25 ms·
FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections
- coldpie 1y agoGood start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail.
- Timwi 1y agoIs that what European countries do? Is that why there are no robocalls there?
- ruszki 1y agoWe have robocalls, just not that much. I have 1-2 every months. Similar amount of spam SMS during the worst month. But I didn't get spam texts for months now. And my phone number is basically a public domain now. I have no idea the reason.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoYes! Easy to forget that just because "we" don't fall for them, they're still incredibly harmful to our seniors and other vulnerable populations. Also hate the scam "work from home for $125,000 per year" texts. They really prey on the desperate.
- RajT88 1y agoI know a gal whose grandmother sent ~400k to scammers, which is the kind of victim they are looking for - someone in cognitive decline who is malleable. The neighbors apparently also were preying on her, and ended up with her cars and a bunch of other stuff. Absolute scum of the earth.
- RankingMember 1y agoThe "r/scams" sub-reddit is an amazing glimpse into this world. The saddest ones to me are the peoples' parents who fully believe they're talking to a celebrity who needs their money for some outlandish reason (and they send it to them over and over).
- jm4 1y agoExactly. My city started posting about online safety and warnings about various scams. Unfortunately, almost every one of them also mentions how a local resident was victimized. We have a fairly large senior population. It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff when we're young enough to have grown up in this world or started using new technology at an early age. We will be the ones targeted someday and it will be a medium that didn't become available to us until later in life just like what the seniors are experiencing now.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoYes, although it's worth mentioning that there are scams that target our demographic, they just look different (fake investment, job, real-estate, or romance opportunities).
- rectang 1y ago> It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff It’s not just “easy”, it’s an ideological imperative to ensure that the vulnerable have “personal responsibility” to avoid predation, while predators bear no responsibility for their own actions. Many tech business models depend on exploitation — it’s not just phone scammers.
- pessimizer 1y agoIt's always convenient to decide that the weak deserve to be exploited because they were too lazy or stupid to be strong. Then we can do the thing that makes the least sense, which is to design society to protect the strong. Or rather, to justify what the strong were already doing and didn't have to ask anybody's permission to do, and that nobody else ever had a say about that mattered.
- mulmen 1y agoApple makes it extremely easy to fall prey to email scams. They absolutely refuse to show an email address in less than 3 taps. There’s no setting in Mail to always show the address and they trust all senders to give an honest name. So if a contact loses their contact list scammers can send a known name with a junk address and you won’t see it unless you go out of your way. Apple makes a lot of dumb user-hostile decisions but this one is particularly egregious and has caught me off guard.
- jacobr1 1y agoHow many are based in the US and subject to US-based prosecution?
- lokar 1y agoThat's no longer a barrier to the use of force by the US
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoLiterally has not been a barrier to the US using force to protect commercial interests since "the shores of Tripoli" in 1801.
- mh- 1y agoMore than you'd think, from what I've seen.
- stonemetal12 1y agoProbably none, but you would think fraud would be illegal everywhere.
- coldpie 1y agoWhy can someone from outside the US make my phone ring? Why can't I opt out of calls sourced internationally? Seems like an easy way to fix the problem. There is no reason for anyone overseas to call me, and if someone US-based does phone spamming, we can prosecute them.
- larrysalibra 1y agoYou're right, it is an easy technical fix. Mainland China lets people opt out of phone calls that come from outside of the Mainland...it's a feature one can turn off on an on their mobile plan. Calls from outside the Mainland always cause a warning to pop up on the receiving user's phone that says something like "this call is coming from outside of the mainland, be careful of being scammed". I can imagine there are many reasons the US doesn't fix this..one of which probably that much of US customer service is outsourced to people outside the US!
- Triphibian 1y agoOr at the very least send them a DVD of The Beekeeper.
- Bender 1y agoGood start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail. I agree. In fact, 1200 SS7 circuits is nothing. If these people are not locked up they will just get another circuit using another fake identity. It's like blocking 1200 ASN's and saying one made a dent in spam.
