[HN Gopher] Report to Congress: Robocalls and Transmission of Mi... ___________________________________________________________________ Report to Congress: Robocalls and Transmission of Misleading Caller ID Author : infodocket Score : 102 points Date : 2021-12-29 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.fcc.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.fcc.gov) | hinkley wrote: | I saw a Shitty Life Tips the other day claiming that if you | mentioned Tienanmen Square to the Chinese robocallers that | they'll end up on a list. | | I only know enough about Mandarin to distinguish it from all the | other East Asian languages. Maybe I should have my coworker teach | me "fuck off and stop calling me," but what I really want is a | Mark as Spam button on my phone instead of just block caller. | hangonhn wrote: | That's definitely a bad life tip. The square itself is still | call "Tiananmen". Even if the Chinese government censor any | mention of the massacre, simply mentioning the name of the | location won't trigger it because it's like saying "Capital | Mall" -- it's a place people go. For that to remotely work, you | would have to actually say "Tiananmen Square Massacre" but I | doubt most people would be able to say it in Mandarin. (In | Chinese it's called the June 4th incident so Tiananmen isn't | even mentioned). | | I'm now actually more curious about the meme itself. I wonder | if the actual motive is to get non-Chinese people to be more | curious about the event. If so, it would actually be a meme or | a mental virus. Fascinating to say the least. | hinkley wrote: | Streisand effect is a real thing. | cjbgkagh wrote: | There is copypasta of banned expressions that you can use. | cogburnd02 wrote: | this is one fugly text file: | | https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-378593A1.txt | thomas wrote: | Yes, most government data is awful but it's usually at least | workable. That's why sites like sec.report and | https://fccid.report exist. https://www.ecfr.gov is actually | good though. | dfdub10 wrote: | How has nobody mentioned Ajit Pai overturning net neutrality | which to me is exactly when the robo calls stopped flossing in. | With Net Neutrality in place callers had to get your permission | to call. And shocker, you remove oversight and allow free acces | to run scams how is anyone surprised robocalls have become a huge | issue. | ncphil wrote: | For landlines we had a Do Not Call Registry, but nothing like | that was ever implemented for mobile as far as I know. For me, | false or misleading CallerIDs are the most immediate problem. | If we required commercial entities to clearly identify | themselves in their CallerID (the way many states require | commercial vehicles to display their business name and contact | info) then we'd have a fair shot of cutting down phone spam | through "technical means". T-Mobile does a fairly good job of | identifying mobile phone and text spam, and gives you a block | button for the ones it doesn't catch: but it's a stopgap. | Almost all the "landline" (VOIP) calls coming into my house | already go to voicemail thanks to around a dozen call | treatments I've got in place: but delayed notice of an | important call from the proverbial clueless bank or doctor's | office with a blank CallerID is a constant risk. | jffry wrote: | > With Net Neutrality in place callers had to get your | permission to call | | That's not at all what Net Neutrality is, and its removal as | policy wouldn't directly enable more of these spam calls from | happening | willis936 wrote: | Interesting take, however your observation is opposite of | reality. Can you explain why the number of robocalls have | exploded soon after Ajit Pai's policies went into place? | thesis wrote: | Illegal (fraud) robocalls need to stop. | | With that being said, I'm tired of the carriers / phone creators | deciding when I want to answer my phone. | | An example of what I'm talking about: | https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251165362 | | My bank was trying to get a hold of me due to them turning off | autopay, and I wasn't answering their calls because it doesn't | show a phone number or anything. Just "Spam Likely" | | IMO I'd rather see all calls coming to my phone, and send them to | VM if I want. Devices nowadays even have the capability to block | calls from outside your contact list if you want. | | These decisions should be up to me! Not some blackhole where | algorithms decide if I should receive the call or not. | CubsFan1060 wrote: | Out of curiosity, do you feel the same about email? When I look | in my gmail spam bucket it's insane how much stuff I never see | (thankfully!). | gbear605 wrote: | It's interesting - my gmail spambox is mostly accurate, but I | get actual important emails there a few times a month. I've | received real emails from my bank there before! I've received | emails from Google services there before!! | | On the other hand, I frequently get obvious spam emails in my | inbox, including from one address that I weekly received a | spam email. It was a very obvious email ("increase the size | of your member with this one quick trick"), and each time I | would mark it as spam, but Gmail never realized that that | address was spam. I eventually just had to create my own | filter. | | I'm not sure what's up with it, but they need to rethink | their approach. | thesis wrote: | No, I don't feel the same way about Junk email. I can go | through it at my leisure and there's history there. Carriers | potentially blocking calls is just some black box deciding | what's "safe" for me. | | There are issues with mail servers being blacklisted and they | can't send emails to me. But there's actual visibility to | that. You can look up mail server IP's and get to the root | issue of why you're blacklisted. | | Honestly I'd rather the government focus on the endless junk | mail I receive to my home than anything. I spend more time | sorting that rather than hitting decline on my phone. | orev wrote: | The email that makes it into your Junk folder are just the | "probably spam" ones. Email providers are outright blocking | "definitely spam" messages, where the decision is being | made by a black box. There's no history you can check for | those, and the decisions are made in a much more | complicated way than just checking an IP blocklist. | ridaj wrote: | I think it's likely that some banks will start building better | communication features inside their apps because of this. IMO | the telecom companies in the US lack not just the incentives | but the skill to fix the spam problem, so people are just | becoming blind to phone calls and texts, with phones abetting | that blindness with spam filtering features. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | I'll never do banking on a device that I consider to be | compromised from first activation. You're one exploit away | from having your account drained. | ridaj wrote: | Well in that case I guess you're not banking on the phone | even if they solve the spam call problem... | salawat wrote: | You (you "You" and royal "You") need to recognize that | industry/developers have been making these kinds of decisions | for decades, but in the last two decades that I've been paying | attention, matters have grossly accelerated to the point that | some tech platforms are basically entirely driven by industry | desires, and not users. | | In fact, I'm getting to the point I may start deprecating | "Users" in my lexicon, and replacing it with "victims" upon | whom technical implementations are "inflicted". | | Because I can't honestly say that industry has been looking out | for anyone but industry in a looooong time. | beckingz wrote: | Daily Active Victims is a good metric. | arbitrage wrote: | Turn off spam call detection, if possible. Let all calls not | from contacts go to voicemail. Turn on voicemail transcription | (unless you're concerned about the privacy implications). Spam | calls rarely leave voicemails. Everyone else has been trained | to leave a VM if there's an actual business or personal need to | do so. | | This is a very old problem. In the days of landlines, we | screened our calls with the answering machine for this very | reason. | vmception wrote: | For the past two years Ive been needing to clear my ios | voicemails every few months because they are full of bounced | calls that left a voicemail | | There is also a deleted messages section, automatically made | for some bounced callers, that needs to be cleared | | Non solution offered here | CubsFan1060 wrote: | Also younger siblings. "Tell them I'm not home!" | function_seven wrote: | > _Spam calls rarely leave voicemails._ | | This is quickly becoming not the case! I get several spam | voicemails every week now. They're intentionally hitting my | voicemail by placing a "dummy" call to my phone, then another | call a second later (forcing it to my VM due to the first | call being in the middle of setup). The first call is | disconnected before I have a chance to answer it. It's only | there to force the next call to voicemail. | | The voicemails all follow a similar pattern. Here's one: | | _Hi this is Josh calling. We spoke some time ago about solar | for your home but the timing was bad so I wanted to reach | back out because we have a brand new program that 's only for | a limited time..._ | | and it goes on from there. I've never once spoken to "Josh" | about solar for my home. | | These are call placement patterns that should be trivial to | detect on the carrier's end. | vmception wrote: | I get the ones where the robot breathes in and out, at the | beginning of sentences, and sighs to sound more human | endymi0n wrote: | I'm always wondering why Americans allow their lawmakers to get | away with this. | | In order to stop robocalls, you just need to do three things: | | * Flat out ban them and make it illegal to route them at | network handover points | | * Make caller ID mandatory with a reachable number to call back | to | | * Create an authority caring for those robocall reports | | Then, put heavy fines on violations and go enforce the heck out | of it. That's exactly what the EU did pretty much in the | infancy of this technology. | | I can't