Perhaps there should be a law similar to the law on the books regarding debt collectors who harass people. $1K fine every time a customer requests and is denied data regarding who supplied the robocaller with their personal information. I was in a traffic accident last year, and I slow-walked getting my car fixed before they informed me that it was actually totaled. Within 3 weeks of purchasing my new vehicle, the robocallers knew that I had a new car and were now calling me regarding the extended warranty of the new car as well as the totaled one.
The FCC ought to mandate traceability for all calls. Every hop adds their signature to the call and the end user can store and analyze the result. The first hop is the organization you sue.
As an aside: you could then easily add carriers or intermediaries to a block list. You could even subscribe to a distributed block list. You could subscribe to an always-allow list that contains hospitals, police stations, and emergency services. It'd be so much better than what we have now.
That would require some major respecification of PSTN calling standards.
That said, yes, something along these lines seems necessary.
Even automated curtailment by last-link telcos (e.g., your own telco) based on rejection / complaint rates (e.g., recpients reporting calls as spam) could be A Thing, and are not dissimilar to how email spam management occurs today. Making that the peer's problem incentivises them to clean up their acts.
Yes, the FTC, not the FCC, but look. Roy Cox settled and was permanently enjoined from telemarketing. Aaron Jones apparently just ignored the complaint altogether, and the FTC won a default judgment banning him from telemarketing also. Yet, here we are again with both of them allegedly involved in this scamming. Maybe the car warranty calls are not considered telemarketing?
This is what I'm wondering. I often get auto warranty calls and I don't even own a vehicle. I just assumed that the calls were spoofed or were illegal in some sense.
Therein laws a potential flaw in those assuming that the solution can be found in plugging personal information leaks. Just like with e-mail, many (most?) of these scams aren't targeted. If the scam has no relevance, people ignore and readily forget it about. For those for whom the scam is pertinent (and that can be a large fraction of the population at any one moment), it seems like the scammer knew something personal about them. The salience may be purely in the mind of of the potential victim; the scammer is often just blasting out the same crap to everybody. I can't even count how many Chinese-language robocalls I've received, for example, and I neither speak Chinese nor could anyone have reason to believe I do (and in any event, such calls are a common experience, AFAIU).
I mean, most scams work similarly to this. Fortune telling, for example. The scammer relies to some degree on the victim connecting the dots themselves as the scammer lacks the necessary information. This is just especially true when it comes to spam.
I used to work a job where we did a follow-the-sun model, so not only do I not drive, I'm not even in the US - but I did answer a US 877-number for part of the day.
We'd get one or two of these calls per month. I don't think there's a chance in hell these are targeted - randomly dialling 877 numbers in the hopes that one will be answered by a human instead of another robot has to be a complete crapshoot.
It seems like they know the responsible carriers, but not the originating customer of those carriers, probably because they're fly by night organizations. These recent orders are basically the FCC saying to the responsible carriers:
"We've told you about this before, you've failed to uphold your promises to stop it, so here's a cease and desist and failure to comply and provide information about how you're complying will result in you being de-peered completely."
And then telling all the other US carriers that they are now authorized to identify and block such calls from the responsible carriers without running afoul of the FCC rules that normally require all carriers to carry for other carriers.
If the originating carriers get de-peered, the FCC will effectively allow other carriers to not carry any of their traffic, legitimate or otherwise and put them out of business.
Considering I'm getting those calls regularly, I wish there are practical way to set up a paywall for incoming calls to deter those.
Like, what if we could set up a system where they have to pay 25c tolls on incoming calls, and they only get waived if it is indeed a legitimate call, indicated by the receiving party...
Selective billing, though?
I know in some countries callers pay for all outbounds but I don't think it was all possible unless one would set up those premium rate numbers...
I actually don't mind the robocalls as much as I used to. What pisses me off now is the random text messages of people pretending to know me on WhatsApp and SMS.
