5 ms·

FTC Offering $50,000 to Anyone Who Can Stop Robocalls

37 points by narad 14y ago

chrisaycock 14y ago
Previous discussion from this morning: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672068 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672068
thebooktocome 14y ago
Probably not enough; the economic incentive to robocall is a couple orders of magnitude higher.
- mamamia 14y ago
  Are providers getting paid off by robocalling services? You would think that this would be treated the same way that spam is.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    They are getting paid off in the sense that robocallers probably have sizable phone-bills. The economics of sending emails and making phonecalls are different.
sahaj 14y ago
I believe Google Voice has already solved this problem. Just as with email, click report spam and the whole user-base benefits. I suppose Google could share that phone number list with others providers.
- elliottcarlson 14y ago
  With the ease of obtaining phone numbers there probably needs to be a different approach as well. Blocking a set of their outbound numbers would prove nothing more than a brief annoyance - not to mention CID spoofing still being a possibility from VOIP companies that allow it.
  - ffk 14y ago
    Furthering this argument, if a robocaller uses a phone number briefly and discards the number after it is banned, the next user attempting to make a legitimate emergency call using the banned number may not get through.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      But that is a good thing, since it will make an incentive to prevent robocalls, just like there is an incentive to not forward mails.
    - elliottcarlson 14y ago
      Excellent point - it seems that tightening up the ease of getting a new number would be important - yet that just causes other issues, people just don't want to have to jump through hoops.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  That requires a centralized management/routing system and sufficiently strong point of origin / point of control auditing. My understanding of present voice systems is that the second is strongly lacking. Content-based analysis (possible for asyncronous text-based comms such as email) doesn't fit so well with voice.
- pixie_ 14y ago
  I agree. On top of this we need a 'mark as spam' button next to the hang up button in Android.
chime 14y ago
I do not fully comprehend the problem so please correct me if I am wrong. Every now and then I get a phone call from http://mrnumber.com/1-360-460-5964 http://mrnumber.com/1-360-460-5964 on my cell that blares a ship's horn into my ear, saying I can get a free cruise trip. If I understand it correctly, someone out there is initiating the connection, be it using Twilio or any of the tons of other IP-to-PSTN gateways. While Caller ID can be spoofed, the call itself should be possible to trace back to the initiating gateway using warrants and assistance from the intermediary parties. Right? If so, then what's the problem following through on this and having the gateway ban the customer and file charges against them? Is it because the spammers are fly-by-nighters using stolen CCs to make dummy Twilio accounts automatically? Is that what FCC's trying to catch?
- dholowiski 14y ago
  It's not just twilio. Anyone with a direct connection (ISDN, T1/T3 etc) to a telco can spoof caller ID. There are also thousands of SIP phone providers and you can spoof caller ID from almost all of them- I've done it and you need nothing more than a SIP account and Astersik. It would be trivial to build a robodialer that could cycle through hundreds of SIP accounts using trials, hacked accounts and stolen credit cards. You could put it on a VPS created using a stolen credit card and be un-traceable. Or, you could just do what everyone else does and locate yourself overseas, in a country with weak laws.
- stanleydrew 14y ago
  Just to be clear, CallerID cannot be spoofed arbitrarily on outbound calls from Twilio. To use a phone number as CallerID you must first verify that you own it via a phone call loop wherein you enter a verification code.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  I feel this weird sense of camaraderie with you since I've been getting the same call from the same number over the past few months. :P Somewhat akin to having gone through the same class together under a terrible teacher.
- potatolicious 14y ago
motiejus 14y ago
This is exactly what I built SoundPatty for, but for (much) smaller scale. We needed to capture certain robo-calls incoming to our call-centre, via GSM. Link: https://github.com/Motiejus/SoundPatty https://github.com/Motiejus/SoundPatty Of course, this program is only a small part of the solution. But it works very well for matching the patterns in a sound record. Unfortunately, I am European, and cannot participate. Feel free to use it, though. License is MIT.
- tzm 14y ago
  Excellent project. I noticed you released a video demo in 2010. Do you have examples or documentation on the latest updates?
sjg007 14y ago
How about an audio captcha service? Seems simple enough with voice recognition so widely available? Might confuse my grandparents though..
- thomc 14y ago
  I'm in the UK and mostly work from my home office so robocalls and the like became really annoying. I installed a "trueCall"[1] device and it completely stopped robocallers, those "I'm calling from Windows" scammers (which were actually funny) and others. I just use the basic setting where it tells the caller "Press 3 to be connected. If you are a cold caller please hang up and do not call again". I'm actually a little surprised how effective it is. If the robocall were to blast DTMF tones down the phone it could automatically bypass and I'd need a more advanced setting (of which there are many). But I haven't needed to do that in over a year of operation. Only downside so far is my bank has recently taken to calling me up to verify transactions, using a robocaller, so I may need to give them my mobile. I considered setting up asterisk to do something similar since the device was a little pricey, but decided the time saving was worth it. It also records my calls to a SD card if needed. Now my land line is the disposable one I give out and my mobile number is the one I'm careful with. Not affiliated with them, just a satisfied user. [1] http://www.truecall.co.uk/ http://www.truecall.co.uk/
agildehaus 14y ago
They could start by banning it for politicians. There goes 50% of them for me ...
michael_h 14y ago
I make sure to hold on the line for the entire call. If it says 'Press 4 to speak to a representative', I press 4. When they come on the line, I keep them occupied for as long as I possibly can. Every minute on the phone with me is a minute that they aren't trying to scam my grandmother. If enough people would do this, I would hope that the ecomonics of it would shift.
