Phone Companies, State Attorneys General Announce Broad Campaign To Fight Robocalls (washingtonpost.com) 40
Twelve of the country's largest telephone companies on Thursday pledged to implement new technology to spot and block robocalls, part of an agreement brokered between the industry and 51 attorneys general to combat the growing telecom scourge. From a report: The new effort to be announced in Washington commits a wide array of companies in the absence of regulation to improving their defenses and aiding law enforcement in its investigations into illegal spam calls, which rang Americans' phones an estimated 4.7 billion times in July alone. Under the agreement, the 12 carriers have agreed to implement call-blocking technology, make anti-robocall tools available for free to consumers and deploy a new system that would label calls as real or spam. Known by its acronym, STIR/SHAKEN, the technology takes aim at a practice known as spoofing, where fraudsters mask their identities by using phone numbers that resemble those that they're trying to contact in a bid to get victims to pick up and surrender their personal information. Signing the pledge are larger mobile carriers, such as AT&T, Comcast, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, which already have said they would implement such robocall protections and in some cases have started testing them around the country. Other carriers adopting the pledge include Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Consolidated, Frontier, U.S. Cellular and Windstream.
Why did it take so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't the FCC forced the telcos this *years* ago?
Re: Why did it take so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Pai needed to make certian that phone companies could charge for the service.
Att charges $4 a month.
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make anti-robocall tools available for free to consumers and deploy a new system that would label calls as real or spam
It's in the summary.
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Probably, but not to the extent of now and to the point where telcos are potentially losing money because everyone is cancelling.
Let's not confuse robocalls with spam calls or telemarketing calls. Let's call them scam calls - something which traditionally is done to scam you from your money without providing any useful service.
Telemarketing calls are handled by the Do No Call registry, and legitimate callers obey it. After all, some people make small fort
Why are telephones so special? (Score:2)
Why aren't the FCC and 51 states attorneys working to spot, block, and outlaw spam?
Block the political calls too (Score:2)
So I'll have to start answering my phone again? (Score:5, Interesting)
I turned my ringer off and stopped picking up years ago. It's annoying that I can no longer use my phone to receive calls, but I've gotten used to it, and most people know to email me now.
If the spam calls go away, it will be like re-living the 90s and getting a mobile phone all over again.
Re:So I'll have to start answering my phone again? (Score:4, Informative)
I received a text message a couple of weeks ago that was from a company acting on behalf of a local realtor. I called the realtor and demanded that they lose my number. The girl kept on pressing the idea that cell phone numbers are public record. I told her that they're not, but she just wanted to argue. So I took that as them wanting to support the black market data-bucket.
Well, here's their info for anyone that would like to stay away from them, or however the info is useful:
The name of the company is Irby LLC. Their number is (251) 202-2222. Their address is 503 Government St, Mobile, AL 36602, USA (google maps: here) and here [irbyllc.com] are their faces.
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You're doing the Lord's work.
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Correction: I'm doing The People's work.
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If you ever get into this situation again, just point them to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act [govinfo.gov], Â227:
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I liken it to advertising by way of mailbox. Except that mailboxes are right out in the open, so to get something in there doesn't require illegal activity. I've got the local police looking into what law enforcement branch will deal with this. Fingers crossed for the FBI, as the owner of the offending company has evidently been in trouble with the feds in the past for similar actions.
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For text message spam, most carriers let you report it by forwarding it to 7726 (which spells SPAM on an old-school phone).
Whether this actually accomplishes anything isn't exactly clear.
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Lots of people don't even like e-mails and refuse to them. They still prefer textings, calls, and in person. :(
Why do we need..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like some of the telcos are deciding to still half-ass it. If my phone rings with a robocall, you've failed.
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Because of false positives. You can't detect a single call as a robocall.
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Because then the Telco's would lose the money they are making from terminating the bogus calls. They know the instances where the callerid does not match the originating number and can refuse to terminate all such calls, and they could do that a decade ago. But they don't. Because they are in business to make money, and these so-called Robocalls make them money.
Tractor Trailer loads of money. And under no circumstance do they want to give up that revenue stream.
It's not that simple Re:Why do we need..... (Score:1)
They know the instances where the callerid does not match the originating number and can refuse to terminate all such calls
Legitimate businesses do this all the time, for legitimate reasons.
