FTC Awards $50k In Prizes To Cut Off Exasperating Robocalls 216
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said it picked two winners out of nearly 800 entries for its $50,000 Robocall Challenge which dared technologists to come up with an innovative way of blocking the mostly illegal but abundant calls. According to the FTC, Serdar Danis and Aaron Foss will each receive $25,000 for their proposals, which both use software to intercept and filter out illegal prerecorded calls using technology to 'blacklist' robocaller phone numbers and 'whitelist' numbers associated with acceptable incoming calls." Can't wait until Symantec, Kaspersky, etc. sell competing anti-spammer packages for phones.
I know ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Offer $1k for the heads of anybody who runs one of these organizations. ;-)
It's gotten to the point where pretty much any unknown caller either gets hung up on immediately, or told to PFO since I can't believe they are who they claim to be.
If I actually have any business interest with you, send it to me in snail mail, because I no longer trust incoming calls -- between the fake tech support, notification I've won a cruise, or someone offering to lower my credit card interest but who has no idea of who I am, the vast majority of calls I receive are clearly fraudulent and coming from another country.
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If you're not in my contact list, leave a message.
If you are in my contact list already identified as a spammer, don't even bother to leave a message.
[John]
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If you're not in my contact list, leave a message.
If you are in my contact list already identified as a spammer, don't even bother to leave a message.
[John]
Do you get multiple spam calls from the same phone number? The only repeat spam calls I get from the same number are political calls - the commercial spammers use made up numbers (or move to different numbers often).
One time I got repeated calls from a politician to join a "town hall meeting", there was no way to opt-out of the calls, so finally after the 3rd one I put him on speaker phone and waited for the question and answer section - they put me live on the call when I asked "Please stop calling me, I'm
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Actually I do. I get multiple spam calls from mainly home security companies. They're all under two entries (I filled the list for 'Spammers' last year so I have a 'Spammers2' list) so it'll pop up as one or the other when they call.
I also identify as spammers the local marketing companies that try to get me to subscribe to the paper, increase my subscription to the paper from weekends to all week, add cable channels to my subscription, increase my cable subscription (the Xfinity spam calls to add voip and
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Actually I do. I get multiple spam calls from mainly home security companies. They're all under two entries (I filled the list for 'Spammers' last year so I have a 'Spammers2' list) so it'll pop up as one or the other when they call.
If they are known companies and they don't stop calling, why not sue them?
http://www.impactdialing.com/2012/05/how-to-sue-a-telemarketer/ [impactdialing.com]
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Except as a normal course of work I do call from another country... I could use skype but it isn't as clear as a land line.
Here is where I see a problem... I'm not too sure, but I seem to remember something about spoofing phone numbers/call display via an asterisk server. If that can be done then using phone numbers would be useless.
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If I actually have any business interest with you, send it to me in snail mail, because I no longer trust incoming calls
Meh, I get more junk snail mail than junk calls, and even though snail mail doesn't actually interrupt what I'm doing, its still pretty annoying because of the environmental cost and the cost of recycling, which is born by the council (and hence the council tax payer).
I do wish that Ofcom would actually do *something* about the illegal cold-callers and spam SMSers though. They just don't seem to be at all interested in punishing anyone, even where either the cold-callers themselves, or the telco they're us
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Yes, but in the US, at least, bulk mailing subsidizes ordinary first-class letters. It's annoying, but it's the postal equivalent of advertisements on the radio - the noise pays the bills for the signal. I have no idea if it works that way
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Yes, but in the US, at least, bulk mailing subsidizes ordinary first-class letters. It's annoying, but it's the postal equivalent of advertisements on the radio - the noise pays the bills for the signal. I have no idea if it works that way in the UK, though.
I have no interest in this subsidy. If someone wants to send me something through the post, they can damned well pay for it rather than expecting me to be subjected to the junk mail just so they can save a bit. Add to that the cost to every household of disposing of the junk, and the net result is it probably doesn't actually make anything cheaper anyway. Junk-mailers should be taxed heavilly.
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Junk-mailers should be taxed heavilly.
They should pay the same postage that everyone else has to. Right now they get a discount "bulk rate" even though delivering their junk requires the same effort as delivering first class mail. This would cut down on the amount of their obnoxious spam and help the post office stay afloat.
Also, if a person doesn't want to receive unsolicited mail, it should be trivial (and free) to return it to the sender. Let them throw it away.
