SHAKEN even works properly. Recently, I migrated a DID from one VOIP provider to another. I set the outbound caller ID on the new provider, and it was showing up Verified with a checkmark to mobile devices before I had even submitted the port request to the old provider.
      - nsporillo 3y ago
        Depending on your new provider, they might just see that they have a contract with you and sign the call on your behalf with B level attestation - indicating that they "know" the end user, but not that they have the right to use the number. As long as they managed to attach the identity header to the sip invite correctly, and are not considered to be a shady actor - downstream providers such as carriers probably have no reason to label it as spam. Spam labeling is typically done via analytics, outsourced to third parties like First Orion. Attest levels are not in themselves proper tools for spam detection. The real meat of stir shaken is the origid in the identity JWT claim which is an opaque identifier that can be traced back to a particular user/customer/network equipment. STIR/SHAKEN being sold as the one and only solution for spam calls was a mistake as it is only one iteration in the right direction. You have a handful of RFCs and ATIS specs that the FCC told operators to implement in a phased approach, and ultimately some gaps were uncovered in practice that reduced its effectiveness.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
aw49r59aw 3y ago
Yes. Completely redesigning how phones work is exactly what we need. This problem is only going to get worse.
- asah 3y ago
  consumers have an easier solution: they just don't answer the phone unless it's a someone they know.
  - dymk 3y ago
    This isn't a solution. I need to accept legitimate calls from numbers who've never called me before all the time.
    - SirMaster 3y ago
      Don't accept them until they start talking. IDK, my iPhone will show me the live transcription of the callers message without me answering it. And then if I want to speak to them, I can answer the call in the middle of the message being left and talk to them. Sounds cool, but this concept isn't at all new. Anyone who used answering machines did exactly this. You would listen to the message being left in real-time and pick up if you actually wanted to talk to them. If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then that's their problem.
      - dymk 3y ago
        > Don't accept them until they start talking. Not professional, not an option for some calls. > If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then that's their problem. It's actually my problem if I miss an important call. A message is great, sure, but I still missed the call.
        SirMaster 3y ago
        My phone shows a live transcription of the message being left. If I see that it's an important call, then I can pick up and answer right there mid-voicemail. That's what I was referring to. They start talking when they leave the voicemail. This is how we did it for a long time with home answering machines too. Except instead of reading a live transcription, you listened to their live recording, and could interrupt it and answer if you wanted to talk to them. It's not a new idea.

paxys 3y ago

That would require upgrading literally 50-70 years worth of telecommunications infrastructure across the country, which isn't happening.

jjtheblunt 3y ago
for landlines, do you mean?
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  No, it's not a one or the other thing. Phone calls don't work like web apps. Hell, most land lines aren't actually copper either , they're essentially VoIP. A phone call is not just a socket connection. Look up SS7 and PSTN. It's quite literally impossible to change any of this stuff, it's far too embedded.
standardUser 3y ago
Better to abandon that technology all together (for normal phone calls). It should be used exclusively for emergency calls and similarly vital functions. Let everything else operate over cell networks and require explicit opt-ins before party A can call party B. A man can dream.
IamLoading 3y ago
Where is all the money going? You're saying we cant get some billions from 36 Trillion dollars? WTH
- renegade-otter 3y ago
  That's not the priority. The priority is tax cuts for the rich. I know it sounds snarky, but I don't see how, since I've said the actual truth (TM).
- lenerdenator 3y ago
  It's privately-owned infrastructure, for the most part. And if the companies could, they'd charge you simply for the privilege of existing in the same universe as the infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send that money to their shareholders.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

What should be done is something else entirely. Apple and Google should offer, as part of their standard software, a personal "phone robot". When you get a new phone, you spend 15 minutes recording various phrases, and from that point on you just have the robot answer for you. When the robot talks to these spammers and telemarketers, it will try to keep them on the phone as long as possible. A minute would be good, 10 minutes would be better. As the spammers tried to avoid this, Apple and Google could improve the robots to counter. And, within a few months of this, at most, that industry would just be dead. It can't afford to spend a half hour on each call trying to determine if they've got a real live knucklehead who will start sending cash to Nigerian princes, or just bad software tricking operators who don't speak English as a first language. Their margins would drop, their need for more sophisticated AI to try to determine if they were talking to a real person or not would skyrocket, etc. It just wouldn't be economically viable to continue.

imzadi 3y ago
Not sure why this would come from Google or Apple. You basically just described RoboKiller, which already exists.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  So that it would be standard, and could tap into the "setting up my new phone". Just looked up Robokiller... >Robokiller is a phone app that blocks 99% of spam calls and texts with predictive analytics and audio fingerprinting. Doesn't look like what I'm talking about at all. We don't want the calls to be blocked, we want them to linger on forever. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand.
  - imzadi 3y ago
    RoboKiller has "answer bots" that do what you said. They just keep saying things like "hello? I'm sorry, I don't understand" etc.
    - 3y ago