- paxys 1y agoI'm going to go ahead and say none of them are in the jurisdiction of the DoJ.
- coldpie 1y agoNo one outside the jurisdiction of my country's laws should be able to make my phone ring or send me text messages without my permission.
- more_corn 1y agoYou got my vote
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoAt least without it showing up as an international number.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoNo, labeling is not enough, options are not enough, unattested communication needs to go silently to spam by default. Anything else encourages the spam. "We let spammers ring your phone unless you tick an option 5 menus deep in your phone that gets automatically reset every 3 months at update time and moved every 2 years between names/locations that range from awful to insane" doesn't cut it.
- coldpie 1y agoThe beautiful thing about default-deny for internationally-sourced calls is it fixes the spam problem for everyone, including those who opt-in. If 90% of the spammers' calls are just immediately dropped, they're no longer going to get enough hits to be worth the effort, so it also protects those who actually do have a legit reason to receive international calls.
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
- more_corn 1y agoOr start assassinating them. They prey on the most vulnerable Americans. Why not declare war on them and start decapitating their organizations?
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago[flagged]
- edm0nd 1y agoI pray and yearn for the day that they legalize and allow drone striking ransomware operators.
- candiddevmike 1y agoDo these scam phone providers have their Google My Business listing verified yet?
- RugnirViking 1y agoHere's to many more. Some may be downcast because they feel like its a drop in the ocean, but many drops an ocean do make. Hopefully its the start of actually enforcing some of our laws on the internet.
- jborden13 1y agoIs this why I haven't received any spam calls today after years of getting dozens daily? Hallelujah if so!
- msgodel 1y agoJust kill the phone. It's a terrible anachronism. If you insist on voice you can attach an ogg/mp3 file to your email.
- nativeit 1y agoI'm not one of the people down-voting this, I'm inclined to sort of agree with you. Where you lost me was attaching files to an email. Are you really suggesting this solution has fewer problems than telephones?
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoI'm here for the explanation as to how attached voice clips are equivalent to real time two-way voice communication
- unsignedint 1y agoWell, isn’t that essentially what voicemail is? We already have a mechanism to send voices as files—it’s just that not all voicemail systems deliver them in that format. It wouldn’t solve everything, but considering how many scammers rely on real-time urgency in their calls, shifting phone communication toward asynchronous messages could actually help. It would undercut that pressure tactic, and it would also make record-keeping much easier.
- Mashimo 1y agoHow I imagine you ~~calling~~ emailing the fire department: https://youtu.be/uesx85EHRTo https://youtu.be/uesx85EHRTo (The IT crowd - Moss Contacts Fire Department)
- msgodel 1y agoSure, put the emergency hotline on the internet. It already is very special and doesn't use the phone network the way other voice calls do.
- 1y ago
- vorpalhex 1y agoEVE Online has had a functional anti-spam system for many years: it costs you some money to contact someone who doesn't have you in their contacts. The amount is configurable and the feature can be turned off. You as the receiver keep 70% of the fee. Think of how quickly spam would go away.
- AJ007 1y agoBetween the 0 real security and the generational jump in capability fraud now has because of AI, there is no excuse for the continued existence of traditional voice or SMS. We'll never be able to solve compromised devices or social engineering of others, but the idea that anyone/any software in the world can push a message to a device and then immediately communicate with that person is absurd.
- xp84 1y agoAt the risk of going too cliché on AI speculation, imagine a hostile AI (or just a non-aligned one under the control of a big nation-state adversary) with nothing but ability to send spoofed texts and calls, and a mission to harm US interests. It could easily set up thousands of people as unknowing patsies to commit mass terrorist acts, just by giving the AI a small amount of crypto to use in "paying people for gig work" to do tasks. It could start people off with busywork like ferrying harmless packages back and forth, and the ones who proved reliable, eventually would get a much less harmless package to be delivered somewhere sensitive. That could all be orchestrated by human terrorists of course, but it's so much more effective if they could do it in 100 cities at once without almost any (knowing) human labor, and without any detectable foreign involvement.