Great news. Now tackle "real estate opportunity" and "off market" robocalls. I get two dozen of them a day, for which I thank TMobile for filtering out most.
It's interesting the FCC takes a stand against robocalls while the USPS would happily deliver offers to sell my grandmother into slavery directly into my mailbox. It baffles me that all spam doesn't fall under the definition of harassment.
Junk mail is wasteful and a PITA but it isn't quite as intrusive as a phone call. You pick up your mail when it's convenient, and it's easy to identify junk mail and discard it without it really interruping your day or having it change its message when it sees you heading for the trash bin.
It's long since passed the point where the task of sorting through junk mail for the very rare valid item is a tedious and error-prone chore. Again, the real harm is in missing legitimate postal mail.
You can request junk mail, including bulk unaddressed mail be excluded. And reject delivery requiring your carrier to pick it up and dispose of it.
Yep, I just don't check my mail. I get emails for my bills, I don't get checks in the mail or anything, I track deliveries of things I've ordered. Mail is sort of useless nowadays anyway, there's no reason to send me paper when there are a myriad of ways to contact me electronically.
I once decided not to replace a stolen mailbox at my house. I don’t get anything of value anyway.
My carrier just started leaving it on the ground in front of my door. Including all that spam addressed to nobody. Even though I repeatedly opted out of that stuff.
At least where I live, the post office primarily serves as a spam distribution agency, and they take that mission very seriously.
I'm pretty sure that both EDDM and specific bulk mail senders can be blocked.
There was a long-standing rejection applied to pornographic materials, based on the recipients own assessment based on "I know it when I see it", though that loophole may have been closed.
From the old Junkbusters site, there are a Form 2150 and 1500 which can be filed against any sender.
No you can’t. There’s a Direct Marketing Association that will let you “opt out”, but it’s purely voluntary and only a minority of junk mail senders are members.
If you bothered to read the linked USPS page, you’d know that “refusing” mail does not prevent you from receiving it. It just means you can give it back to your mailman. Lower on the page it discusses what I mentioned, that there’s voluntary opt-outs that some companies will abide by.
There is no way to tell USPS to not deliver junk mail to you.
> the real harm is in missing legitimate postal mail.
What the post office should enforce is properly labeled envelopes. Watermarks like "response required", "official correspondence", "winning x enclosed", " final notice" should be chargeable/fineable when not legitimate.
Envelopes should never have non-postal information in the first place. Destination, return address and postage should be all that is allowed, anything else gets your mail returned at your cost.
not in general: my wife is a letter carrier part time for USPS, and the overwhelming 2 problems they face are people never getting around to it being convenient, and Amazon shipping huge packages via USPS.
Regarding convenience, mail gets recalled and addressees have to be seriously inconvenienced to retrieve it. this isn't a punitive thing, but a logistics issue.
The USPS at a time was the center of a lot of communities (open on Sundays, serving alcohol) before other forms of communication and has a legislative history to disseminate “information” independently due to “information” not being uniformly accessible in all states.
The USPS does that to survive because one party, funded by owners of competitors, would like to see the USPS go away. if they were simply funded as they should be, then they wouldn't have to send all that.
Great political strat too: ruin the thing that is competing with the businesses paying for your campaign while pointing out how badly that thing is doing. Try to make it as unbearably bad as possible for everyone and pitch fixing it as part of your campaign. Then just privatize it so your friends can extort everyone previously served by the thing.
I want more than the calls stopped. I want a fine of at least 8 billion calls times the legal $500 per call fine plus treble damages. The money distributed to everyone with a phone. I also want to pierce the corporate veil and take everything the owning operators have. Then I want the same done to all robo callers.
Yeah, the fact that a handful of individuals are allowed to make this much infrastructure effectively useless for hundreds of millions of people just so they can make their own millions of dollars from their scams is insane. Maybe someone could start their own robocall campaign urging everyone sick of scam calls to donate $1 to a crypto assassination fund.
