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AT&T Communications United States Verizon Technology

Robocalls Can Now Get Blocked By Your Carrier By Default (cnet.com) 150

Posted by msmash from the something-everyone-agrees-on dept.
The FCC voted unanimously today to allow carriers to block robocalls by default, setting the stage for the major carriers to take action against the surge of unwanted automated calls that basically everyone hates. From a report: The agency also voted to move forward on a proposed rule that would require carriers to adopt the SHAKEN / STIR caller ID authentication system if they don't do it themselves by year-end. Ajit Pai, a Republican, has called robocalls the "scourge of civilization," while Geoffrey Starks, a Democrat, said that the unwanted calls have "changed the fabric of our culture." The vote comes just two weeks after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai proposed the blocking rule, which he said was designed to give carriers "certainty" about whether automatic blocking was allowed or not. Carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile have offered robocall-blocking services for a while, but they were opt-in. In an op-ed published on USA Today, Pai said, "I hate robocalls as much as you do." He added, "If Americans can agree on anything these days, it's that they're fed up with robocalls. The scam calls. The calls from foreign countries at 2 a.m. The deceptive caller ID 'spoofing,' which happens when a caller falsifies caller ID information to make it look as if they're calling from your area code."
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Robocalls Can Now Get Blocked By Your Carrier By Default More

Robocalls Can Now Get Blocked By Your Carrier By Default

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  • But will they? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nitehawk214 ( 222219 ) on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:28PM (#58720146)

    The money says... no.

    • Re:But will they? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:35PM (#58720204)

      Of course. They'll simply offer an "enhanced enterprise package" for businesses so they can become a "trusted" entity and have free rein to spam the masses. And AT&T makes an extra buck to boot. And the government will be happy with the extra tax revenue as well.

      • Of course. They'll simply offer an "enhanced enterprise package" for businesses so they can become a "trusted" entity and have free rein to spam the masses. And AT&T makes an extra buck to boot. And the government will be happy with the extra tax revenue as well.

        What makes you think they won't just include it for free because it will become the expectation by consumers? That seems much more plausible than your scenario.

        • I honestly don't think they'll even let non-iPhone users access to the feature. I guarantee they won't blanket block them all automatically. Chances are likely you'll have to block them individually one-by-one as the calls come in, and that "blocking" feature won't actually prevent the call, probably just silence the ringer.

        • "We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company."

          (Also, fuck NBC for eradicating all traces of the sketch from the internet. I guess now that they are owned by a telecom company this became awkward for them.)

          • "We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company."

            (Also, fuck NBC for eradicating all traces of the sketch from the internet. I guess now that they are owned by a telecom company this became awkward for them.)

            I am unfamiliar with the bit (SNL?) you're referring to, but it likely referred to phone companies while they operated as monopolies. Wireless carriers actually do compete on features to some degree, none of them wants to be the one that charges for a service that is standard with the competition.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Because Ajit Pai received no money.

    • Confirmed. I'm still getting them on AT&T as of today. I've previously contacted them about this before today, and they informed me that their network no longer has any call-blocking features whatsoever, and that it is a client-side-only feature I can now only gain by buying a recent model iPhone (data plan required obv.) which I could then use to add individual numbers one-by-one to a block list.

      I didn't even bother asking how many numbers the list would hold maximum. They probably budgeted space on

      • Well that's a bunch of bullshit and they know it. The numbers are spoofed to be from local area codes or exchanges.

        "Here spend money and buy this new phone. It still won't help stop the robocalls though."

  • Ajit Pai (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Ajit Pai, a Republican, has called robocalls the "scourge of civilization"

    Ajit Pai has no sense of irony.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by unixisc ( 2429386 )
      Republican? About as 'Republican' as James Comey, since he also served under Obama
      • You're using the word "since" incorrectly. Your sentence should be, "About as 'Republican' as James Comey, and he also served under Obama." Yes, Ajit Pai and James Comey are equally Republican. i.e.: They are Republicans.

    • As TheRegister pointed out at the time, Pai's unexpected support for call blocking coincided closely with congress finding cross party support for it. Knowing it would be forced on him within 24 hours or so, he immediately 180degreed and tried to grab the glory for something he'd resisted till then!