- unsignedint 1y agoOr just make callers cover all the costs, like in some countries. Still, I really wish there were an option to charge incoming callers as you suggested—because honestly, about 90% of calls I get outside my circle are unsolicited. That way, only the 10% that truly matter would reach me. Right now, I’m on a strict “no-ring” policy: if a call turns out to be legitimate, I’ll call back. But nobody gets real-time PSTN access to me anymore—it’s simply not sustainable.
- patrickhogan1 1y agoSomething changed about 1 year ago where the spam calls I get are 10x higher than in the past. It got so bad I had to change how I use my phone. Any caller not in my contact list goes immediately to voicemail. I’ve tried several robocall blockers, but they tend to cause connectivity issues. If anyone else has this problem, what are you using to prevent robocalls?
- njovin 1y agoSame thing happened to me several years ago. I just send anyone not in my contacts to voicemail (using the iOS setting) and delete all the robocall voicemails about once per month.
- _mlbt 1y agoI’ve given up and just don’t answer calls from anyone that isn’t in my contacts list. If it’s important they’ll text me or leave a voicemail with a callback number.
- bahmboo 1y agoPixel phones. Night and day difference from my wife’s iPhone. Same carrier. It’s simply not an issue.
- BugsJustFindMe 1y agoI have an iPhone and I basically never get spam calls.
- bahmboo 1y agoInteresting. To be clear I get spam calls but they are rejected or screened automatically. If I look through my call history I can see some them. There are most certainly other factors at play. My wife recently switched from a Samsung to a new iPhone which prompted my observation (not a pixel phone of course but still it got worse for her). All anecdata.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
- xp84 1y agoI'll definitely believe it when I don't see those calls, but I could not be more in favor of turning the phone network into a much more "trusted" type of system -- similar to how SSL certs used to be prior to the Let's Encrypt era, where it requires some form of validation of something besides 'existence': Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real. People should be free to configure their devices or phone accounts (A) what countries to accept calls from and (B) whether to accept unverified calls whose numbers are presumably spoofed. Note: i'm aware that SHAKEN/STIR or whatever exists and shares some of that idea, I'm just looking forward to full adoption of something so that I can make those choices described above. Combine this next with ability to report numbers who spam (with the Apple/Google duopoly it should be trivially easy to put a "report spam" button in the call UI) and sanction providers (first financially and eventually with revocation of their credential to sign calls). Maybe 30 years ago it would have been seen as too draconian to prevent someone from being able to call others anonymously but the Internet exists and provides ample avenues for those cliche use cases like "whistleblower needs to talk to journalists" so I'm 100% happy to have 'burdensome regulation' here if it stops scammers from ruining the phone as a usable channel for urgent information like "Your car is ready to pick up from the shop" or "Hi, you're the emergency contact for ____ and they are headed to the hospital."
- bongodongobob 1y ago> Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real. But phone numbers aren't real. They aren't any more real than an IP address. It's arbitrary. This is how VOIP systems work. You just assign a number from your block.
- xp84 1y agoI totally get this, however they are assigned -- meaning someone is responsible for them. If you own the range 212-555-0000 through 9999 and you sign calls for spammers as coming from that range, those numbers should be revoked from your control, or you should be denied the ability to sign those outbound calls/texts so that your calls appear as likely fake. Ideally anyone who owns numbers would stop letting literally anybody do anything with their numbers (the way they do today) because they don't want to lose the numbers or to get banned from operating a PSTN-connected system. The outcome I'm going for is that if you're a spammer you can't find any US phone number owners who will let you use their numbers so you can only send "unsigned" calls that are obviously spam, or sign calls as originating from irresponsible countries, which are easily filtered out by those of us who don't have any friends in the Phillipines or whatever (I get a lot of "DMV" threat texts from +63)
- SilverElfin 1y agoI get relentless text and phone spam calls - both robotic and with humans - from just a few voice over Internet platforms. Bandwidth.com, Neutral Tandem, and ALL the brands associated with Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) like Inteliquent. Many of these companies got cease and desist orders in the past from the FTC. It didn’t help anything. We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.
