US Files Lawsuits Over Robocall Scams, Cites 'Massive Financial Losses' (reuters.com) 60
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. government on Tuesday sued five U.S. companies and three individuals, alleging they were behind hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls that scammed elderly Americans and others into "massive financial losses." The U.S. Justice Department lawsuits said most of the calls originated in India and used voice over internet protocol (VoIP) carriers, which use internet connections instead of traditional copper phone lines.
The companies named in the suits include Tollfreedeals.com, Global Voicecom Inc., Global Telecommunication Services Inc and KAT Telecom Inc. The Justice Department said the robocalls led to "massive financial losses to elderly and vulnerable victims across the nation." U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, who overseas the Eastern District of New York office, said that for the first time, the Justice Department was targeting "U.S.-based enablers" and seeking temporary restraining orders to block further calls. The government said the firms were warned numerous times they were carrying fraudulent robocalls.
The companies named in the suits include Tollfreedeals.com, Global Voicecom Inc., Global Telecommunication Services Inc and KAT Telecom Inc. The Justice Department said the robocalls led to "massive financial losses to elderly and vulnerable victims across the nation." U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, who overseas the Eastern District of New York office, said that for the first time, the Justice Department was targeting "U.S.-based enablers" and seeking temporary restraining orders to block further calls. The government said the firms were warned numerous times they were carrying fraudulent robocalls.
swat teams should raid their offices (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are in India. The US has no jurisdiction and would not risk a military confrontation with a nuclear superpower. This lawsuit is for show only in an election year and has no hope of stemming the flood of robocalls or punishing anyone in any way. If anything, after it is thrown out, it will encourage more people to enter into this lucrative business.
Oh man, I was totally going to say we should shoot cruise missiles at their offices, too.
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I doubt we would go to war with India over a raid of a foreign company.
Some political tension? Yes. but not war.
That said if America has any soft power left in the world. It probably could encourage the Indian Government to Raid and extradite the criminals for them.
While America might have a big stick, most victories come from speaking softly.
Re: swat teams should raid their offices (Score:2)
Re: swat teams should raid their offices (Score:1)
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LOL. Yeah, we get it. Trump bad. Clinton good.
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While America might have a big stick, most victories come from speaking softly.
We have been complaining softly about this crap for years, and nothing happens.
Re:swat teams should raid their offices (Score:5, Informative)
at least read the fucking summary.
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at least read the fucking summary.
You must be new here. [checks user id] Nope. You just have more faith in the Internet than I do.
Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything good MUST be turned around to look bad. Otherwise the Trump administration might get credit.
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How about cutting all cables going into India if the Indian government won't deal with the problem?
Because all the software projects outsourced to India would come to a grinding halt.
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...and then the quality of projects delivered in the US would skyrocket!
Thank goodness for Quality Control; who knows what heights quality could ascend to without it!
Re: swat teams should raid their offices (Score:1)
The calls came from India but the companies affected are in the US
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I see they modded you down as a troll, but you're not necessarily wrong here. The robo-calls to my own phone continue today, unabated. There's no evidence this will do anything at all other than move some tax money to the pockets of some lawyers.
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At least read the summary. The companies being sued are U.S. companies knowingly carrying robocalls from customers in India.
Their offices are in the U.S.
here we need regulators (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:here we need regulators (Score:5, Interesting)
Tolerate? I would be willing to pay for over-regulation that prevents real businesses, charities and political parties from telemarketing.
A $10/month fee and a guarantee that all telemarketing calls will be blocked? Sign me the fuck up!
Re: here we need regulators (Score:1)
Id pay $10/mo to ensure that the telemarket scammers are subject to prison shower-rapes daily. Hell I would auction off a carton of cigarettes to the one who inflicted the most mental trauma.
Re:here we need regulators (Score:5, Insightful)
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They get hit just as hard as the rest of us by incoming spam calls too. Once pub I frequent has the bartender answer the phone. When I'm there and it's quiet I can see just how many calls are a an instant hangup, because they're spam calls. The amount of time the poor bartenders waste answering calls like that would definitely be well worth $10/month to them. Probably even $100/month.
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Fix Caller ID! (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a ton of rules and regulations out there. The problem is the scammers put money into the politicians so they don't bother to enforce them. Often when such claims go to court they will favor the telemarketer because the person who may have put themselves on a no-call list is just judges being a whiner trying to use the legal system to get money from a company.
The real problem is Caller ID. It is too easy to spoof your Caller ID, and nearly impossible to track back to the offender. (However the phone companies know where to send the phone bill too). While there are legit reasons to Spoof your Caller ID (Doctor Appointment Reminders, you want the Caller ID to return to the Office so the Admin staff can handle the calls), this should be regulated and managed, much like how some companies can get vanity phone numbers, you can have it done but there is a lot of paper work and checks before you do this.
Because if you are going to telemarket and especially scam people, you should expect a phone DDOS attack back, as part of your cost of business.