I like the calls, because they highlight the shortcomings of the telephony protocol that has been strapped to the side of communications technologies with box tape and is a bunch of legacy system compatibility layers glued together.
Telephone numbers are stupid. An arbitrary sequence of digits, area codes, they only really serve as unique identifiers like a social security number, I can easily be contacted by anyone even if I don't want to be. They're technically inferior. I only need one because other people I don't really care to interact with need me to need one. The only reason I even have one is because it comes free with my mobile data plan.
Who are these people that answer the phone for numbers not in their contacts anyway? Or check voicemail? If someone wants to get a hold of you via your phone number and you actually want to speak to them, they'll SMS. I don't even like that, but at least it's better.
Just ask me for a fucking email address so I can communicate asynchronously, I also have a few other contact mechanisms and if I want to talk to you I'll give you information you need to contact me that way.
> Who are these people that answer the phone for numbers not in their contacts anyway? Or check voicemail? If someone wants to get a hold of you via your phone number and you actually want to speak to them, they'll SMS.
Sorry, but I am glad you’re not on the board of the FCC. While I do get spam VM, usually less that 5 seconds in length that doesn’t get converted to text, I still get a lot of VM from friends and family that gets converted to text, awkwardly which I read a listen to if necessary.
> FCC Enforcement Bureau notifies all U.S.-based telecommunications providers they may block auto warranty robocalls originating from a robocalling enterprise led by Roy Cox, Jr., Aaron Michael Jones, their individual associates, and associated entities
may block. That sounds pretty weak to me. Is there some reason telcos couldn’t block them before?
> Is there some reason telcos couldn’t block them before?
Yes, the FCC normally requires carriers to put all calls through. So the FCC is only now, very belatedly and in very limited circumstances, allowing deviations from the FCC's own rules that have prevented carriers from stopping robocalls for all these years.
The title says "ordered" but that doesn't match the article text:
> The FCC said it has authorized all U.S.-based voice service providers to stop carrying traffic from...
Why is this distinction important? The FCC by default requires carriers to put all calls through, and this rule has prevented phone companies from cleaning up the robocalls that have become ubiquitous.
So it's nice that the FCC is finally allowing carriers to clean up a little bit of the robocall problem, but lets be clear about this: this is a problem of the FCC's making that it is only very belatedly allowing carriers to fix.
74 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 96.8 ms ] threadThe warranty provider? Your telco? Peering telco? The data provider? The call centre?
How do you find / sue them?
As an aside: you could then easily add carriers or intermediaries to a block list. You could even subscribe to a distributed block list. You could subscribe to an always-allow list that contains hospitals, police stations, and emergency services. It'd be so much better than what we have now.
That would require some major respecification of PSTN calling standards.
That said, yes, something along these lines seems necessary.
Even automated curtailment by last-link telcos (e.g., your own telco) based on rejection / complaint rates (e.g., recpients reporting calls as spam) could be A Thing, and are not dissimilar to how email spam management occurs today. Making that the peer's problem incentivises them to clean up their acts.
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/0...
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/1...
Yes, the FTC, not the FCC, but look. Roy Cox settled and was permanently enjoined from telemarketing. Aaron Jones apparently just ignored the complaint altogether, and the FTC won a default judgment banning him from telemarketing also. Yet, here we are again with both of them allegedly involved in this scamming. Maybe the car warranty calls are not considered telemarketing?
I mean, most scams work similarly to this. Fortune telling, for example. The scammer relies to some degree on the victim connecting the dots themselves as the scammer lacks the necessary information. This is just especially true when it comes to spam.
We'd get one or two of these calls per month. I don't think there's a chance in hell these are targeted - randomly dialling 877 numbers in the hopes that one will be answered by a human instead of another robot has to be a complete crapshoot.
And then telling all the other US carriers that they are now authorized to identify and block such calls from the responsible carriers without running afoul of the FCC rules that normally require all carriers to carry for other carriers.
If the originating carriers get de-peered, the FCC will effectively allow other carriers to not carry any of their traffic, legitimate or otherwise and put them out of business.
