FCC finally starts tackling America's robocall scourge

It’s not just robocalls, as it’s also spoofing numbers. I have received many phone calls from average joes who said they were returning a call from my number, but I had never called them.<p>I’d say 95% of the calls I receive are spam. It’s so bad that I rarely even answer my phone anymore, instead letting it go to voicemail if the number is not in my contacts.<p>Everything in life has turned to spam. My physical mailbox, my email, and my phone is bombarded by spam and there’s practically nothing I can do about it.

We need to start targeting the companies who profit from it: the telcos who deliver the calls (i.e. AT&amp;T, Verizon, etc.). That’s the only way to get a solution.<p>Telcos get a multiple benefits from spam: they charge fees to the originating carriers, and in the long term it kills voice service which they have been eager to shut down for at least a decade. Data is clearly the future and that’s where they make most of their money. People giving up on wireline voice allows them to more easily make the argument to shut down all that old wireline infrastructure.

One hack if you get those robocalls that match your area code. Get a new phone number for an area code you think you’ll never go to and use a smart blocking app[1] to block the entire area code.<p>It’s a brutalist solution that’s not for everyone, but it has restored my sanity.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;wideprotect-spam-call-blocker&#x2F;id1171024059" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;wideprotect-spam-call-blocker&#x2F;...</a>

Good start, but ideally networks should also be required to provide originator info (number, network, country of origin, as many hops as available basically) to cell phones, regardless of whether a call is blocked or has a different number set as caller id.<p>So not only would the networks be blocking spam, end-users could then block whatever calls they want. Don&#x27;t wanna get calls from any VOIP numbers or anyone out of your country? You can block them and chill out.

I think we&#x27;ve all taken the wrong approach to the phone spam problem.<p>Whenever I get a scam call, I always answer. I let the guy do his spiel about the free vacation he&#x27;s got for me, then when he asks me for my credit card, I hit him with one of the ligma jokes [0] and hang up. Never takes more than five minutes of my time and it&#x27;s a source of great joy for me. I&#x27;ve gotten the same guy three times and he&#x27;s fallen for it every single time; at this point I&#x27;m starting to develop a bond with him.<p>If we pushed a social movement that popularized this, we could basically DDOS phone scamming out of being viable.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tphecca&#x2F;awesome-ligma" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tphecca&#x2F;awesome-ligma</a>

I may have written this in the past, but I still don&#x27;t get why we still use PSTN where identifying caller is next to impossible, and very easy to be exploited (allowing mass dialing easily)<p>E-mail is not perfect, for example, but at least its address provides bit more context than the seemingly random number showing up, legit or not.<p>If we are insisting to use the current system, norm really should shift to a strict white list at least for residential inbound. The current system is simply not sustainable, and more and more people are not taking the call from the number they don&#x27;t recognize anyways.

It&#x27;s easy to write spam off as a minor annoyance, but you&#x27;re not the intended target. Your parents and grandparents are, and your immigrant neighbor who doesn&#x27;t speak English well, and the intellectually disabled woman who waves to you at the grocery store. These are predators who prey on the vulnerable and ignorant and ruin lives on a daily basis. They are the absolute scum of the earth.

I would love that someone investigated why Google pulled call recording API from Android 9 onwards. Given that I was scammed by insurance companies twice over the phone and I could have lost substantial amount of money if I couldn&#x27;t prove the scam, I think call recording feature is essential for a consumer to be able to protect themselves from distance selling scammers or even honest mistakes. There are other benefits like being able to record your parents or other family members and keep their voice forever or simply being able to listen again your conversation with a doctor, so you don&#x27;t have to bother the clinic if you forget something about dosage etc. The official reason is that it is for privacy (oh good lord...) and that in some countries it is illegal and basic narrative is that they don&#x27;t want people to secretly record others. This falls apart quickly - you can record someone secretly using your built-in phone camera and microphone, but somehow that&#x27;s okay, they won&#x27;t disable the camera and in my country, for example, call recording is perfectly fine. So who lobbied Google? Removing such API is not a trivial task, it takes time, planning, resources, developers and then dealing with the fallout. Who wanted people to be defenceless against phone scams?

I met Ajit shortly after he started in his role. I specifically told him how we can track and trace back these robocalls via SS7 (at least once they hit the PSTN - SIP ingress even easier to track back to the trunks they originate), and I even had proof of concept code and examples. He seemed really excited, then did nothing. No follow-up, etc. It would only work if mandated by the FCC because there is no financial incentive for the telcos to do it.

The FCC should not only force them to block all robocalls, but fine them an amount in the billions for what amounts to pissing in the well of public trust for decades. I mean, I don’t ever answer a number I don’t recognize anymore. If the doctors office calls, and I don’t remember the number, they are going to have to leave a message and play phone tag. What is the social cost of an entire population of people who basically don’t trust their phone or anyone who calls them? Some survey company tried to call me last year, and I didn’t answer it because I assumed it was some kind of scam. It doesn’t have to be this way. The way phone companies have conducted themselves constitutes gross negligence and betrayal of the public trust. I want to see jail time, not a slap on the wrist.