tvladeck 14y ago
I can't resist. David Vladeck is my dad, and I'm extremely proud of the job he's doing at the FTC.
rwallace 14y ago
E-mail spam is a problem because sending e-mail is basically free. It costs money to make a telephone call; why doesn't that wipe out the economic incentive? Are telephone calls too cheap? If so, why isn't a simple price increase the solution?
- dholowiski 14y ago
  At volume, it's really close to free to make a phone call. Just like sending email - there is a cost (electricity, data, infrastructure), it's just extremely close to nothing.
  - rwallace 14y ago
    How? Do American phone companies give bulk discounts on call charges or something?
simonsarris 14y ago
I wish the prize were larger. I live in New Hampshire, a "swing state." This means that, unlike for most of the U.S., my vote matters in presidential elections.[1] I imagine this is why I get ~6 calls a day by numbers in Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Iowa, etc. All political as far as I can tell. I've given up on answering my phone until after the election. --------------- [1] The electoral college bothers me. My presidential vote matters. If you're reading this from California or Texas, yours simply doesn't. You're a foregone conclusion. I would imagine that if we abolished the electoral college we might see 80%+ turnout in smaller states, since the only way to be "represented" on the national scale would be to have as many of your people vote as possible.
- maratd 14y ago
  > The electoral college bothers me. It shouldn't. > If you're reading this from California or Texas, yours simply doesn't. This is patently false. You only think this way because you were told to. This is a fine opportunity for those who don't live in a "battleground" state to really vote for the guy they want to. There are many presidential contenders, and regardless of your beliefs, you will find someone who fits them much more closely if you simply look. You can vote for Romney or Obama, but I know you'll walk out of that polling place feeling dirty. I'll walk out of mine knowing that I voted for the guy I really wanted to vote for and didn't shoot myself in the foot doing so. If enough people realize this and do this, you'll get a much more dynamic political system and you'll send a very clear message to both the Republican and Democrat party. > I would imagine that if we abolished the electoral college we might see 80%+ turnout in smaller states The only places that see that kind of turnout are 3rd world countries where everything has gone to shit. They need to go out and vote or things will just get worse for them. You will never see that kind of turnout in any Western country.
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    This is a fine opportunity for those who don't live in a "battleground" state to really vote for the guy they want to. Yes, quite a few states are sure things for one major party candidate or the other, and those of us who live in "safe" states like that can vote for anyone we please without undue worry about actually influencing the election result. My state (Minnesota) has cast its Electoral College votes for the candidate of the same major party for as long as I have been able to vote (more consistently than any other state in the country). Minnesota has fairly reasonable ballot-access laws, so there are ten different presidential candidates on the Minnesota ballot. There is also a third party that is a "major party" for purposes of Minnesota law, and that party is running a United States Senate candidate this year. I have a lot of choices here. Over the years, I have split my ticket when voting such that I have till not voted for candidates from six different political parties. I will be splitting my ticket again this year.
tomjen3 14y ago
That is easy. Just make the punishment high enough. It is an economic activity - nobody would do it if it was a capital offense.
narcissus 14y ago
Growing up in Australia, I was jealous of local, outgoing landline calls being free in North America. Having said that, and living here now, I wonder how many of these ridiculous scam, spam and random calls I wouldn't get if the callers had at least a few cents per call tacked on to the price? I mean, I have no doubt that they probably pay some provider for some access to the network, but if calls had essentially 'a few cents' at the bare minimum... I know normal people would have to pay the same thing, but still. And who knows... having not been in Australia for so long, things may be just as awful there now too, but I do know that I never hear my mother complaining about all the calls.
- thomc 14y ago
  Same here, from the UK and always wished the outgoing local calls were free like the US. However, many of the robocalls and scam calls coming into my line these days appear to come from overseas. I don't know how they can afford to do that but I've seen reports that some are using spare capacity in legitimate overseas call centres as a side-business. Otherwise you have to assume they make enough from their scam to be worth it, or purchase the capacity on credit and do a runner before paying the bill, or using stolen credit cards. Actually there are many ways now that I think about it! Point being that charging for outgoing calls won't stop the robocalls but will cost legitimate users.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Often they would hack people's VoIP or telephone exchange and just route calls through that.
lucb1e 14y ago
I didn't even know what Robocalls were until looking them up on Wikipedia just now. This is common in Canada it seems? And I assume it's a bad problem (worth 50 grand) because they're simply spam, only without available spamfilters?
Xcelerate 14y ago
Couldn't you apply some kind of hash function to the first few seconds of each phone conversation? Then when you get multiple matching hashes, you analyze where these calls are coming from, perform some kind of statistics magic, and determine what numbers to block?
rorrr 14y ago
Increase the fines. Where can I have my $50K?
dsr_ 14y ago
Require all telcos to provide this service: After a robocaller hangs up, the complainee dials *555 (or something similar). The switch notes all the details of the previous inbound call to the complainee and the complainee's phone number. This information is sent to an FTC database. When an originating number gets a threshold of complaints, a sample of recent complainees is called by a human to get a quick interview as to what happened. That's the end of the technical requirements. After that, policies and prosecution.