- reactordev 1y agoShut one down, another pops up in its place.
- homeonthemtn 1y agoOk shut that one down too.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoShut that one down and jail the execs too. The number of people willing to take that chance is finite; it is more finite when the penalty is seen to be consistently applied.
- klipklop 1y agoNot if we actually put the people financing these companies in prison.
- SilverElfin 1y agoSinch just keeps acquiring one company after the other and turning them into the new spam channel. Weirdly the only responsible player seems to be Twilio. The others refuse to identify the spammers that are their customers, and keep saying it’s not their responsibility since they’re a “wholesaler” (their words).
- singpolyma3 1y agoTwilio has historically been a customer of these other companies, so not really at the same level. Though that's been changing recently
- mgkimsal 1y agohttps://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-737A1.txt https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-737A1.txt doc with list of the removed company names.
- unquietwiki 1y agoThere are a LOT of ISPs on this list. I wonder what's going to happen to all the legitimate VOIP users? No more cable phone lines, effectively?
- FateOfNations 1y agoLooks like a lot of small ISPs have been procrastinating about getting their robocalling mitigation/compliance policies implemented, and didn't think the FCC was serious about the “Final Warning”. They'll get their stuff fixed eventualy.
- _fat_santa 1y agoBefore I got my phone number, a woman by the name of "Sade" has the number. Recently I've been getting at least one call per day from the same company regarding an extended auto warranty. I've told them politely that this is the wrong number, they keep calling. I've asked them to take my number off their list and they happily agree to, but they keep calling. I've threatened to contact the FCC is they keep calling yet....they keep calling. I've tried to block their number multiple times, but they just keep fucking calling from different numbers. I honestly don't get the logic of these places. "Hey this guy has told us 20 times in all manner of ways to stop calling him....but I think he might buy an extended warranty on the 21st call!!" Can someone explain to me what the logic of these places is? It just seems like an absolute brain-dead strategy.
- reactordev 1y agoLack of write access to the db, your call will be forwarded to the next available operator.
- delichon 1y agoSade as in de Sade.
- RankingMember 1y agoI never answer any calls from non-contacts because I assume answering automatically flags the number as "a live one" meaning "potential target who picks up their phone" in any number of nefarious databases. If an outside/unknown number needs me they can leave a message and I'll call them back if the message reveals them to be legit.
- jjmarr 1y agoI think there's a database of "known trolls" because I've stopped getting calls after I started consistently wasting their time.
- craftkiller 1y agoI used to get ~6-10 spam calls per day and I would do what you describe: ignore the call. Then I started picking up, immediately muting myself, and waiting. The auto-dialer gives up after exactly 10 seconds of silence and hangs up. This has reduced my spam calls to 1-3 per WEEK. The downside is sometimes real people call (like a contractor your landlord hired), hear silence, and don't say anything themselves because they're waiting for a "hello?". Whereas ignoring the call would let them actually leave a voicemail which would be useful. As I learned recently: sometimes real people don't call back a 2nd time.
- lippihom 1y agoRobocalls are a huge pain but just as annoying is non-stop spam text messages. No idea why Apple doesn't allow for keyword filtering. Spam and robocalls are mostly nonexistent problems on Android.
- barkerja 1y agoIt's not perfect/ideal, but you can basically accomplish keyword filtering using a shortcut powered by a message automation. I've done something similar where during the political season I would have all incoming texts (from unknown numbers) run through an LLM to determine if it was a political message. If so, it'd get deleted immediately.
- rgreen 1y agoi've used Bouncer for years on ios with success to filter non-stop political fundraising texts.
