48 States Sue Phone Company That Allegedly Catered To Needs of Robocallers 47
Nearly every US state yesterday sued a telecom company accused of routing billions of illegal robocalls to millions of US residents on the Do Not Call Registry. From a report: Avid Telecom, an Arizona-based company formed in 2000, "chose profit over running a business that conforms to state and federal law," according to a lawsuit led by Arizona AG Kris Mayes and joined by the attorneys general of 47 other states and the District of Columbia. The case involves every US state except Alaska and South Dakota. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Arizona against Avid Telecom, CEO Michael Lansky, and VP of Operations and Sales Stacey Reeves. The lawsuit arises from work done by the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 attorneys general.
"In the more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, Avid Telecom used spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies," a press release from the Arizona AG's office said. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial, a permanent injunction to prevent additional illegal robocalls, and financial penalties including "restitution or other compensation on behalf of residents" for illegal calls. The lawsuit cites the federal Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and certain state laws regarding unfair and deceptive trade practices.
"In the more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, Avid Telecom used spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies," a press release from the Arizona AG's office said. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial, a permanent injunction to prevent additional illegal robocalls, and financial penalties including "restitution or other compensation on behalf of residents" for illegal calls. The lawsuit cites the federal Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and certain state laws regarding unfair and deceptive trade practices.
wtf (Score:1)
Re:wtf (Score:4, Funny)
Alaska because they don't have phones, South Dakota because they're fucking in on it.
Remember when they made that do-not-call list? (Score:2, Insightful)
... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?
Re:Remember when they made that do-not-call list? (Score:5, Insightful)
... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?
It's also useful for suing the shit out of the companies that don't abide by it - having your number on that list also means you can get a whole lot more money when they're found guilty for violating it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's taken them 23 years to take action on one sole violator, guilty of literally billions of fraudulent calls. You're delusional if you think this is an example of "the system working."
Re: (Score:2)
It's taken them 23 years to take action on one sole violator,
[citation needed]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The fucking story you are is the comments of. ffs
[citation needed]
Re:Remember when they made that do-not-call list? (Score:5, Funny)
... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?
Yes, because phone numbers come from an un-quantifiable pool of numbers that couldn't be dialed w/o that list, even randomly. /s
Re: (Score:1)
The volume of spam, scam, and phishing calls I get belies the hypothesis that they're going by random selection.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They are dialing sequences 555-1234 555-1235 etc.
What would fix some of this is something like what we have for email, SPF, DKIM, DMARC authentication except for CallerIDs, instead of email.
Doesn't solve everything, but it helps.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm rather sure it isn't that simple. (I mean, yes, some of them are doing that, but there's got to be some other selection that others are doing.) OTOH, it can't be any personalize selection, because they keep trying scams on me where I wouldn't want what they're offering even for free.
Re: (Score:2)
The volume of spam, scam, and phishing calls I get belies the hypothesis that they're going by random selection.
I get literally zero of those on my home landline and almost none on my cell, which are almost all hangups (but noted as SPAM by Google). If an undesirable caller is dumb enough to leave a voicemail, I report the call to the National Do Not Call Registry [donotcall.gov] -- whether the number shown on the Caller ID is the actual number is another story, but if the voicemail mentions a different number, I include that in the comment and make an additional report for that number, with a comment about the first number.
Both
Re: (Score:2)
2008. My home address is also registered with the Direct Marketing Association DMA Choice [dmachoice.org], though I did that *way* back via the USPS when it was free and permanent
Its still free you just have to tell them you’re dead.
Re: (Score:2)
Its still free you just have to tell them you’re dead.
Ha -- nice.
Re: (Score:2)
almost none on my cell, which are almost all hangups (but noted as SPAM by Google).
The hangups are the first round to see if the phone number is active. The calls that are answered get the second round of calls that actually have people on them.
Well, you were wrong then (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?
No, I don't remember that. You got the URL to your post where you said that?
Not a chance (Score:1)
1) extremely hostile to any legal issue that crosses state lines. Unless it has to do with abortion. If thats the case, a judge in rural texas can overrule 20 years of medical knowledge and order a nationwide change in medicine availability.
2) exceptionally supportive of free speech. Unless it has to do with black slavery in the US, which has been outlawed as a topic in some grade schools, because white people are apparently too brittle to hear about it.
I
Re: (Score:2)
The act of phone calling is not free speech. The call itself is by law supposed to not be calling those on the do not call registry for unsolicited purposes - and using faked caller ID is fraud. Once you legally place a call you can then say whatever you want but you are also not free from defamation or fraud laws.
Re:Not a chance (Score:4, Funny)
Eliminating robo calls is one of them.
Re: (Score:1)
I guessed wrong (Score:2, Funny)
I would have guessed FL or TX, but it seems the list of trash states keeps getting longer. /bad-thoughts
WHY? (Score:2)
Re:WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
To connect a call requires two endpoints that can route to each other, but when there are transitions between POTS and VOIP, especially when different companies are involved... they generally trust each other and the caller ID information is not actually authenticated.
As long as everyone gets paid, they don't care.
Re: (Score:2)
They needed cryptographic authentication. This was Ajit Pai's biggest push as FCC Commissioner (STIR/SHAKEN).
95% of the people here hate on him because he's Republican and these things that take a long time take twice as long with politicial haters.
So irrational haters is why you got an extra three years of robocalls.
Re: (Score:2)
They needed cryptographic authentication. This was Ajit Pai's biggest push as FCC Commissioner (STIR/SHAKEN).
95% of the people here hate on him because he's Republican and these things that take a long time take twice as long with politicial haters.
So irrational haters is why you got an extra three years of robocalls.
Nobody, or very few, hated Ajit Pai because he was Republican. Most hated him because he was a primary example of the principal that you should not hire industry insiders to play regulator. His entire motive was to increase profits on the companies he should have been cracking down on. It was the hypocrisy that made us hate him, not his political affiliations.
States rights FTW (Score:2)
Another example of why DC is full of shit. We have a do not call list at the federal level but do they actually research and go after these scammers? No.
Good for the states and they need to start taking more action like this to actually benefit their residents rather than waiting for a bunch of idiots in DC to do it.
Repealing the 17th Amendment would go a long way in fixing that.
How about... (Score:4)
Banning Political robocalls
You know I'm a registered democrat (Score:1)
Correct solution (Score:2)
Beheadings
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, public executions.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, Avid Telecom, CEO Michael Lansky, and VP of Operations and Sales Stacey Reeves already self-selected for execution. We can stop there until someone else self-selects.
Check this (Score:2)
Asking for too little (Score:2)
Does anyone know Avid Telecom's phone # (Score:2)
It would be great if they could be denied access to the phone network by a human DDOS attack. Nothing would be more fitting.
Re: (Score:1)
Remember Ralsky? https://slashdot.org/story/02/... [slashdot.org]
Yeah I get these spam calls (Score:1)
Re: Yeah I get these spam calls (Score:2)
Death penalty? (Score:2)
I get dozen of scam calls per day. I have to answer the phone. I can't whitelist, blacklist, or ignore calls. Returning legitimate calls is a problem because many people refuse to answer their phone unless it's from someone they know. These scammers have seriously devalued the US phone system. Millions of hours are wasted weekly by these criminals.
I usually play along to see how the scam goes, but some scammers keep hanging up on me even when I think I'm giving the right answers so they can try to scam
Hear me out, that's every phone company (Score:3)
As long as they fail to do the things we already know how to do in order to prevent these abuses, like enforcing sane caller ID, then they are ALL complicit.
Don't they all? (Score:2)
why is spoofing possible? (Score:1)