37 points by narad 14y ago

Previous discussion from this morning: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672068 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672068

thebooktocome 14y ago

Probably not enough; the economic incentive to robocall is a couple orders of magnitude higher.

mamamia 14y ago
Are providers getting paid off by robocalling services? You would think that this would be treated the same way that spam is.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  They are getting paid off in the sense that robocallers probably have sizable phone-bills. The economics of sending emails and making phonecalls are different.

sahaj 14y ago

I believe Google Voice has already solved this problem. Just as with email, click report spam and the whole user-base benefits. I suppose Google could share that phone number list with others providers.

elliottcarlson 14y ago
With the ease of obtaining phone numbers there probably needs to be a different approach as well. Blocking a set of their outbound numbers would prove nothing more than a brief annoyance - not to mention CID spoofing still being a possibility from VOIP companies that allow it.
- ffk 14y ago
  Furthering this argument, if a robocaller uses a phone number briefly and discards the number after it is banned, the next user attempting to make a legitimate emergency call using the banned number may not get through.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    But that is a good thing, since it will make an incentive to prevent robocalls, just like there is an incentive to not forward mails.
  - elliottcarlson 14y ago
    Excellent point - it seems that tightening up the ease of getting a new number would be important - yet that just causes other issues, people just don't want to have to jump through hoops.
dredmorbius 14y ago
That requires a centralized management/routing system and sufficiently strong point of origin / point of control auditing. My understanding of present voice systems is that the second is strongly lacking. Content-based analysis (possible for asyncronous text-based comms such as email) doesn't fit so well with voice.
pixie_ 14y ago
I agree. On top of this we need a 'mark as spam' button next to the hang up button in Android.

chime 14y ago

I do not fully comprehend the problem so please correct me if I am wrong. Every now and then I get a phone call from http://mrnumber.com/1-360-460-5964 http://mrnumber.com/1-360-460-5964 on my cell that blares a ship's horn into my ear, saying I can get a free cruise trip. If I understand it correctly, someone out there is initiating the connection, be it using Twilio or any of the tons of other IP-to-PSTN gateways. While Caller ID can be spoofed, the call itself should be possible to trace back to the initiating gateway using warrants and assistance from the intermediary parties. Right? If so, then what's the problem following through on this and having the gateway ban the customer and file charges against them? Is it because the spammers are fly-by-nighters using stolen CCs to make dummy Twilio accounts automatically? Is that what FCC's trying to catch?