recall ever getting a robocall here in Germany. | | That being said, my bet is this being a tragedy of the commons, | as the only two parties in the system seem to heavily rely on | the tool for fundraising -- oh and they probably also make | millions for some selected members of congress... -\\_(tsu)_/- | gwd wrote: | > I can't recall ever getting a robocall here in Germany. | | The simpler reason you haven't gotten a robocall on your cell | phone^W^W"handy" is that the _caller pays_ a non-negligible | amount of money to call you (at some point it was around | PS0.25). This makes the sort of mass spam calling that 's | happening in the US uneconomical. In the US, the _receiver_ | pays the cost of the tower-to-mobile connection; meaning it | 's fractions of a cent to call anyone, even on their cell | phone. | | Making the US more like Europe in that regard would | instantaneously get rid of a massive amount of spam calls, | without the need for any more complicated regulation. | bluGill wrote: | It would also get rid of a massive amount of useful calls. | Germany doesn't get robo calls, but that is at the | expensive of not being able to use their phones as a phone | when they want to. | | Back when cell minutes were expensive what Germany has made | sense. Today nearly everyone in the US has unlimited voice | minutes (in and out) and nobody worries about how long they | talk to each other. | vanusa wrote: | _I 'm always wondering why Americans allow their lawmakers to | get away with this._ | | Generations of brainwashing in support of the divine right of | "free enterprise" has something to do with it, I suspect. | ectopod wrote: | A large proportion of the spam that makes it into my gmail | inbox is from American politicians and I'm not even American. | They are indeed part of the problem. | msoad wrote: | The US government failed attempts to stop robocalls is my | favorite example of how ineffective and corrupt the system is. We | all know that in a healthy system it is an easy problem to solve. | All the lobbyist and corporate interest is goin in the way. It's | ironic because the government officials know how directly the | general population feel the pain of this one and sometimes really | want to do the unordinary and focus on interest of The People but | can't get it done! | vlovich123 wrote: | This argument is interesting to me because why wouldn't the | same apply to email spam? | howdydoo wrote: | Phone service is an oligopoly. Spectrum is sold by the | government and it is EXPENSIVE. No new companies can join the | market, and customers have nowhere to go. So prices are high | and companies do the bare minimum. | | Email is more of a fair marketplace. In theory, you can even | roll your own on a $5/mo VPS. Switching costs are low. You | can forward messages anywhere. So email providers cannot | charge exorbitant rates or require 12-month contracts, and | they must provide better service to retain customers. | vlovich123 wrote: | You're thinking about cellular service. Most of the phone | spam I'm aware of is coming from VoIP connections and the | reason there's so much of it is it's extremely cheap. | kmeisthax wrote: | I think you have this backwards. E-mail is actually a good | example of _why_ you shouldn 't open up communications | systems too much. Because they're more or less free to | send, people who want to send advertisements send loads of | them. This makes e-mail entirely unusable unless you are | very proactive in restricting who can send mail to you. | Technical limitations like SPF, DKIM, and so on only | prevent the worst abuses. What does really work has been IP | blacklisting and reputation systems that more or less make | rolling your e-mail very difficult. | | Yes, you _can_ roll your own e-mail; but you 're taking on | the challenge of both getting spam out of your incoming | mail as well as getting your outgoing mail to be | deliverable to everyone else. As a homelab[0] training | exercise, it's fun; but businesses that need reliable mail | just outsource it all to Google or Microsoft. The end | result is that e-mail users more or less reinvented the | restrictive systems that phone service _used_ to have | before the FCC opened POTS up to everyone that wanted to | call an entire state about the their car 's extended | warranty. | | When you mention spectrum limitations, that's for providing | _mobile_ phone service; which is only tangentially related | to the actual phone call routing these days. Just getting a | dialable number or placing a call is hilariously cheap and | plenty of services of varying quality will let you do this | in bulk. Providing access to that number over wireless | spectrum is the expensive part; but you don 't need | spectrum to spam people. | | [0] Don't try to take the word "homelab" literally and run | your mail server on your residential ISP. It won't work. | tdeck wrote: | 1) Emails are decentralized and the telephone network is much | less so. It's controlled by a relatively small number of | companies. I can't run my own server and connect it to the | VoIP network and start sending packets. The major companies | can all agree to ban caller ID spoofing and block any | carriers that allow it to happen, or at least block any of | them for domestic numbers. But they don't. | | 2) We actually have kinda solved the caller ID problem with | email. We have SPF and message signing and the Telco industry | seems to be dragging their feet to implement equivalent | caller ID verification technology. Imagine if you could block | a spam caller and report their endpoint on the telephone | network. They'd at least have to purchase a new number each | time this happens, rather than just impersonating as they do | now. | netizen-936824 wrote: | Is email _truly_ decentralized? Roll your own and you 'll | encounter issues with deliver ability just from being new | in the market. Large providers manage their own block lists | and prevent some messages from some ips being delivered at | all. This is a practice that shuts down decentralization | and creates an oligopoly, although I agree it isn't as | severe as the tele situation. | | There are ways to enter the VoIP market by purchasing trunk | access but iirc that's still controlled by a few big | players. | | Another difference is that email in your junk folder still | contains the information. Blocking a spam call means no | information gets stored. | vlovich123 wrote: | > Emails are decentralized and the telephone network is | much less so. It's controlled by a relatively small number | of companies | | E-mail is largely controlled by a small number of | companies. The vast majority of people use Microsoft, | Google or Yahoo Mail. The reasons it's not centralized is | the same as with phone numbers - interoperability. | | As you note, all the major e-mail providers already | implement SPF and DKIM which is more advanced than anything | the carriers are talking about implementing. Spam remains a | problem. I think spammers will evolve the same techniques | of attacking and taking over "valid" endpoints and routing | traffic through them as they do with e-mail today. Of | course, this is a good thing. It raises the expense and | risks associated with spam phone calls. Still, I think the | claim that any technical measures will stop these calls is | unhelpful hyperbole. | | Ultimately the only way to actually stop these is to starve | these services for funds which will be lobbied against | heavily by large players who rely on these services | (knowingly or unknowingly) to drive sales. | briffle wrote: | Honestly, its like all the huge DDoS attacks by spoofed UDP | packets. In both cases, their is already tech in place, that | prevent you from forwarding packets for networks that are not | 'under' you (BCP 38 came out in what, 2000?) But their is very | little incentive for the provider to do the work. | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | This doesn't sound like an informed breakdown of the issue | thewebcount wrote: | For me this is the most infuriating part: | | > The Commission does not collect criminal fines for violations | of section 227. > If a party fails to pay a forfeiture, we refer | the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice for further | enforcement action. We have referred to the Department of Justice | forfeiture orders involving violations of section 227 by Adrian | Abramovich, Marketing Strategy Leaders, Inc., and Marketing | Leaders, Inc. (Abramovich), Philip Roesel, dba Wilmington | Insurance Quotes, and Best Insurance Contracts, Inc. (Roesel), | Affordable Enterprises of Arizona, LLC, and Scott Rhodes a.k.a. | Scott David Rhodes, Scott D. Rhodes, Scott Platek, Scott P. | Platek (Rhodes). 34 _During calendar year 2020, the Attorney | General did not collect any forfeiture penalties or criminal | fines for violations of section 227 cases that the Commission has | referred._ We lack knowledge about the U.S. Department of | Justice's collections beyond those cases. | | It said earlier that these entities owe tens of millions of | dollars in forfeitures. Why were they not collected? If these | criminals know that there's no penalty, they'll continue acting | badly. (And we can see already that they do this. They change | names and start over.) | xxpor wrote: | Are you upset about the lack of criminal penalties imposed | directly by the FCC? That's mostly just an organizational | issue. The FCC isn't law enforcement. They can only impose | civil penalties. | | Referring the issue to the Justice dept is really the only | thing they can do. I think this goes for all independent | agencies. Of course, once it's referred over there, it goes in | the big tumbler of prioritization for the FBI/US Attorneys.... | and I'm not shocked they wouldn't immediately jump on a non- | violent, extremely technically complex case. | bluGill wrote: | They should jump on all cases. That their job is hard is not | an excuse to not do it. | ncphil wrote: | Can't help but think that if marijuana | decriminalization/legalization finally happens, law | enforcement will be rooting around for other low hanging | fruit. Seems like this just might fit the bill. Imagining | heavily armed SWAT teams breaking down the doors of call | centers and swarming in. On that happy note... | micromacrofoot wrote: | based on how law enforcement has worked historically it | probably depends on the racial demographics and political | leanings of the perpetrators | degenerate wrote: | In today's telecom world where everything is tracked and logged | down to the microsecond, it's extremely angering that the only | reason we still get robocalls is because the players in the | telecom game are making _a lot of money from letting them | happen_. | tenebrisalietum wrote: | Phones and snail mail have been supplanted by equivalent | Internet services, and both are trying to stay alive/relevant | by selling out to annoying commercial interests. | | Telegrams gave way to phones, but it was never possible to spam | someone with telegrams, and they had a cost per word. | tdeck wrote: | If telcos want the phone to be relevant, this is the wrong | way to go about it. Just 10 years ago I answered my phone | when it rang, even with an unknown number. Does anybody do | that anymore? It's become nearly unusable, for example, as a | way for businesses to contact customers they have an actual | relationship with because of all the spam. | thewebcount wrote: | > It's become nearly unusable, for example, as a way for | businesses to contact customers they have an actual | relationship with because of all the spam. | | On top of that the telcos are joining in on the fun. I am | an AT&T cell phone subscriber and in the last month they've | started robo-calling me non-stop to sign up for their | ailing DirecTV service. Who in their right mind would | subscribe to that with all the better streaming options | available? But the worst part is that they technically | aren't breaking the rules themselves because we do have an | existing business relationship (if you can call paying my | bill on time and doing everything in my power not to | otherwise interact with them a relationship). | ktkoffroth wrote: | I recently questioned this when setting up my mother and | grandfather with TV and internet for their new house. The | internet TV provider either don't have, or charge so much | extra for channels they consider "essential" (that's | another issue) that it's not worth getting the service, | as the price is equivalent or more to a satellite TV | provider. | jlarocco wrote: | I'm not 100% sure, but that may be a scam. | | I recently got one of those, and I'm not an AT&T | customer. | monkpit wrote: | A scam or a dodgy 3rd party (or both?). DirecTV has a | reseller program where anyone can become a "retailer". | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | > Who in their right mind would subscribe to that with | all the better streaming options available? | | Large swaths of the US can't get usable broadband. These | people use satellite TV services. Of course that market | is already developed so growth requires pestering the | people with better choices available. | tehjoker wrote: | I'd really like to be able to use my phone for real | relationships with natural persons too even if they're | not in my contact list. | monkpit wrote: | But you're assuming that the ATT/DirectTV calls are legit | and direct from HQ. DirecTV is resold through 3rd parties | all the time, I am pretty sure these calls are from a 3rd | party or even a scam. | ryandrake wrote: | Imagine if nobody ever used or knew about traditional | phones, and then someone came up with the "Phone app": | | "Yea, so here is an app you will love! Install it, and it | allows anyone, anywhere, anytime, to interrupt whatever you | are doing on your device, background whatever app you are | running, cause it to ring, buzz, and notify! Further, if | you press the green button, it will allow that random | person to start talking to you." | | Even if it managed to get past either of the app stores' | rules, who would install such an intrusive app? | | Yet, every smartphone sold today has that exact annoying | app pre-installed! | charcircuit wrote: | Why would you frame it like that? It's all about how you | market it. | phkahler wrote: | Imagine if it also reliably indicated who was calling you | and had super easy blocking capability. | | Also, what if you could set time and day for availability | - i.e. for work related numbers. | zipswitch wrote: | ridaj wrote: | US telcos know at best two things at this point: keep the | network up and collect rent. They cannot solve complicated | social problems like spam or internet security. They just | don't have the skills or the willingness to invest. We will | all continue to pay them if only for internet access, and | for a good price too thanks to countless mergers leaving | consumers with few choices, but they are otherwise | transforming into dumber and dumber pipes at a pretty fast | clip. There's more profit to be made for them being a dumb | pipe while device and OS manufacturers pick up the security | / spam slack for free (eg, how much is anyone actually | willing to pay for spam filtering) because it lets them | provide a trusted environment to sell apps and ads in. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-29 23:00 UTC)