Here's to many more. Some may be downcast because they feel like its a drop in the ocean, but many drops an ocean do make. Hopefully its the start of actually enforcing some of our laws on the internet.
Something changed about 1 year ago where the spam calls I get are 10x higher than in the past. It got so bad I had to change how I use my phone. Any caller not in my contact list goes immediately to voicemail.
I’ve tried several robocall blockers, but they tend to cause connectivity issues.
If anyone else has this problem, what are you using to prevent robocalls?
I'll definitely believe it when I don't see those calls, but I could not be more in favor of turning the phone network into a much more "trusted" type of system -- similar to how SSL certs used to be prior to the Let's Encrypt era, where it requires some form of validation of something besides 'existence':
Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real. People should be free to configure their devices or phone accounts (A) what countries to accept calls from and (B) whether to accept unverified calls whose numbers are presumably spoofed.
Note: i'm aware that SHAKEN/STIR or whatever exists and shares some of that idea, I'm just looking forward to full adoption of something so that I can make those choices described above.
Combine this next with ability to report numbers who spam (with the Apple/Google duopoly it should be trivially easy to put a "report spam" button in the call UI) and sanction providers (first financially and eventually with revocation of their credential to sign calls).
Maybe 30 years ago it would have been seen as too draconian to prevent someone from being able to call others anonymously but the Internet exists and provides ample avenues for those cliche use cases like "whistleblower needs to talk to journalists" so I'm 100% happy to have 'burdensome regulation' here if it stops scammers from ruining the phone as a usable channel for urgent information like "Your car is ready to pick up from the shop" or "Hi, you're the emergency contact for ____ and they are headed to the hospital."
I get relentless text and phone spam calls - both robotic and with humans - from just a few voice over Internet platforms. Bandwidth.com, Neutral Tandem, and ALL the brands associated with Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) like Inteliquent. Many of these companies got cease and desist orders in the past from the FTC. It didn’t help anything. We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.
Before I got my phone number, a woman by the name of "Sade" has the number. Recently I've been getting at least one call per day from the same company regarding an extended auto warranty.
I've told them politely that this is the wrong number, they keep calling. I've asked them to take my number off their list and they happily agree to, but they keep calling. I've threatened to contact the FCC is they keep calling yet....they keep calling. I've tried to block their number multiple times, but they just keep fucking calling from different numbers.
I honestly don't get the logic of these places. "Hey this guy has told us 20 times in all manner of ways to stop calling him....but I think he might buy an extended warranty on the 21st call!!"
Can someone explain to me what the logic of these places is? It just seems like an absolute brain-dead strategy.
Robocalls are a huge pain but just as annoying is non-stop spam text messages. No idea why Apple doesn't allow for keyword filtering. Spam and robocalls are mostly nonexistent problems on Android.
The PSTN is simply not sustainable. It’s a relic of a time when there was no practical way to authenticate or validate calls. Today, with malicious actors able to dial in from anywhere in the world at negligible cost, the system is fundamentally unequipped to handle the abuse it faces.
Efforts like STIR/SHAKEN exist, but they’re little more than a band-aid—and not a particularly effective one—because the underlying network was never designed with resilience or trust in mind.
I know some people push back on this view, often pointing to edge cases where PSTN’s ubiquity still provides value. But as trust in the system erodes, so does its relevance. And if the majority of people already avoid answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize, its practical utility is clearly diminished.
For KYC-like needs, foreign companies or bad actors are registering their LLC in Wyoming which satisfies the requirements, according to a friend of mine who’s in the business…
On a side note, today and yesterday I've been bombarded with spam calls. Even got one while writing this comment. All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years. No voice mail, nothing. It's not even this bad around election time.
Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it does make it illegal for legitimate companies to call you. Absent this incident, it did appear to have a significant effect in reducing spam calls when I signed up years ago. Also, here's some info about junk mail[1]. It costs about $6 and lasts 10 years.
At this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale.
In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list. Which means the scammer, already pretending to live in small town rural USA (where they most certainly are not) has to correctly guess the number of one of my relatives before my pocket actually rings. It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.
I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
It’s important to make it clear to Americans that this problem is mostly solved in other countries. It should be possible to end this tomorrow in the US.
Spam calls in the UK for example, are rare. All of the spam calls I get are from my US desk number.
Why doesn't the FCC put together a new communications solution to replace phone calls? We already have capable devices and robust infrastructure. What's stopping them from dropping a new protocol on top of that?
The costs of maintaining this legacy solution only seem to be getting higher by the day.
Maybe I'm just old, but I remember the tv advertisements for the dubious 900 numbers (remember Miss Cleo?) that you could call, but you had to pay for the time.
Is there any law that says that I can't just get one of those for use as my personal number and then give that # out as my contact info?
I have received a scam text message every day for the last few months. I haven’t received one yet today. Next time someone says something snide about the government remind them of this enforcement.
I have been using Pixel phones since they came out and currently have a Pixel 9. They have EXCELLENT spam call blocking. There are a couple other comments below that reference this but I wanted to highlight it at the top. There are other reasons I like Google's phones, but this tops the list.
The assistant integration is great for this reason too. I occasionally get calls come through that are likely SPAM but I've learned to let the assistant answer for me. If it's a spammer, then I waste just a small amount of their time.
It's especially helpful that Google's Assistant has gotten good enough, AND that people making legit but unsolicited calls (like doctor's offices), that people calling don't hang up right away and actually answer the assistant. So I can see what they say and then answer when it's a legit call.