  • so reading between the lines here, the interesting thing is they say block using some form of reasonable analytics.

    there's no guarantee carriers will allow /legitimate/ robocalls. there's no regulation of the type of analytics that will be in place or what it is allowed to do or who is allowed to subvert it. there are a huge number of legitimate robocalls that may be impacted by whatever systems a carrier is allowed to implement under this system. will the carriers abuse their control to create a non-neutra

    • If they do abuse it then they are bound to get slapped hard in the courts. robocall legislation doesn't supersede common carrier requirements.

    • plenty of us feel there are no legit robocalls whatsoever on this Earth. The rest of you can enjoy your "legit robocalls" that are a poor substitute for what modern tech can do

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        plenty of us feel there are no legit robocalls whatsoever on this Earth.

        Your bank calls you to tell you that they have noted a suspicous activity on your credit card. The initial call is always done by robocall... you have to call them back.

        I, for one, am grateful that my bank does this.

        I will say, however, that there is no legitimate use for robocalls from a number that you would not be able to recognize.

        • Your bank calls you to tell you that they have noted a suspicous activity on your credit card. The initial call is always done by robocall...

          If your bank feels that it needs to spoof the caller id on that warning call so that it looks like the call from your next door neighbor, then they should be slapped with a fine.

          You are not talking about "robocalls" as intended by the context of this rule.

          I will say, however, that there is no legitimate use for robocalls from a number that you would not be able to recognize.

          Which is it? Is there a legitimate use or not? I would not be able to recognize the phone number my bank would use to call me about a charge issue.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            Why not? Your bank wouldn't be spoofing another number, except perhaps the 800 number for the main branch. Enhanced caller ID could readily tell you who was calling.

            • Why not?

              Because I don't know the phone number for the credit card company fraud department, that's why. I never call it, why would I?

              Your bank wouldn't be spoofing another number,

              Which means that they are not a "robocall" as meant by this new rule. Stop worrying about your bank calling you with bad news. This rule has nothing to do with that.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by mark-t ( 151149 )
                Whether this new rule would apply to them or not does not mean that they are not robocalls. The definition of a robocall only is that it is an automated call which delivers a recorded message, nothing more or less.

                • Whether this new rule would apply to them or not does not mean that they are not robocalls.

                  Read all the words, next time. They are not robocalls for the purposes of this rule. Stop getting your knickers in a knot thinking that your bank is going to be prevented from alerting you to charge issues when the phone companies go after robocallers who spoof their numbers.

                  The definition of a robocall only is that it is an automated call which delivers a recorded message, nothing more or less.

                  You will find that for the purposes of law the definition is usually somewhat more, or somewhat less, than the colloquial definition of something. If you don't know that, and you deliberately ignore the specific limits on the legal defi

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by mark-t ( 151149 )
                    Why did you think that I was "getting my knickers in a knot" thinking that my bank is somehow going to be prevented from alerting me because of this rule. I never suggested that this was a concern.

                    If you reread my initial comment, I clearly quoted another poster, who said the following:

                    plenty of us feel there are no legit robocalls whatsoever on this Earth

                    My point is that there *are* legitimate robocalls... not that I was suggesting that such a legitimate case would necessarily be impacted by the rule

        • My bank calls me with a live human and verifies who I am, and I don't call them back

          My bank also does SMS alerts and email.

          Ditto for my credit cards

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            Emails, SMS, and even calling you up in person all have a good chance of being mistaken for phishing attacks. Email "from" headers and caller ID are spoofable, so you can't count on them. If your bank requires you to call them back at the same number that's printed on the back of your credit card, you have some assurance when you return the call that they are who they say.
            • Of course, you completely missed the point he made. The bank doesn't need to do "robocalls" because they can make real, human-backed calls to tell you the same thing. How YOU respond to that call doesn't change the fact that robocalls are not necessary. (In fact, the last time I got such a call from the credit card company, it was a human. No robocalls necessary.)

              And again, if your bank spoofs their caller ID so it looks like the call comes from a next door neighbor, then they deserve to be slapped with a

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by mark-t ( 151149 )

                And again, if your bank spoofs their caller ID so it looks like the call comes from a next door neighbor, then they deserve to be slapped with a fine

                I wasn't suggesting that they shouldn't.

                My point is that there *are* legitimate uses for robocalls. That this rule doesn't seem to apply to them doesn't mean that such things have somehow ceased to be robocalls, only that they are not the types of robocalls covered by this rule.