- unsignedint 1y agoThe PSTN is simply not sustainable. It’s a relic of a time when there was no practical way to authenticate or validate calls. Today, with malicious actors able to dial in from anywhere in the world at negligible cost, the system is fundamentally unequipped to handle the abuse it faces. Efforts like STIR/SHAKEN exist, but they’re little more than a band-aid—and not a particularly effective one—because the underlying network was never designed with resilience or trust in mind. I know some people push back on this view, often pointing to edge cases where PSTN’s ubiquity still provides value. But as trust in the system erodes, so does its relevance. And if the majority of people already avoid answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize, its practical utility is clearly diminished.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 1y agoThis is a corollary to Chesterton’s fence. unsignedint’s public good. If you can’t explain the benefit then you can’t tear it down. The PSTN guarantees that all telco operators interoperate. Without it you get what happened with instant messaging. AKA walled gardens. You take for granted the ability to call an iPhone with an Android. The FCC is responsible for maintaining trust, which they have done here. They can incentivize telco providers to curb the spam activity. You don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
- unsignedint 1y agoI think Chesterton’s fence is a fair analogy—but it only works if the “fence” still serves a protective function. With the PSTN, the fence is riddled with holes, and the people meant to maintain it can’t keep up with the erosion. Interoperability was indeed its greatest strength, but today that same universality is what lets malicious actors reach everyone at trivial cost. Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems. The PSTN never evolved those trust layers; instead, it relied on scarcity (call cost, geographic constraints) to keep abuse in check. Once those costs collapsed, the trust model collapsed with them. As for the FCC, sure, they can try to incentivize carriers. But the fact that we need constant regulatory intervention just to keep basic trust afloat suggests the system is no longer structurally sound. Band-aids like STIR/SHAKEN prove the point: we’re bolting authentication onto a protocol that never envisioned it. That might extend its life a little, but it doesn’t make the foundation any less fragile. So the question isn’t whether the PSTN once had value (it did, massively), but whether preserving it now delivers more value than the cost of propping it up. If a good chunk of people already treat unknown calls as spam until proven otherwise, then the social contract around the PSTN has already been broken.
- mavelikara 1y agoMore details: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-694A1.txt https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-694A1.txt
- shrubble 1y agoFor KYC-like needs, foreign companies or bad actors are registering their LLC in Wyoming which satisfies the requirements, according to a friend of mine who’s in the business…
- godelski 1y agoOn a side note, today and yesterday I've been bombarded with spam calls. Even got one while writing this comment. All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years. No voice mail, nothing. It's not even this bad around election time. Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it does make it illegal for legitimate companies to call you. Absent this incident, it did appear to have a significant effect in reducing spam calls when I signed up years ago. Also, here's some info about junk mail[1]. It costs about $6 and lasts 10 years. [0] https://www.donotcall.gov/index.html https://www.donotcall.gov/index.html [1] https://consumer.ftc.gov/how-stop-junk-mail https://consumer.ftc.gov/how-stop-junk-mail
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThe do not call list seems to be a "Spam me, you brute" list. In the beginning, they seemed to take their job seriously, but I doubt that has been the case for many years. Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed, I got zero spoofed calls. I did get a few robocalls, but they weren't spoofed. For a month or so. So that shows the problem can be solved, legislatively. Then, they started coming back, and now, almost every call I get, is spoofed. This includes some legit ones. Also, legit callers should keep in mind that the autodialer companies they employ, might also moonlight as spammers, so they get blacklisted. I have had quite a number of legit calls get listed as spam. Cynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them. That seems to be both sides of the aisle.
- mikestew 1y agoCynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them. Of course they do, and they voted themselves an exception. Same reason some small business in Redmond, WA isn't allowed to put out a sandwich board sign, but 10 months before every election every g*ddamned piece of dirt in Redmond has a political sign stuck into it.