If I have 10 employees each with their own "outside line" phone number, I may still want their outgoing-call caller-ID to have the main company number.
My own telephone provider knows which "real" phone numbers belong to me, but if I call someone and the call gets routed to other companies, those companies won't know that it's okay for the originating number to use my company's main number as a caller-ID unless my own telephone company tells
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Really?
How do you think *your* phone company knows this for a call that has been routed to it from outside of any exchange it happens to directly control. Your phone company isn't the one billing them if it has originated from another provider.
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Need to make sure that only the originator of the call pays the money; no more free onramps from IP voice calls, and make sure the receiver is never charged. Spam will go down as soon as spammers have to pay a suitable price. Right now there are weekly advertisers in the snail mail, which feels bad but imagine how huge it would be if it were free? Just that bulk rate charge for advertising material has reduced the amount of junk mail that arrives. At the very least the roocallers need to pay a bulk rate
phone numbers receive calls, do not place calls (Score:2)
You are forgetting that not every phone, or phone system, is the very simplest possible case - one station which can be reached by one number, and the one number can only ring that one station.
Heck if you just forward a call from your phone you'll suddenly realize you can no longer define "originating number" - your phone initiated a connection to some other phone, after someone else initiated a connection to you. Which is the originating station? It gets much, more more complicated than that.
Here's the th
the Robocall Wars (Score:3)
The telephone wires glowed red-hot in on the moonless October night following the county road and stretching to the horizon. Lifeless abandoned cars and trucks blocked easy passage along the rutted and cracked pavement. Picking his way along the road by foot, Miguel surveyed a junction box near the roadside.
"Damn, the Robocallers were already here. They've infiltrated this network too."
Miguel unloads his pack and unrolls a brown paper sack containing six charges and detonators. He started with thirty only the day before yesterday. He tapes a charge to the base of the junction box closest to the fiberoptic cable, inserts and twists the cap of the electronic timer.
"I better hole up for the night before it gets any darker. Wardialers might be prowling around, looking for an easy mark."
As if on cue, a buzzing sound comes from Miguel's pocket, and his ruddy complexion pales in terror.
Politicians? (Score:2)
So, will the politicians again magically exempt themselves or will this time we finally have absolutely no robocalls?
Robocalls continuing as intended (Score:1)
Re: Robocalls continuing as intended (Score:2)
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Calling it "necessary changes" is just a summary, not a realistic implementation plan.
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Again, all you've said is "they should just fix it" and then have the audacity to complain about saying useless things. Yeah, sure - they'll "just make the necessary changes" aka hit the "fix robocalling" button.
Sure sounds like that's exactly what they're doing - the necessary changes.
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The thing is, they could have fixed this years ago. The necessary changes are obvious, and they've had more than enough time to implement them. That we're still facing this robocall scourge in 2019 is simply inexcusable.
Of course, it was all too easy to sit on their 1970's technology and let the money flow in which is exactly what they did. So now we have the apologists out saying "they can't upgrade their networks overnight"! Well no shit, of course they can't. But they've had 20 years to do it, and i
About time... (Score:2)
Thank God. Fully 90% of calls I get are spam these days, to the point where I'm tempted to just let everything go through to voicemail.
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It's almost as if you don't know that those things have cables with plugs on the end.
I disconnected mine about four months ago and it's the best thing I've done this year. I use a thing called a "cellphone" for communicating now.
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I use a thing called a "cellphone" for communicating now.
And of course that never receives a spam call.
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The fact that they said "voicemail" and not "the answering machine" should have clued you in.
Cell numbers, get as much spam as landline numbers, and often more (they also get text message spam).
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Local companies? (Score:2)
Most of my calls come thru local small telcos. (at least that is the caller ID)
Places like Lakeview, Athena , Oregon etc...
I have always assumed this was because they did not have the resources to police the activity.
It appears they still will not.
Bullshit (Score:2)
Too late (Score:2)
No one in the USA answers calls from unknown numbers anymore. When I exchange phone numbers, I make sure the person calls me so I can record his/her number.
This is unfortunate, because there are a lot of legitimate cases where you want to be able to call someone from a phone thatâ(TM)s not your own, or receive a call from an unknown number (youâ(TM)re someoneâ(TM)s emergency contact, you lose your phone, etc.) â" so the smug âoeI already whitelist every numberâ approach is co