The ratio of SPAM calls to legit calls from unrecognized numbers is still higher for SPAM. But, the frequency is low enough (maybe a few a week), and dealing with them is so easy, that the distraction/annoyance factor is very low to the point that I'm not personally bothered by it anymore.
I've tried to get my grandma to switch to a Pixel phone for her main phone number at home, just for SPAM blocking, but she won't. I don't know how she stands getting multiple calls per hour, it's crazy to put up with when we are there.
“ The FCC is doing everything in its power to fight back against these malicious and illegal calls.”
Umm, no it isn’t. This is 2025. The technology to fix this is not complicated, but the people who can implement it simply don’t want to.
If Verizon/ATT/T Mo got fined $25 every time a robo call went through they’d find a way to stop it really fast. Create KYC verification systems and use metadata to route non-verified calls to a spam voicemail folder, problem solved.
It is highly configurable with every feature I've ever wanted but could never find for call filtering in the the app store. I've essentially set mine so that if the calling number is not in my contacts, or is not a number I've called in the last 90 days, the phone never runs and the call is sent to voice mail. But it supports lots of other mechanisms to filter with like regex, or how many times the number has called within a given timeframe.
33 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 66.1 ms ] threadThe amount is configurable and the feature can be turned off.
You as the receiver keep 70% of the fee.
Think of how quickly spam would go away.
I’ve tried several robocall blockers, but they tend to cause connectivity issues.
If anyone else has this problem, what are you using to prevent robocalls?
Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real. People should be free to configure their devices or phone accounts (A) what countries to accept calls from and (B) whether to accept unverified calls whose numbers are presumably spoofed.
Note: i'm aware that SHAKEN/STIR or whatever exists and shares some of that idea, I'm just looking forward to full adoption of something so that I can make those choices described above.
Combine this next with ability to report numbers who spam (with the Apple/Google duopoly it should be trivially easy to put a "report spam" button in the call UI) and sanction providers (first financially and eventually with revocation of their credential to sign calls).
Maybe 30 years ago it would have been seen as too draconian to prevent someone from being able to call others anonymously but the Internet exists and provides ample avenues for those cliche use cases like "whistleblower needs to talk to journalists" so I'm 100% happy to have 'burdensome regulation' here if it stops scammers from ruining the phone as a usable channel for urgent information like "Your car is ready to pick up from the shop" or "Hi, you're the emergency contact for ____ and they are headed to the hospital."
doc with list of the removed company names.
I've told them politely that this is the wrong number, they keep calling. I've asked them to take my number off their list and they happily agree to, but they keep calling. I've threatened to contact the FCC is they keep calling yet....they keep calling. I've tried to block their number multiple times, but they just keep fucking calling from different numbers.
I honestly don't get the logic of these places. "Hey this guy has told us 20 times in all manner of ways to stop calling him....but I think he might buy an extended warranty on the 21st call!!"
Can someone explain to me what the logic of these places is? It just seems like an absolute brain-dead strategy.
Efforts like STIR/SHAKEN exist, but they’re little more than a band-aid—and not a particularly effective one—because the underlying network was never designed with resilience or trust in mind.
I know some people push back on this view, often pointing to edge cases where PSTN’s ubiquity still provides value. But as trust in the system erodes, so does its relevance. And if the majority of people already avoid answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize, its practical utility is clearly diminished.
Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it does make it illegal for legitimate companies to call you. Absent this incident, it did appear to have a significant effect in reducing spam calls when I signed up years ago. Also, here's some info about junk mail[1]. It costs about $6 and lasts 10 years.
[0] https://www.donotcall.gov/index.html
[1] https://consumer.ftc.gov/how-stop-junk-mail
In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list. Which means the scammer, already pretending to live in small town rural USA (where they most certainly are not) has to correctly guess the number of one of my relatives before my pocket actually rings. It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.
I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
Spam calls in the UK for example, are rare. All of the spam calls I get are from my US desk number.
The costs of maintaining this legacy solution only seem to be getting higher by the day.
Is there any law that says that I can't just get one of those for use as my personal number and then give that # out as my contact info?
The assistant integration is great for this reason too. I occasionally get calls come through that are likely SPAM but I've learned to let the assistant answer for me. If it's a spammer, then I waste just a small amount of their time.
It's especially helpful that Google's Assistant has gotten good enough, AND that people making legit but unsolicited calls (like doctor's offices), that people calling don't hang up right away and actually answer the assistant. So I can see what they say and then answer when it's a legit call.
The ratio of SPAM calls to legit calls from unrecognized numbers is still higher for SPAM. But, the frequency is low enough (maybe a few a week), and dealing with them is so easy, that the distraction/annoyance factor is very low to the point that I'm not personally bothered by it anymore.
I've tried to get my grandma to switch to a Pixel phone for her main phone number at home, just for SPAM blocking, but she won't. I don't know how she stands getting multiple calls per hour, it's crazy to put up with when we are there.
Umm, no it isn’t. This is 2025. The technology to fix this is not complicated, but the people who can implement it simply don’t want to.
If Verizon/ATT/T Mo got fined $25 every time a robo call went through they’d find a way to stop it really fast. Create KYC verification systems and use metadata to route non-verified calls to a spam voicemail folder, problem solved.
It is highly configurable with every feature I've ever wanted but could never find for call filtering in the the app store. I've essentially set mine so that if the calling number is not in my contacts, or is not a number I've called in the last 90 days, the phone never runs and the call is sent to voice mail. But it supports lots of other mechanisms to filter with like regex, or how many times the number has called within a given timeframe.