FTC To Trap Robocallers With Open Source Software

coondoggie writes: The Federal Trade Commission today announced the rules for its second robocall exterminating challenge, known this time as Zapping Rachel Robocall Contest. 'Rachel From Cardholder Services,' was a large robocall scam the agency took out in 2012. The agency will be hosting a contest at next month's DEF CON security conference to build open-source methods to lure robocallers into honeypots and to predict which calls are robocalls. They'll be awarding cash prizes for the top solutions.

Ah, how adorable...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not quite sure whether it is cute or sad that the FTC is merrily holding a little contest to attempt to detect robocallers based on the (relatively sparse) information available to the system at the far end of the phone line when it's a matter of public knowledge that somewhere between 'a strikingly large percentage' and 'All' calls connected are logged and potentially retained for quite some time.

Surely the network level is where robocallers stand out most dramatically, unless the caller has spoofing good enough to disguise the origin and frequency of their calls from the telco carrying them (which would also likely allow theft of service and thus be the sort of thing that would actually get fixed, unlike the pitiful state of caller ID), and we know that those logs exist.

Is it just considered polite to pretend that the telephone system can't be so scrutinized, or are robocallers customers who are just too reliable to hunt down and exterminate?

Was anyone sent to prison?

[mi]

'Rachel From Cardholder Services,' was a large robocall scam the agency took out in 2012

Sure, the "Rachel" didn't kill anyone. Probably. But with the number of calls placed, the overall damage — even if spread among millions of people — certainly exceeded that of a serious bodily injury or even death of one person.

Was any of the scammers sent to prison? I mean, I'd recommend impalement, but prison would've been good enough. Did it happen?

Re:Was anyone sent to prison?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It seems a waste to imprison or impale them when they are likely still full of usable organs that could be reassigned to somebody who isn't an abhuman sleazeweasel...

Re:The Republicans will never allow this

[Anonymous Coward]

Then how come all the FCC commissioners are appointed by Barack Hussien Obama? http://www.fcc.gov/leadership [fcc.gov]
You are a libtard fuckwit.