                • My point is that there *are* legitimate uses for robocalls.

                  A meaningless point since your bank's calls are not robocalls for the purpose of this discussion. Yes, context matters.

                  And you claimed that they were always robocalls. They aren't. Others besides myself have gotten such calls, and they're real people. The bank doesn't need to make robocalls for this, and thus even were they the target of this rule, too bad. They'll have to change. We'll all cry about it.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by mark-t ( 151149 )

                    You have apparently failed to notice that my comments in this regard weren't with regards to this rule, but specifically addressing another commenter's remark that there was supposedly absolutely no legitimate use case for robocalls.

                    It's kinda funny that you seem to think I was somehow trying to dispute the idea behind this rule with this example when in my initial remark, I *explicitly* quoted the person I was actually raising a dispute with.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by mark-t ( 151149 )
                      That's what the story is about, sure... but that's got nothing to do with the comment I was making... and for that matter, I wasn't even the one to originally bring the subject up.

                      The poster to whom I had responded said:

                      plenty of us feel there are no legit robocalls whatsoever on this Earth.

                      While my remark might be OT from the story, it sure as hell isn't OT with respect to that comment. Perhaps the above poster should be reprimanded for mentioning that he didn't believe in legit robocalls in the first

            • but they don't ask fishing questions, verify ID with things you can get online.

              "This is about the $391.03 purchase at Red's at 5:30pm. Did you make that purchase?"

              Yeah, someone is faking that question. PFffft.

              you're all a bunch of scaredy cats.

          • Except they don't verify who they are. Just because it is a live human with a north american sounding accent, doesn't mean they are for real. "Please verify your home street address and last 4 digits of your social security number. Thanks sucker, goodbye!"

            • "was your purchase in the amount of $403.23 at the Dr. Sam a valid one?"

              yeah, real danger if they're fake and know that

              NOT

      • plenty of us feel there are no legit robocalls whatsoever on this Earth

        Robocalls can be used as part of two factor authentication. They can be used by your bank to ask if a suspicious payment was legitimate or not. They can be used to tell you when a delivery will arrive.

        • Robocalls can be used as part of two factor authentication.

          The other part of the colloquial definition of "robocalls" is that they are made in volume to large numbers of people. 2FA "robocalls" would be useless. Not every machine made call is a "robocall". (You know, as in a robot that does tedious repetitive work so a human doesn't have to. One call is not tedious repetitive work that a human could not make.)

    • HOW SHAKEN/STIR WORKS (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/understanding-stir-shaken/

      it's DKIM for phones

  • Ohh Ohh (Score:3)

    by jwymanm ( 627857 ) on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:49PM (#58720320) Homepage
    Both sides agree to this. This makes my Spidey sense go crazy. I've got to wonder how this will be used against citizens now. I hate robocalls but now I feel like whatever passed might be somehow backdoored or booby trapped.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      I have no faith in any of this bullshit. The Do Not Call list was supposed to be the answer. I feel this will have to end in blood and fire. Maybe a few heads on pikes will send the message.

      • Maybe a few heads on pikes will send the message.

        Without the underlying infrastructure to verify the caller's identity you will never get "heads on pikes". Enabling this rule will help push the infrastructure for that identification. Why object to a natural result of a new level of authentication when the current level cannot give you what you want?

        I get robocalls from spoofed numbers. It's not worth my time to report them to the FTC because there is no identification I can provide to allow them to get "heads on pikes". With this new rule my telco can b

  • I used to hate robocalls (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Until I found out that Ajit Pai hates them,

  • I hope they'll have a way to make sure that if/when they get recycled to a legitimate user all the carriers will no longer block calls from them. And let's follow the money back to who's paying for the robocallers numbers. Can we insist that every purchase can be tracked to an individual who can be held legally responsible for its use?
  • I suddenly stopped getting them. I got them 4-5 times a day until the last few weeks.

  • The phone companies are the cause of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday June 06, 2019 @02:57PM (#58720810)
    When a robocaller makes a call, the phone company knows who they are because their system is set up to identify that that number is valid and has a paid account with them. If they would just use the same info in their caller ID system so the call recipient can see with certainty who the caller is and decide to block it, that would mostly solve the problem. Phone dialers could then have updateable blocklists you could download from a site which compiled spam caller numbers from millions of users.

