The thing that puzzles me is why is the goal to stop the <i>robocaller</i>, and punish them, and not the punish the company that hires them? Okay, we can't find the scammer easily, but they're advertising a service, and we CAN find that service company!<p>If the car warranty company that keeps calling me is in the US, aren't they liable for contracting for an illegal service? If they're out of the US, can't we impose some block on all payments from the US to them?
My grandma just lost her best friend to scammers. Through lies, constant harassing phone calls, and intimidation, they got him to "invest" his life's savings. They even sent locksmith to change the locks on his house, and they called his new phone number the day after he changed to it. By the end he was so stressed out he couldn't sleep and was having all kinds of physical issues. Died just a few days ago.<p>We can't start catching/blocking scammers and robocallers soon enough. The telcos can get us in touch with people from other continents, but they can't spare the time to stop or trace the calls? Their "solution" for my grandma's friend was to tell him not to have a phone for a few weeks. LOL.
Just get rid of spoofing phone numbers and this problem goes away. Make every caller reveal their phone number of origin and give consumers the ability to easily block anonymous calls and overseas calls and the ability of scammers to contact people via phone goes away.<p>Phone companies don't want to do this because implementing the no-spoofing infrastructure requires money and they also make a lot of money off scammers business lines.<p>The telephone infrastructure is critical to a nation and anyone abusing it should not be tolerated, especially scammers.
I’m not <i>as</i> concerned about Robocalls as I used to be, because I just don’t answer the phone anymore.<p>The new issue I have is spam and sexual text messages, particularly when they are sent to my kids.<p>Both my kids have phones to interface with their CGMs (glucose monitors) so that I can track their numbers remotely. Both my kids get adult text spam from random invalid numbers about once a day. They are 8 and 11.<p>I called AT&T and said I want to block all text messages, I just want data and voice (and iMessage). I spent over an hour on the phone, they weren’t able to do it.
I've thought for years that if there were, say, a $20 fine for each robocall, with $10 going to the reporting consumer and $10 going to the phone company, robocalls would very soon be a thing of the past.
I just use the "Silence unknown callers" feature in iOS - It's a godsend. I also noticed after a few months that I actually have a lot fewer unknown calls now. (You can look to see missed calls)
Make it illegal for calls originating from international origins to lack caller identification. Also likely unenforceable, but again, it sets the basis.<p>Since I sense that caller ID is completely spoofable for calls from international networks, now add some technical salt: Require domestic phone companies at the edges to add some kind of "network of origin" prefix to caller IDs from international origins. This is prepended to what is provided by the outside network, even if they provided "no caller ID" or "unknown caller".<p>Make it that domestic calls don't have this prefix and it is illegal to insert anything that resembles one.<p>This way I can see incoming calls from network Xyzabc for the junk they are. And networks will each get a reputation from consumers.<p>I can dream.
This is 10 or 20 years too late and still too limited in scope. Allowing up to three calls per 30 days? Just set up 10 companies and hit everyone, everyday, forever.<p>I don't understand why digital protections are so limited.<p>The incentive for those in "untouchable jurisdictions" to commit cybercrimes skews entirely towards high reward, low/no risk.<p>I honestly just wish I could cut off all phone calls originating from out of country. If this could be technologically enforced, I think it would dramatically lower scam calls.
Thankfully where I live robocalls only target landlines and rarely cell phones.<p>My telco moved to voip, and since then I have asterisk pbx software running that only makes the phone ring if the call is from a whitelist of numbers, otherwise it makes it look like the phone is ringing for a while and then goes straight to voice mail.<p>This works well as 99% of the robo dialers detect the voice mail and don't leave a message. If I was getting lots of voicemails I would probably setup IVR prompts to stifle them.
The FCC shouldn’t even need to tell them to do this. The utter signal pollution this has caused has practically destroyed their business. People don’t even answer the phone in their own home.
How much do we actually need the phone network? I exchange occasional non-iMessage SMS or place a call to order a pizza. Rare inbound calls always go straight to voicemail, which I would strongly prefer to read over listen.<p>Why can't we get data-only phones with no phone number? Fastest way to solve problems with SS7 is to disconnect from the phone network except through a gateway.