- 1y ago
- zeta0134 1y agoAt this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale. In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list. Which means the scammer, already pretending to live in small town rural USA (where they most certainly are not) has to correctly guess the number of one of my relatives before my pocket actually rings. It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price. I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
- ryandrake 1y agoImagine if the concept of a phone call did not exist. We still have these computers in our pockets, but without the history of the telephone system. Then, one day, an app developer thought: Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing, play a sound, vibrate the device, and put up a full-screen dialog, that this all could be activated remotely by any other device by simply typing in a short numeric code, and that if the recipient pushed a button, the remote attacker could send audio data and activate the recipient's microphone? Most app stores would classify this as malware, yet here we are today with devices that all have built-in apps that do exactly this, and only because of how normalized the legacy idea of a "phone call" is.
- mzajc 1y ago> Every app store that exists would classify this as malware Considering Facebook ([0] and [1] to name a few) is still available, I think that's a pretty high bar to clear. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44401406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44401406 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115
- tempodox 1y agoThat‘s a great example of how technology can change the rules. In the era of rotary phones hardly anyone would have felt the need to describe it that way. But nowadays it‘s appropriate.
- epanchin 1y agoIt’s important to make it clear to Americans that this problem is mostly solved in other countries. It should be possible to end this tomorrow in the US. Spam calls in the UK for example, are rare. All of the spam calls I get are from my US desk number.
- CivBase 1y agoWhy doesn't the FCC put together a new communications solution to replace phone calls? We already have capable devices and robust infrastructure. What's stopping them from dropping a new protocol on top of that? The costs of maintaining this legacy solution only seem to be getting higher by the day.
- gosub100 1y ago[dead]
- coreyp_1 1y agoMaybe I'm just old, but I remember the tv advertisements for the dubious 900 numbers (remember Miss Cleo?) that you could call, but you had to pay for the time. Is there any law that says that I can't just get one of those for use as my personal number and then give that # out as my contact info?
- craftkiller 1y agoThe phone carriers stopped supporting them: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/business/t-s-decision-withdraw-billing-for-900-lines-leaves-call-industry-bind.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/business/t-s-decision-wit...
- dayvid 1y agoI've been getting 2-3 calls a DAY from people pretending to be Google trying to get in my account. Hopefully this action reduces this
- mulmen 1y agoI have received a scam text message every day for the last few months. I haven’t received one yet today. Next time someone says something snide about the government remind them of this enforcement.
- rsyring 1y agoI have been using Pixel phones since they came out and currently have a Pixel 9. They have EXCELLENT spam call blocking. There are a couple other comments below that reference this but I wanted to highlight it at the top. There are other reasons I like Google's phones, but this tops the list. The assistant integration is great for this reason too. I occasionally get calls come through that are likely SPAM but I've learned to let the assistant answer for me. If it's a spammer, then I waste just a small amount of their time. It's especially helpful that Google's Assistant has gotten good enough, AND that people making legit but unsolicited calls (like doctor's offices), that people calling don't hang up right away and actually answer the assistant. So I can see what they say and then answer when it's a legit call. The ratio of SPAM calls to legit calls from unrecognized numbers is still higher for SPAM. But, the frequency is low enough (maybe a few a week), and dealing with them is so easy, that the distraction/annoyance factor is very low to the point that I'm not personally bothered by it anymore. I've tried to get my grandma to switch to a Pixel phone for her main phone number at home, just for SPAM blocking, but she won't. I don't know how she stands getting multiple calls per hour, it's crazy to put up with when we are there.
- mattmaroon 1y ago“ The FCC is doing everything in its power to fight back against these malicious and illegal calls.” Umm, no it isn’t. This is 2025. The technology to fix this is not complicated, but the people who can implement it simply don’t want to. If Verizon/ATT/T Mo got fined $25 every time a robo call went through they’d find a way to stop it really fast. Create KYC verification systems and use metadata to route non-verified calls to a spam voicemail folder, problem solved.