I&#x27;m always flabbergasted at seeing how these things are handled in America.<p>Long ago in the country where I live, the regulator:<p>- set up an opt-out central register where the owner of any phone number can freely declare they do not want any unsollicited calls<p>- made this register freely available to all businesses<p>- required from telcos that they make it easy for customers to report infringing calls<p>- made telcos liable if they do not swiftly take action whenever they have &#x27;sufficient&#x27; reports (10s not 1000s) that one of their clients is infringing on the opt-out list, including by cutting off all of the client&#x27;s numbers.<p>... does not seem such a big deal to set up.

It would be nice if there were an Adnauseam[1] that answered calls for me and carried on a life-like humanoid conversation with the spammer or asked a question as a CAPTCHA.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;adnauseam.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;adnauseam.io&#x2F;</a>

It takes me far more time to sort through all the crap I get in my mailbox delivered by USPS. I either don&#x27;t answer the call, or hang up 5 seconds after answering.<p>In general I worry that blocking legitimate &quot;robocalls&quot; will make people miss important events. My mortgage company was trying to contact me and the phone was displaying &quot;Spam Likely&quot;. Another instance last year was my city sending out an emergency alert for a hurricane.

If every call cost 5 cents to originate we would no longer have a spam problem.

Legal threats and spam blacklists are an endless game of whack-a-mole. I&#x27;m not convinced robocalls will ever disappear until the telephone protocol is updated so a receiver can confidently verify the identity of the sender. Once calls are authenticated, the problem will evaporate practically overnight.

Interesting that seems to be an exclusively American problem (as far as I know). I’ve experienced exactly 0 robocalls in all the other countries I’ve lived. My friends and I are constantly astounded when our American friends complain about spam calls, it’s just unheard of here and everywhere else I’ve ever lived.

Google Voice’s call screening feature has made robocalls a non event for me. I have Voice set to screen calls, so when the robocall comes in, it usually hangs up when it encounter’s Voice’s questions. I get one ring on my cell phone and nothing else. It’s somewhat satisfying every time it happens.

shaken&#x2F;stir is supposed to go in July, I hope that the tools that come on phones for that allow you to just immediately drop the call. No voice mail, no &quot;silent notice&quot;, just let them sent their crap to &#x2F;dev&#x2F;null and give them nothing to waste my time.

These are very easy to illustrate to the law makers. It costs almost nothing to incessantly call the phone numbers of the most influential lawmakers. All someone has to do is do it for a week and we would get a new law against it. Wonder why no one did it till now.

Like a lot of you, I don&#x27;t answer my phone ever unless the number is in my contacts or I am expecting a call.<p>Today I got my first ever porn spam via SMS. So glad to have that to look forward to over the coming months&#x2F;years. <i>eyeroll</i>

It seems it would be very easy to accept a robocall, follow the money to the advertiser and begin the investigation there.<p>Follow the money and fine the living fire out of the dirtbags that do the robocalling.<p>It seems we&#x27;re taking a different tack, though.

Is it just me, or did Arjit Pai seem to be actively avoiding the Robocall issue?

The two companies named are of course receiving PPP &quot;loans&quot;. So they are literally being paid, by you (American taxpayer), to annoy you.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.federalpay.org&#x2F;paycheck-protection-program&#x2F;r-squared-communications-llc-dublin-oh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.federalpay.org&#x2F;paycheck-protection-program&#x2F;r-squ...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sba.com&#x2F;ppp-funded-companies&#x2F;florida&#x2F;tellza-inc-178893" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sba.com&#x2F;ppp-funded-companies&#x2F;florida&#x2F;tellza-inc-...</a>

There are so many robocalls, typically for scams, that our phones have been effectively stolen from us. We can often no longer practically use them for their intended purpose.<p>I hope the FCC gets serious.

It’s funny, I remember when the iPhone was announced Steve Jobs said “the killer app is making calls!” and then proceeded to show (correctly at the time) how hard making calls with phones was, and how much better it was going to be.<p>And now? I literally don’t use this feature.<p>I turn on Do Not Disturb <i>and</i> “block unknown callers”, <i>and</i> turn on emergency-mode for anyone I actually care about, and receive no other rings on my phone. At this point, I refuse to spend even a moment considering any call that does not leave a voice mail.

I use Google Fi and I wonder if these changes are responsible for my recent problems with caller ID when I call somebody. My phone number is 512-xxx-yyyy and when I call anybody in Canada and some US phones I&#x27;ve been told my number shows up as +51-2xx-xyy-yy or just as unidentified caller.<p>When I text my daughter, my incoming texts show up under that number but she can&#x27;t reply on that number. It&#x27;s very frustrating.

This is incredibly solvable, and it costs me $2 per month. I use a VOIP provider and give out that phone number. I ban all incoming calls from numbers not in my phonebook.<p>The phone number plays an IVR - and you can leave a voicemail which is e-mailed to me. If you&#x27;re someone I know (friend, bank) you have my extension - unlisted in the IVR, and you can enter it.<p>I&#x27;ve received zero unwanted calls in the 2 years I&#x27;ve been doing this.

