FCC closes telemarketing loophole used by scammers

This is nice and perhaps actually useful for going after international organized criminals...but still doesn&#x27;t prevent anything. We need actual authentication for Caller ID. Urgently.<p>Fake voices are already being used to steal millions (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-48908736" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-48908736</a>). I co-authored the paper linked here, which goes into some detail about why this all matters, particularly for voice cloning... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@aviv&#x2F;reducing-malicious-use-of-synthetic-media-research-9def6ab81aaf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@aviv&#x2F;reducing-malicious-use-of-synthetic...</a>

I would argue that the legality of this doesn&#x27;t matter; there&#x27;s a huge technical problem in that there&#x27;s no authenticity guarantees at all when it comes to caller ID and the entire feature is badly designed and has always been open to abuse.<p>SHAKEN&#x2F;STIR is the (technical) answer to this, though I&#x27;ll be interested to see to what extent it&#x27;s adopted.

This is akin to the BCP 38[1] problem with ISPs. I suspect few SIP-based telcos do validation of originating numbers today.<p>STIR&#x2F;SHAKEN has the potential to help here, but there are still shortcomings, e.g. when originating calls with source numbers obtained from other carriers[2].<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.ietf.org&#x2F;html&#x2F;bcp38" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.ietf.org&#x2F;html&#x2F;bcp38</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.bandwidth.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360025664313-What-Is-STIR-SHAKEN-and-How-Does-It-Impact-Robocalling-" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.bandwidth.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360025664313...</a>

They haven’t fixed it. They just made what scammers do illegal for one more reason. Unless they make telecommunication operators liable, this will remain a problem.

I get a ton of calls offering to lower my interest rate. Im surprised that the card issuing companies mentioned by name in the call- visa, MasterCard, etc. don’t take the same tactic that Microsoft used to take down botnets. Microsoft used trademark law to sue the botnet operators and have their domain names seized. Why can’t the same happen here with any US based voip operator they may be using?

Is it currently feasible for carriers to block these calls? Like, it should be easy enough to check if the call originated internationally but the area code is domestic. This regulation would appear to compell carriers to act on that.

I&#x27;m all for it, but one gripe I have about Consumer Affairs&#x27; reporting is that they interchange the words &quot;regulations&quot; and &quot;law&quot; to mean the same thing. As we witnessed during the Net Neutrality see-saw, regulations enacted by the FCC are not &quot;law&quot;, and can change at the whim of a new administration.

Great! I&#x27;ll tell all the scammers calling my phone that what they&#x27;re doing is illegal. That should stop them.

I wish (and I bet there&#x27;s something on Android for this) that there was some kind of social app just for sharing scam numbers among trusted friends†. E.g., as your phone receives a call, it&#x27;d hash the number and compare it with you and your friends&#x27; reported &quot;spam caller network&quot;. If you or your friends have marked something as a spam-originating number (number spoofing not withstanding, yesyes), it would either drop the call outright, or highlight it as potential spam call (&quot;5 of your friends have marked this as spam!&quot;) before you need to pick up.<p>† Why just among your friends? Cos we all know that the minute you make it open to everyone, the marketing and MBA folks will get their fangs in it and monetize and data-mine.

Seriously, if you have a good data plan, why have a phone number? The phone system is so laughably insecure and limited compared to the voip alternatives. And so riddled with SPAM. There are SIP bridges to it, for the legacy calls.

This is better than nothing. It won’t stop criminals who pretend to be from IRS or Microsoft support. But maybe it might help against some US based businesses which use phone spamming like expiring car warranties and such.

Do we even need spoofing at all anymore, are there legitimate uses which can&#x27;t reasonably be resolved other ways?

While I love that the FCC has fixed this (especially the &quot;scammers spoof a U.S. number, usually one in the victim’s area code&quot; part), something tells me the scammers won&#x27;t just roll over and go &quot;whelp, there&#x27;s nothing we can do!&quot;. They&#x27;ll just find a new &quot;loophole&quot;.

Best feature coming in iOS 13 is an option to silence all calls from non-contacts.<p>I installed the public beta for that alone because I get so many of these types of calls, and it&#x27;s saved me 19 interruptions so far this week.<p>Obviously blocking all unknown numbers isn&#x27;t an option for everyone, but it&#x27;s been great for me.

That&#x27;s it people! They&#x27;ve cured spam. We can all go home... right?

Legal solutions don&#x27;t tend to work great for technical problems.<p>I will just continue to block and report spam for calls from all numbers which I did not myself enter into my contacts.

If they want, the local phone companies can easily block international calls that have local caller ID.

Ooo they passed a law making it &quot;illegal&quot;, that will stop the international scammers. Just like the war on drugs. Pai knows this stops nothing. Fuck that piece of shit, even when it looks like he&#x27;s doing good he&#x27;s actually doing nothing.