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Offer $1k for the heads of anybody who runs one of these organizations. ;-)
It's gotten to the point where pretty much any unknown caller either gets hung up on immediately, or told to PFO since I can't believe they are who they claim to be.
If I actually have any business interest with you, send it to me in snail mail, because I no longer trust incoming calls -- between the fake tech support, notification I've won a cruise, or someone offering to lower my credit card interest but who has no idea of who I am, the vast majority of calls I receive are clearly fraudulent and coming from another country.
Why would you pick up the phone for an unknown caller if you're just going to hang up on them, even if they tell you who they are?
I just let unknown calls go to voicemail, the only calls I pick up are for a few known callers (my boss, my wife, etc), everyone else goes to VM. You can tell within the first few seconds of the VM whether or not you want to listen to the whole thing. With Google Voice voicemail->text transcription, I don't even need to listen to the message to know that it's someone I don't w
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I realize a business line gets plenty of unknown calls from real customers so they need to answer, but a personal/home line?
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Honestly, I'm shocked anyone even answers an unknown call at all anymore.
You sound like you live in a rather small circle. Here are some wider-world reasons :-
1) Elderly mother has collapsed in the street somewhere and a Good Samaritan/police/hospital are trying to contact me (she carries my contact number)
2) Daughter's car has broken down somewhere with no cell phone coverage and she is trying to contact me from a payphone.
3) A hobby club meeting I go to weekly has been cancelled and a fellow member is trying to contact me to save me the journey (gets m
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Pretty much all of these 'problems' can be solved by the caller leaving a message. A delay of a few seconds, even a minute or two, before I check VM is not going to make a difference.
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1) I'd call this one of those outlier circumstances. Plus, voicemail. 2) Very much an unusual circumstance. Also voicemail. 3, 4, 5, voicemail voicemail voicemail. 6) Yet again, special circumstance, but
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Still, sorry to hear CID is only an option instead of a standard, included feature in the UK.
It's not a standard, included feature in the US, either, mate. I just checked my bill and "caller ID name and number" is a $10/month option.
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Offer $1k for the heads of anybody who runs one of these organizations
It would be better to expensively fine the businesses who use the robo-callers to advertise their products and services. Once the revenue stream of the robo-callers dries up, the robo-calling will stop.
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Good luck with that ... the calls I get are either from American area codes, or call centers in India who are there just to scam people.
So much of this is going to be outside the reach of any enforcement as to make it a joke. They don't care because nobody can touch them.
Send in the Seals or cal in an airstrike. ;-)
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Good luck with that ... the calls I get are either from American area codes, or call centers in India who are there just to scam people.
The hardware is on local soil.
Start fining people who install hardware that's subsequently used for robocalling. After a couple of large fines you can be damn sure they won't be installing equipment for any more foreigners (or will be asking for a million bucks in escrow as 'insurance' - same effect).
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At least if we use the military option on phone spammers and scammers, it will actually provide some real benefit to the citizens who pay for it. That would be a nice change of pace.
Re:I know ... (Score:5, Funny)
Dear gstoddart,
Thank our lucky stars we've found you on Slashdot! We have tried to contact you by cell and land phoneline both work, and at home and each time without successful. We have only one chance left to you respond or forever your loss. Please text OKYAGOOD to #3832 to claim free cruise or to #2231 to lower your credit rating!
PS: We have noticed your email is full of virus and we can help you clean that out. Text STOPSPAM to #2002 for reply.
Sincerely,
Hazel from Rhodesia
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Don't your friends call anymore? Don't you have friends? :(
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Sure, but they email or text ... actual person to person phone calls from home is reserved for calling my parents for the most part.
It's just not a medium I rely on any more, which means the proportion of fraudulent calls is around 90%.
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A good number of calls are coming from overseas (India - is there nothing that they won't outsource?), however they often acquire local telephone numbers.
In Canada, it's a huge problem - enough so that CBC Marketplace hired an undercover Indian freelance journalist [www.cbc.ca] to get hired by one of these telemarketing firms calling Canada from India. They show up as Canadian calls, but originate overseas.
You'd think they'd be a
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Offer $1k for the heads of anybody who runs one of these organizations. ;-)
While this is humorous, it's not a horrible idea.