dholowiski 14y ago
It's not just twilio. Anyone with a direct connection (ISDN, T1/T3 etc) to a telco can spoof caller ID. There are also thousands of SIP phone providers and you can spoof caller ID from almost all of them- I've done it and you need nothing more than a SIP account and Astersik. It would be trivial to build a robodialer that could cycle through hundreds of SIP accounts using trials, hacked accounts and stolen credit cards. You could put it on a VPS created using a stolen credit card and be un-traceable. Or, you could just do what everyone else does and locate yourself overseas, in a country with weak laws.
stanleydrew 14y ago
Just to be clear, CallerID cannot be spoofed arbitrarily on outbound calls from Twilio. To use a phone number as CallerID you must first verify that you own it via a phone call loop wherein you enter a verification code.
hkmurakami 14y ago
I feel this weird sense of camaraderie with you since I've been getting the same call from the same number over the past few months. :P Somewhat akin to having gone through the same class together under a terrible teacher.
potatolicious 14y ago

motiejus 14y ago

This is exactly what I built SoundPatty for, but for (much) smaller scale. We needed to capture certain robo-calls incoming to our call-centre, via GSM. Link: https://github.com/Motiejus/SoundPatty https://github.com/Motiejus/SoundPatty Of course, this program is only a small part of the solution. But it works very well for matching the patterns in a sound record. Unfortunately, I am European, and cannot participate. Feel free to use it, though. License is MIT.

tzm 14y ago
Excellent project. I noticed you released a video demo in 2010. Do you have examples or documentation on the latest updates?

sjg007 14y ago

How about an audio captcha service? Seems simple enough with voice recognition so widely available? Might confuse my grandparents though..

thomc 14y ago
I'm in the UK and mostly work from my home office so robocalls and the like became really annoying. I installed a "trueCall"[1] device and it completely stopped robocallers, those "I'm calling from Windows" scammers (which were actually funny) and others. I just use the basic setting where it tells the caller "Press 3 to be connected. If you are a cold caller please hang up and do not call again". I'm actually a little surprised how effective it is. If the robocall were to blast DTMF tones down the phone it could automatically bypass and I'd need a more advanced setting (of which there are many). But I haven't needed to do that in over a year of operation. Only downside so far is my bank has recently taken to calling me up to verify transactions, using a robocaller, so I may need to give them my mobile. I considered setting up asterisk to do something similar since the device was a little pricey, but decided the time saving was worth it. It also records my calls to a SD card if needed. Now my land line is the disposable one I give out and my mobile number is the one I'm careful with. Not affiliated with them, just a satisfied user. [1] http://www.truecall.co.uk/ http://www.truecall.co.uk/

agildehaus 14y ago

They could start by banning it for politicians. There goes 50% of them for me ...

michael_h 14y ago

I make sure to hold on the line for the entire call. If it says 'Press 4 to speak to a representative', I press 4. When they come on the line, I keep them occupied for as long as I possibly can. Every minute on the phone with me is a minute that they aren't trying to scam my grandmother. If enough people would do this, I would hope that the ecomonics of it would shift.

tvladeck 14y ago

I can't resist. David Vladeck is my dad, and I'm extremely proud of the job he's doing at the FTC.

rwallace 14y ago

E-mail spam is a problem because sending e-mail is basically free. It costs money to make a telephone call; why doesn't that wipe out the economic incentive? Are telephone calls too cheap? If so, why isn't a simple price increase the solution?

dholowiski 14y ago
At volume, it's really close to free to make a phone call. Just like sending email - there is a cost (electricity, data, infrastructure), it's just extremely close to nothing.
- rwallace 14y ago
  How? Do American phone companies give bulk discounts on call charges or something?

