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The best technical solution I've seen is a spam review fee that turns into a reward and charged to the next closest originating peer. For example say you get a

The best technical solution I've seen is a spam review fee that turns into a reward and charged to the next closest originating peer. For example say you get a spam call. You notify your service provider and pay $10 to have them review the call recording to verify that its spam. An employee listens to the call and determines that it is, in fact, spam. You get a $100 reward for reporting spam and your service provider forwards the charge (+10%=$110) to the peer network where the spam call originated. They will in turn forward it to the next peer, or if the originator is a customer, charge and/or close the offending account. If this system is mandatory then the problem will quickly sort itself out.

saidnooneever 2mo ago
its unlikely going to be worth the costs involved for the telco to do this reviewing. perhaps AI systems and other filters could be used but ultimately its tons of time needed because audio takes time to play. a lot of cases will be clearcut instabans but for the ones that are not it requires all of them to be reviewed with _some_ depth and then some with much more. its also prone to mistakes which is another process that needs to be managed etc. from a consumer standpoint this sounds super good ofc tho. i will post my phone nr everywhere :)
- infogulch 2mo ago
  Why? They get paid $10 every time spam is reported regardless of the outcome. Trained staff listening at 3x speed with AI assistance could classify 3 obvious spam calls in a minute. If you can't turn $1800/hr per employee into a profit center I don't know what to tell you. That's a lot of money to cover for extreme outliers. Eventually the obvious spam callers would all quit and the volume would reduce to a handful of borderline cases. So the spam department wouldn't make a lot of money anymore, but the volume would be so low it would barely register.
  - Kon5ole 2mo ago
    But your idea is basically that the telco pays anyone 90 dollars per spam call they receive, how does that become a profit center? They can't get the money from the spammers, if they could this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
    - infogulch 2mo ago
      They get the money from the peer networks that are the source of the spammers. If they don't cough up then you void your peering agreement. If they try to route around through a different trusted peer then that peer takes the hit. If its your own customers then you can do something about it. VOIP peers would quickly run into trouble and they'd probably require new customers to keep a spam deposit, carefully monitor their calls, and have a ramp up period that limits their outbound call rate and lifts it over time. I don't see a downside yet.
      - Kon5ole 2mo ago
        >They get the money from the peer networks that are the source of the spammers. What peer networks? Vodaphone, AT&T or whatever the largest operator in India is? You're going to cut off India because someone there calls people claiming to be Microsoft selling antivirus protection? Refuse calls from AT&T? Nah man, you're not. Also not from a customer that ordered 100 numbers last month and is defunct this month, leaving you with 100 000 confirmed spam calls to pay for. If it was possible to simply charge the spammers money, this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
    - dredmorbius 2mo ago
      Peers, with a bonding obligation, and no transit offered to unbonded (never bothered, bond rejected/expired) carriers. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679> from a few days back.
  - dredmorbius 2mo ago
    Volume and calling patterns alone should be sufficient to identify spam calls in most cases. Audio analysis (probably AI/LLM-based) might be invoked on some, but even that is probably overkill. Better: an appeals / review process which more-or-less automatically grants an initial reverse judgement, though if complaints continue from additional sources, that decision is reversed. The real goal of my variant of this proposal isn't to nail the call originators but the networks (carriers) which either serve as origin or transit this traffic.
- dredmorbius 2mo ago
  A few points to consider: 1. Phone spam is pervasive. Single actors are responsible for billions of calls per month within the US alone. 2. The goal in setting the liability charge high is to create an incentive to propagate investigations up the chain. $10 * 1 billion does create a substantial incentive to a phone operator to pursue actions. Especially if a large fraction of the traffic is peered from a small number of sources, if not a single source. I'd really like to see a serious attempt at pointing out possible abuses or issues with the system, though I think it could work, and may be necessary to address the fundamental economic incentives spurring phone spam. See my own variant here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679>.
dredmorbius 2mo ago
Not sure where you ran across that, but I'd made a similar suggestion a few days back on HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679>. I'm not aware of similar proposals (specifically: chaining liability through the route of call transmission).
- infogulch 2mo ago
  I think I'd first seen the idea on HN, but I don't recognize your comment specifically.

saidnooneever 2mo ago

its unlikely going to be worth the costs involved for the telco to do this reviewing. perhaps AI systems and other filters could be used but ultimately its tons of time needed because audio takes time to play. a lot of cases will be clearcut instabans but for the ones that are not it requires all of them to be reviewed with _some_ depth and then some with much more. its also prone to mistakes which is another process that needs to be managed etc. from a consumer standpoint this sounds super good ofc tho. i will post my phone nr everywhere :)

infogulch 2mo ago
Why? They get paid $10 every time spam is reported regardless of the outcome. Trained staff listening at 3x speed with AI assistance could classify 3 obvious spam calls in a minute. If you can't turn $1800/hr per employee into a profit center I don't know what to tell you. That's a lot of money to cover for extreme outliers. Eventually the obvious spam callers would all quit and the volume would reduce to a handful of borderline cases. So the spam department wouldn't make a lot of money anymore, but the volume would be so low it would barely register.
- Kon5ole 2mo ago
  But your idea is basically that the telco pays anyone 90 dollars per spam call they receive, how does that become a profit center? They can't get the money from the spammers, if they could this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
  - infogulch 2mo ago
    They get the money from the peer networks that are the source of the spammers. If they don't cough up then you void your peering agreement. If they try to route around through a different trusted peer then that peer takes the hit. If its your own customers then you can do something about it. VOIP peers would quickly run into trouble and they'd probably require new customers to keep a spam deposit, carefully monitor their calls, and have a ramp up period that limits their outbound call rate and lifts it over time. I don't see a downside yet.
    - Kon5ole 2mo ago
      >They get the money from the peer networks that are the source of the spammers. What peer networks? Vodaphone, AT&T or whatever the largest operator in India is? You're going to cut off India because someone there calls people claiming to be Microsoft selling antivirus protection? Refuse calls from AT&T? Nah man, you're not. Also not from a customer that ordered 100 numbers last month and is defunct this month, leaving you with 100 000 confirmed spam calls to pay for. If it was possible to simply charge the spammers money, this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
  - dredmorbius 2mo ago
    Peers, with a bonding obligation, and no transit offered to unbonded (never bothered, bond rejected/expired) carriers. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679> from a few days back.
- dredmorbius 2mo ago
  Volume and calling patterns alone should be sufficient to identify spam calls in most cases. Audio analysis (probably AI/LLM-based) might be invoked on some, but even that is probably overkill. Better: an appeals / review process which more-or-less automatically grants an initial reverse judgement, though if complaints continue from additional sources, that decision is reversed. The real goal of my variant of this proposal isn't to nail the call originators but the networks (carriers) which either serve as origin or transit this traffic.
dredmorbius 2mo ago
A few points to consider: 1. Phone spam is pervasive. Single actors are responsible for billions of calls per month within the US alone. 2. The goal in setting the liability charge high is to create an incentive to propagate investigations up the chain. $10 * 1 billion does create a substantial incentive to a phone operator to pursue actions. Especially if a large fraction of the traffic is peered from a small number of sources, if not a single source. I'd really like to see a serious attempt at pointing out possible abuses or issues with the system, though I think it could work, and may be necessary to address the fundamental economic incentives spurring phone spam. See my own variant here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679>.

dredmorbius 2mo ago

Not sure where you ran across that, but I'd made a similar suggestion a few days back on HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129679>. I'm not aware of similar proposals (specifically: chaining liability through the route of call transmission).

infogulch 2mo ago
I think I'd first seen the idea on HN, but I don't recognize your comment specifically.