I wish there was a way to stop this bs. Robocall numbers used to be easily identifiable. Nowadays, robocalls shows up as a random-similar number of a third party person, which is never repeatedly dialed, so even blocking the number won&#x27;t stop calls from coming it (as it&#x27;d just dial from a different similar number...)

I got in trouble for not answering my phone when HR was trying to call, because the number was unknown and I get about a dozen spam calls every single day. It&#x27;s ridiculous, my actual work productivity greatly suffered due to the spam flying in daily.

my dad (80 YO) has a PhD in computer science and has been scammed multiple times.<p>I have had multiple employees buy about 7K in gift cards for scammers.<p>I personally bought a $200 electric surfboard that ended up being a $20 boogie board (facebook ad). I immediately realized it was a scam but paypal wouldnt let me cancel the transaction. They said I had to receive the item first. Then when I received the item the refund link wouldnt work (errored out). I ended up just giving up and eating the $200.<p>A retired friend had all bank accounts and investment accounts drained (millions). Im not sure how this happened, but 2FA is a must for big accounts.<p>Im pretty sure scammers make a lot of money.<p>These days I mainly get car warranty calls.

Try nomorobo.com - free for Voip numbers, $20&#x2F;year for mobile. Not 100% perfect, more like 95%, but it will suffice until the FCC improves the situation ... soon. Other similar services exist, and would likely be as effective.

About frickin’ time, the amount of money that has been scammed from some of those who are most at-risk is ridiculous.<p>And get your ass in gear and require companies implement a positive ID system that makes call spoofing impossible.

Here in India, the telecom authority (TRAI) has prescribed various measures to curb unwanted calls and messages[1], with mixed success. They also have an app released[2], which essentially uses a template to send SMS to the number denoted for complaining about spam.<p>After a lot of action for around nine months, I got junk SMS and spam calls (both automated and otherwise) to a bare minimum. It did take some time and there were a lot of frustrations along the way, but was completely worth it.<p>Some good practices I figured from all this:<p>1. For spam calls where there is an actual human speaking to you, try and get them to reveal the name and location of their call center. Most of the time, the culprits are the same for different types of calls. Requesting to speak to their manager and having a friendly chat about the TRAI penalty system helped a lot in reducing the calls. Having a log of when they had called you in the past is also helpful; at least it conveys that you aren&#x27;t some buffoon shouting at the clouds.<p>2. For SMS spam where the sender is a bunch of letters (eg. ZZ-ABCDEF), iPhone isn&#x27;t able to add that contact to the block list. Using T9 to figure out those numbers and adding them[3] to the blocklist that way works. This is mostly for your telecom service provider who feels free to send you spam with no way for you to complain to TRAI, because you&#x27;re using their service, and they don&#x27;t care about do-not-disturb for such cases.<p>3. Naming and shaming on Twitter and email helps, especially for companies depending on their brand name. Funded startups in particular are abusers of spam calling and SMSes, but are also fearful of complaints on social media going viral.<p>4. This might be anecdotal, but I found I actually received fewer spam calls after removing my number from TrueCaller[4]. Ironically the service is used to figure out who&#x27;s calling you, but I found that I don&#x27;t need it at all, and not having my number in there has somehow proved beneficial.<p>5. Certain mobile service providers are more serious about acting on spam complaints than others. If you find that your provider is not heeding complaints about spam, definitely switch to another service if possible.<p>6. Some services do provide a DNC (Do Not Call) registry on their website. Do use those and keep a record of you having added your name to it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.trai.gov.in&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;RegulationUcc19072018.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.trai.gov.in&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;RegulationUcc190...</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;app&#x2F;trai-dnd-do-not-disturb&#x2F;id1443781196?ls=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;app&#x2F;trai-dnd-do-not-disturb&#x2F;id1443...</a> [3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gadgets.ndtv.com&#x2F;mobiles&#x2F;features&#x2F;iphone-how-to-block-sms-from-any-sender-including-bulk-messages-797992" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gadgets.ndtv.com&#x2F;mobiles&#x2F;features&#x2F;iphone-how-to-bloc...</a> [4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.truecaller.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;212063089-How-do-I-unlist-my-phone-number-" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.truecaller.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;212063089-H...</a>

i don&#x27;t get too many here in uk. And most of them are the &#x27;guys themselves&#x27; phoning.

By siding with Facebook?

I see a few answers here touting the use of a fee and I couldn&#x27;t help but ask for feedback on my in-production solution with a few thousand users. It uses a refundable $0.05 fee, which is refunded if a call lasts more than 25 seconds. [1]<p>A business model we&#x27;re pursuing is to let legitimate callers pay willing recipients $&#x2F;min according to the recipients predetermined rate. [2] I&#x27;d love more users&#x2F;feedback&#x2F;customers. iOS is in the works for Summer 2021.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;karmacall.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;karmacall.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thecompanybrief.com&#x2F;briefs&#x2F;rhntb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thecompanybrief.com&#x2F;briefs&#x2F;rhntb</a>