Like, what if we could set up a system where they have to pay 25c tolls on incoming calls, and they only get waived if it is indeed a legitimate call, indicated by the receiving party...
I tend to answer even still.
Using an ancient vestigial telecommunications system as your lifeline is your problem.
I think ideally people should use something like xmpp or email.
Longtime friend called me from one of these places yesterday. I answered only out of common courtesy, fully expecting a robocall.
I tend not to answer, because it is _always_ an unwelcome interruption.
They would sell their own grandmothers for a chance to balance their books, hence the Faustian junk mail bargain.
You can request junk mail, including bulk unaddressed mail be excluded. And reject delivery requiring your carrier to pick it up and dispose of it.
My carrier just started leaving it on the ground in front of my door. Including all that spam addressed to nobody. Even though I repeatedly opted out of that stuff.
At least where I live, the post office primarily serves as a spam distribution agency, and they take that mission very seriously.
How? Last I checked Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) cannot be opted out of.
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo...
I'm pretty sure that both EDDM and specific bulk mail senders can be blocked.
There was a long-standing rejection applied to pornographic materials, based on the recipients own assessment based on "I know it when I see it", though that loophole may have been closed.
From the old Junkbusters site, there are a Form 2150 and 1500 which can be filed against any sender.
https://web.archive.org/web/19970713104642/http://www.junkbu...
I'm only finding the form 1500, here:
https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf
You can also directly contact bulk senders through the DMA mail preference service, Valpack, RedPlum, and others. See one listing of these here:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-junk-mail_n_5b27b...
The From 1500 is the take-off-and-nuke-it-from-orbit option, however.
There is no way to tell USPS to not deliver junk mail to you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32038862
What the post office should enforce is properly labeled envelopes. Watermarks like "response required", "official correspondence", "winning x enclosed", " final notice" should be chargeable/fineable when not legitimate.
not in general: my wife is a letter carrier part time for USPS, and the overwhelming 2 problems they face are people never getting around to it being convenient, and Amazon shipping huge packages via USPS.
Regarding convenience, mail gets recalled and addressees have to be seriously inconvenienced to retrieve it. this isn't a punitive thing, but a logistics issue.
Public schools are another example of this.
and the carrier, to boost the incentive?
Telephone numbers are stupid. An arbitrary sequence of digits, area codes, they only really serve as unique identifiers like a social security number, I can easily be contacted by anyone even if I don't want to be. They're technically inferior. I only need one because other people I don't really care to interact with need me to need one. The only reason I even have one is because it comes free with my mobile data plan.
Who are these people that answer the phone for numbers not in their contacts anyway? Or check voicemail? If someone wants to get a hold of you via your phone number and you actually want to speak to them, they'll SMS. I don't even like that, but at least it's better.
Just ask me for a fucking email address so I can communicate asynchronously, I also have a few other contact mechanisms and if I want to talk to you I'll give you information you need to contact me that way.
Sorry, but I am glad you’re not on the board of the FCC. While I do get spam VM, usually less that 5 seconds in length that doesn’t get converted to text, I still get a lot of VM from friends and family that gets converted to text, awkwardly which I read a listen to if necessary.
may block. That sounds pretty weak to me. Is there some reason telcos couldn’t block them before?
Yes, the FCC normally requires carriers to put all calls through. So the FCC is only now, very belatedly and in very limited circumstances, allowing deviations from the FCC's own rules that have prevented carriers from stopping robocalls for all these years.
> The FCC said it has authorized all U.S.-based voice service providers to stop carrying traffic from...
Why is this distinction important? The FCC by default requires carriers to put all calls through, and this rule has prevented phone companies from cleaning up the robocalls that have become ubiquitous.
So it's nice that the FCC is finally allowing carriers to clean up a little bit of the robocall problem, but lets be clear about this: this is a problem of the FCC's making that it is only very belatedly allowing carriers to fix.