    But instead, the phone companies only let you see a spoofable caller ID number, meaning the number you see calling you isn't necessarily who is really calling you. Basically the phone companies' scam goes like this:
    1. (To regular customers): If you pay extra, we'll give you a caller ID feature, so you can block or not answer unwanted calls.
    2. (To spammers): If you pay extra, we'll give you the ability to spoof your caller ID number, so you can bypass people using caller ID to block your calls.
    3. (To regular customers): If you pay extra, we'll give you an enhanced caller ID service which will block robocallers.
    4. (To spammers, in the future): If you pay extra, we'll give you a way to bypass our robocaller block.
    5. (To regular customers, in the future): If you pay extra, we'll give you a new feature for blocking spam calls.
    6. (To spammers, in the future): If you pay extra, we'll give you a new way to bypass that new block.
    7. etc.

    In an arms race, the only winners are the arms dealers. This is the cycle you need to break if you want to fix this. Force the phone companies to pick whose side they're on. Force them decide who they value more: their regular customers or the spammers. (And just to head off the inevitable comments about how capitalism has failed in this case, capitalism is not a factor here. The phone companies can only do this because they have a government-granted monopoly in each region, preventing customers from switching to a different local phone company. So this failure is 100% the government's fault. If there were actual competition among multiple phone companies, the "good" companies would only allow calls to go through their network from other "good" companies which shared the account ID which was actually making the call. They'd flag calls from "bad" companies which only shared spoofable caller ID (abused to mask the real account), allowing their users to auto-block all flagged calls. Once word got out that you didn't get spam calls if your service was with a "good" company, all regular customers would switch their service from "bad" companies to "good" companies, leaving the spammers on the "bad" companies nobody to spam but each other.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by XanC ( 644172 )

      I don't think it's so cut-and-dried. I run a service which places phone call notifications on behalf of local institutions. I have to "spoof" Caller ID, because I'm calling via a dialing service on behalf of legitimate institutions. If the Caller ID didn't say the phone number and name of my customer, there would be no point.

      • The call center can ask the phone company to change its displayed name each week. "This week, this subset of our phone lines is working for customer X, so please display X for those lines." When the call center changes to a different customer, tell the phone company to update the display.

        If there's some reason that doesn't work, well, then your service may be a casualty of this war. Sorry, but I and a lot of other Americans are willing to kill your business in order to stop the rest of the system from de

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        What you are saying is that you are running a service that is dependent on a broken system. In the case the system was fixed, you would have to find another hack to be able to pretend that you are the organization buying the phone line connection. Your situation does not invalidate the GPs assertion that the phone company is a bad actor for allowing spoofed phone numbers in the first place.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by XanC ( 644172 )

          Email is a broken system, but lots of services run over it, and we're very, very careful about making changes that will break things that people expect to work.

          There are many scenarios where the Caller ID of a call needs to be something other than the "actual" caller. I didn't say I was invalidating anybody's assertion, only that there's some baby and bathwater going on here.

  • I recently added the AT&T Call Protect app to my phone, and it's blocked a ton of obviously bogus numbers and robocalls.

    (Full disclosure: it also initially blocked me from getting to my own voicemail, but after unblocking my number everything seems to be working smoothly.)

    It's reduced the bogus/robo calls from about 5 per day to one every few days. When one does get through I can click to report it and automatically add it to the reject list.

    It's not perfect but it's definitely helped.

    • NOTE: "AT&T Call Protect" is close to nothing more than a rebranding of the HIYA app (http://www.hiya.com) which is cross platform , free plus in app purchases, and is carrier agnostic.

      Don't go thinking AT&T are doing you any favors, they just slapped a logo on some other app that everyone with a clue is using already.

      • Don't go thinking AT&T are doing you any favors, they just slapped a logo on some other app that everyone with a clue is using already.

        Thanks. Yeah, I kind of figured they'd leased/borrowed/stolen it from someone else, but at the same time it does seems to help considerably.

        Would you recommend switching it out for the HIYA app? The AT&T version doesn't seem to have any overt advertising in it as far as I can tell.

  • big difference
  • F them! https://www.newser.com/story/2... [newser.com] They WANT robocallers to thrive, and secretly promote it. You can't tell me the FCC, or the phone company, can't identify EXACTLY who is opening these phone accounts and where. They could shut them all down in a single day and charge the SOBs for the scams!

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