simonsarris 14y ago

I wish the prize were larger. I live in New Hampshire, a "swing state." This means that, unlike for most of the U.S., my vote matters in presidential elections.[1] I imagine this is why I get ~6 calls a day by numbers in Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Iowa, etc. All political as far as I can tell. I've given up on answering my phone until after the election. --------------- [1] The electoral college bothers me. My presidential vote matters. If you're reading this from California or Texas, yours simply doesn't. You're a foregone conclusion. I would imagine that if we abolished the electoral college we might see 80%+ turnout in smaller states, since the only way to be "represented" on the national scale would be to have as many of your people vote as possible.

maratd 14y ago
> The electoral college bothers me. It shouldn't. > If you're reading this from California or Texas, yours simply doesn't. This is patently false. You only think this way because you were told to. This is a fine opportunity for those who don't live in a "battleground" state to really vote for the guy they want to. There are many presidential contenders, and regardless of your beliefs, you will find someone who fits them much more closely if you simply look. You can vote for Romney or Obama, but I know you'll walk out of that polling place feeling dirty. I'll walk out of mine knowing that I voted for the guy I really wanted to vote for and didn't shoot myself in the foot doing so. If enough people realize this and do this, you'll get a much more dynamic political system and you'll send a very clear message to both the Republican and Democrat party. > I would imagine that if we abolished the electoral college we might see 80%+ turnout in smaller states The only places that see that kind of turnout are 3rd world countries where everything has gone to shit. They need to go out and vote or things will just get worse for them. You will never see that kind of turnout in any Western country.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  This is a fine opportunity for those who don't live in a "battleground" state to really vote for the guy they want to. Yes, quite a few states are sure things for one major party candidate or the other, and those of us who live in "safe" states like that can vote for anyone we please without undue worry about actually influencing the election result. My state (Minnesota) has cast its Electoral College votes for the candidate of the same major party for as long as I have been able to vote (more consistently than any other state in the country). Minnesota has fairly reasonable ballot-access laws, so there are ten different presidential candidates on the Minnesota ballot. There is also a third party that is a "major party" for purposes of Minnesota law, and that party is running a United States Senate candidate this year. I have a lot of choices here. Over the years, I have split my ticket when voting such that I have till not voted for candidates from six different political parties. I will be splitting my ticket again this year.

tomjen3 14y ago

That is easy. Just make the punishment high enough. It is an economic activity - nobody would do it if it was a capital offense.

narcissus 14y ago

Growing up in Australia, I was jealous of local, outgoing landline calls being free in North America. Having said that, and living here now, I wonder how many of these ridiculous scam, spam and random calls I wouldn't get if the callers had at least a few cents per call tacked on to the price? I mean, I have no doubt that they probably pay some provider for some access to the network, but if calls had essentially 'a few cents' at the bare minimum... I know normal people would have to pay the same thing, but still. And who knows... having not been in Australia for so long, things may be just as awful there now too, but I do know that I never hear my mother complaining about all the calls.

thomc 14y ago
Same here, from the UK and always wished the outgoing local calls were free like the US. However, many of the robocalls and scam calls coming into my line these days appear to come from overseas. I don't know how they can afford to do that but I've seen reports that some are using spare capacity in legitimate overseas call centres as a side-business. Otherwise you have to assume they make enough from their scam to be worth it, or purchase the capacity on credit and do a runner before paying the bill, or using stolen credit cards. Actually there are many ways now that I think about it! Point being that charging for outgoing calls won't stop the robocalls but will cost legitimate users.
- rmc 14y ago
  Often they would hack people's VoIP or telephone exchange and just route calls through that.

lucb1e 14y ago

I didn't even know what Robocalls were until looking them up on Wikipedia just now. This is common in Canada it seems? And I assume it's a bad problem (worth 50 grand) because they're simply spam, only without available spamfilters?

Xcelerate 14y ago

Couldn't you apply some kind of hash function to the first few seconds of each phone conversation? Then when you get multiple matching hashes, you analyze where these calls are coming from, perform some kind of statistics magic, and determine what numbers to block?

rorrr 14y ago

Increase the fines. Where can I have my $50K?

dsr_ 14y ago

Require all telcos to provide this service: After a robocaller hangs up, the complainee dials *555 (or something similar). The switch notes all the details of the previous inbound call to the complainee and the complainee's phone number. This information is sent to an FTC database. When an originating number gets a threshold of complaints, a sample of recent complainees is called by a human to get a quick interview as to what happened. That's the end of the technical requirements. After that, policies and prosecution.