Telemarketing and SPAM is too cheap, and non-supportive advertising. Ads on my Web Site, TV that give me information or services I want is OK, because the Ad revenue is paying for part or all of the service offered to me. But Telemarketing and SPAM are not giving me anything for me, and are often called on my dime (My Bandwidth, My Storage, My Metered bills)
Re:Fix Caller ID! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not because it isn't a valid excuse (it is) but because they are totally ignoring that we partially solved this with BGP and other routing protocols. I say partially because DDoS can't be properly neutralized until protocols enforce spoofing limits on packet sources.
Anyway, in networking we have the network address and mask, and route summarization. These are basically what is needed with phone systems. You can still have spoofing for legit reasons (callback number) but it must belong to your assigned pool of numbers. It might work out that legacy systems can't support this, which is fine. You either upgrade your system or accept that some people might start blocking calls that don't arrive with this extra information. That will be incentive to upgrade if you actually require legit spoofing.
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There really isn't a problem here. Plenty of business and charaities operate without this sort of marketing. The ones that do are the exception rather than the rule, and I suspect few legitimate organistions use only robocalls.
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Plenty of business and charaities operate without this sort of marketing. The ones that do are the exception rather than the rule
Telemarketing has reached a point that most people still in posession of their brain will assume a cold call is a scam anyway. I'm surprised that any straight company or charity wants its reputation ruined by being the originator of a telemarketing call.
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... I would be willing to tolerate some over-regulation that restricted some real businesses and charities from telemarketing in order to get rid of the scams.
I would not describe that as over-regulation. All telemarketeers can FOAD as far as I'm concerned.
Better Idea? (Score:3)
Re:Better Idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that if carriers firmed up the security around the CNAM and CID so that carriers couldn't just spoof any number they wanted, it would go a long way toward stopping the scourge.
If a spammer had to buy every phone number they used and the number was tightly bound to CID, it would discourage the spammer through financial means as well as allowing the receiver to block the number, confident that they were blocking this spammer.
Re:Better Idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
I meant to say: I think that if carriers firmed up the security around the CNAM and CID so that spammers couldn't just spoof any number they wanted, it would go a long way toward stopping the scourge.
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"it must be somewhere in the "hard" to "damn near impossible" range, otherwise it would have been done."
It is actually in the "more profitable not to do it" range.
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Number portability means that carriers actually have a database which identifies what carrier each number belongs to so they can route calls to the proper network.
Calls also carry a mandatory calling party identification (the carrier version of caller ID), so in theory if the call entering your network doesn't match the carrier from which it originated, you could drop it.
I'd imagine the actual implementation would involve more effort than you think in terms of software.
And then there are gotchas where calli
Caller I Fee (Score:2)
Re: Better Idea? (Score:2)
I like it, but the receiver shouldnâ(TM)t get any money, as it incentives doing this to everyone. Also it could be a tenth of a cent and it would put the scammers out of business, but it would still promote local spam type calls. From business that have your information, so 25 cents does seem good. The phone company shouldnâ(TM)t get it either, they should get a tenth of a cent for processing, then the 24.9 cents goes to a fund taking down spammers and robocallers .
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Make it a) mandatory, b) 1/1000th of a cent, c) waive the first 1 cent of imbalance each month, and d) make the local provider liable if they do not pass the charge upstream.
The median residential consumer would see no change in their bill, since their incoming vs. outgoing imbalance is going to be less than 1000 per month. Call centers, who are the largest "legit" business that take a position against easy spoofing, will back the harder spoofing in exchange for collecting their imbalance. Local phone compa
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Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.
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Another good step (Score:3, Informative)
Ban Phone Number Spoofing and force callerID to show the actual number being called from
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The only good reason for spoofing caller ID is if you want your main business line number when an employee is calling out. For example, receptionist calls to remind patient that they have a doctor's appointment, but you don't want the receptionist's direct line to show up so you spoof it so that the main office line shows instead. In this case, though, you'd be spoofing to a number you own. If you don't own the number, you shouldn't be able to spoof to it.
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Sure, but the local company terminating the call isn't. Require telcos, including VOIP, to ensure valid CID or drop the calls, with the end user's option to turn that off. If the remote telco won't validate, or is shown to spoof validation, no call termination for you. If that means ALL calls from India or some other country to my phones drop, fine with me. If the user doesn't want that, let them turn it off. Or perhaps send them all to voicemail. I'm fine with a hard drop.
As for the remote spoofing, one re
why not charge the originator (Score:3)
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One question (Score:1)
Why arenâ(TM)t these folks being perp walked in front of tv cameras and facing criminal charges?
Goverment Does Job--Creates Exposive News! (Score:3)
Let's get the names (Score:4, Interesting)
PSTN Gateways, yay! (Score:3)
Finally (this should have happened long ago), they are cracking down on the VOIP to PSTN gateway providers.
These companies KNOW they are injecting robocalls into the telephone network, and they do not care, because they are making money.
Kudos to the feds for nailing them, though this could have been done years ago.
Proof on US Companies that use Robocall services (Score:2)
Months ago, I started getting hammered by robocalls. Eventually, I answered one and they said they wanted to know if I needed supplemental medicare insurance. I said no. But they kept calling, so I made up a fictitious name (Scott, but call me Scotty), a birthday (I'm now 74 years old), and address (I live out west). They'd spend a long time getting these details and then ask if I wanted to talk to someone about this insurance and I would say "no." And they'd get mad and hang up.
But they'd call back.