- bitbang 1y agoFor anybody on an android phone,I highly recommend https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker It is highly configurable with every feature I've ever wanted but could never find for call filtering in the the app store. I've essentially set mine so that if the calling number is not in my contacts, or is not a number I've called in the last 90 days, the phone never runs and the call is sent to voice mail. But it supports lots of other mechanisms to filter with like regex, or how many times the number has called within a given timeframe.
- rstuart4133 1y agoMeanwhile, here in Australia ... It used to be as bad as others describe here, if not worse. A few years ago my 92 yo mother disconnected her land line because she was getting 20 calls a day. The spammers had figured out the number range of her retirement village, and hammered it mercilessly. But other day I was reflecting on how oddly silent it has become on the phone spam front. This article made me wonder - just how long had it been since I received a spam call or SMS. So I looked at the phones block list. It seems the answer is 4 months of spammless bliss on my phone. The ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority - the government body that polices this sort of thing) have been hammering on about this for years, apparently without success. I had given up on them. Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job. I salute you sirs and madams. Good work. Not just good - excellent work. In fact brilliant. Your efforts make me proud to be an Australian.
- pdabbadabba 1y ago> Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job. How?
- rstuart4133 1y agoA more concrete example of how: https://www.abc.net.au/news/105697996 https://www.abc.net.au/news/105697996
- rstuart4133 1y agoI didn't even know it had happened. I can't say. But if I was to speculate ... The ACMA effectively killed email spam originating from Australian businesses years (decades?) ago. The government passed legislation allowing ACMA to impose big fines on companies that sent spam, they then set set up a web form you could upload spam emails to, and a couple of years later there was no email spam ... from Australia. It didn't reduce email spam much, as most spam originated outside of Australia. The other possible choke point was email Inbox suppliers like Google and Hotmail, but they are also located outside of Australia, beyond the ACMA's reach. Still, it did mean when I set up an email / web server for a local club, if I black listed most of the world's IP addresses outside of Australia, it killed all email spam. The question in my mind was: if they could do it for email, why couldn't they do it for phones after years of trying? They had stopped Australian business from sending phone spam of course, so it all came from internationals just as with email. But this time they did have jurisdiction over the equivalent of the "inbox providers" - the Australia telco's. Most of the overseas spam did come from Australia phone numbers. If it didn't people would just ignore it. I can only guess those telco's fought the good fight to be allowed to send and charge for spam successfully for a long time. I don't know why they were successful in that fight for as long as they were, but the timing does look suggestive. The USA equivalent of the Republicans run the place federally during most of that time. Now, partly due to example set by Trump, they lost in a landslide to our equivalent of Democrats. These "Democrats" won three years ago too, but now they look to moving as if they have a mandate to do whatever they want. While this mob speaks in woke tones, there looks to be an iron will fist behind their "kind" words. They are getting the ACMA(?) to enforce age verification scheme internet access for example, something I think is worse than a waste of time. But they are hard and determined taskmasters, so they may make it stick.
- anonymousiam 1y agoThe only Google service that I still regularly use is Google Voice. They've partnered with NoMoRobo and their call screening really works. I get 2-3 spam calls and a few spam SMS texts per day, and they are all filtered so I don't see them unless I look in the Spam folder.
- jeffiel 1y agoLots of folks hit the nail on the head, it's a structural problem with a telco network that was never designed to be open. I wrote about it back in 2019 in case folks are interested [0] [0] https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/insights/compliance/your-phone-your-call-eliminating-robocalls https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/insights/compliance/your-p...
- mrcwinn 1y agoYou know, never once in my life have I ever subscribed to anything or agreed at checkout to receiving marketing communications. Ever. And yet my inbox is flooded at all times with retailers I’ve interacted with. I literally don’t care about Gemini because I’ve just given up on using Gmail. If you need to reach me, you probably won’t.
- m463 1y agostill got plenty of "spam risk" calls today.
- Ms-J 1y agoPeople don't answer their phones any longer because they are tired of the scams. The government could fix this but they won't. They are more busy creating new ways to spy on good citizens.