Let people sue the businesses that use robodialers for $1000 for each call they received. After this "inexpensive marketing technique" starts costing them money, they'll think twice about doing it. The people who are annoyed get money, which makes them happy. Problem solved.
Nuke it from orbit (Score:3)
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Didn't our Patriotic Attorney General claim the right to us Drones to attack Americans on American Soil?
Surely they wouldn't have any reservations against hitting some call center off-shore...
Pfffff 50k? (Score:5, Funny)
I just got a call from this lady who said I could make at LEAST that much EVERY WEEK all at home using my computer. I even get to go on a cruise for a small deposit.
Good old fashioned police work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hire some investigators to wait by the phone for a robocall. When they get one, play along. While they play along, collect evidence. When you have enough evidence, arrest the perp and send him to prison.
Is this a trick question?
One step further... (Score:4, Insightful)
...follow the money trail and file a RICO suit against EVERYONE involved in the money trail, especially managers and executives or anyone else who would have "created a climate accepting of working with illegal businesses".
Perp walk those fuckers on national news, naming names and home towns.
If we ratchet up the fear factor high enough, nobody will work with these assholes anymore, and if you can't collect money what's the point? Sure, some politically minded assholes will still robocall ("Stop Obama!", "Legalize Gay Marriage", etc), but if it doesn't make any money, nobody will do it.
There's a big chunk of the "legitimate" economy at work here to keep these guys going -- if we take away their 2% take and make sure some of them do 20 in Lewisberg while desperately holding the soap then this will dampen the urge to dabble at the fringes of the economy.
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Because robocallers are not the people selling goods and services. Robocallers are "lead generators" meaning they sell leads.
Say you get a robocall for burial insurance. You press 1 when prompted, and "play along." A few days later, you get a salesman from ABC burial insurance calling you to sell you a policy. Sue the shit out of ABC, and you find out that ABC never even heard of robocalls, and doesn't know anything. ABC bought "leads" -- names and phone numbers of people who were interested in burial
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They bought leads. And the money for those leads went somewhere. Ask ABC where the money went and claw it back.
Re:Good old fashioned police work. (Score:4)
So ABC didn't make the calls, and isn't liable.
The second that ABC called my number they were in violation of the DNC legislation. That makes them liable.
Prosecute enough of these innocent "lead buyers" who are paying people who create phone spam and people will stop paying phone spammers. Phone spammers don't work for free, so they'll eventually stop when nobody buys their services.
The same policy can work for email spammers. If nobody paid Constant Contact to spam potential or current customers, Constant Contact wouldn't spam anyone.
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arrest the perp and send him to prison.
Investigating, arresting and prosecuting people for violating these kinds of laws is unbelievably difficult and expensive and rarely nets more than wrist-slaps. Cases take years, litigators cost millions and there is and endless supply of replacement spammers to replace the prosecuted. Governments executives and their staffs know this and have better things to do.
Finding the least statist solution is my preferred remedy in any case; make the practice economically infeasible by creating a generic regulat
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The Telcos know who's dialling 10,000 numbers per day and who isn't. They could shut down a robocaller in minutes if they were motivated to do so by a large fine.
After a while they'll stop working for shell companies and/or start asking for large deposits in escrow before they'll work for people who don't have a large physical presence in the country.
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The Telcos know who's dialling 10,000 numbers per day and who isn't.
I was about to post something similar. The core of the problem is telcos profiting from crime, not lack of a technical solution. FTA: "...getting private industry to use these to block and reduce the number of robocalls"
Houston, we have a problem...
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Investigating, arresting and prosecuting people for violating these kinds of laws is unbelievably difficult and expensive and rarely nets more than wrist-slaps. Cases take years, litigators cost millions and there is and endless supply of replacement spammers to replace the prosecuted. Governments executives and their staffs know this and have better things to do.
Like throwing potheads in jail.
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that's why you need to be a cop so you can subpoena to follow the money trail...
Worthless... (Score:5, Informative)
Worthless. 99% of all illegal robocalls currently spoof their CallerID. I get robocalls that appear to be coming from my neighbors (robocallers frequently spoof a number that is in the same areacode and prefix as the number they are calling). When I subpoena phone records, the calls actually came from across the country from some podunk reseller in California. All that will happen is that robocallers will start spoofing the whitelisted phone numbers.
You need 1) some indication that the callerID has been falsified (i.e. does not match the exchange of the originating ANI) and 2) have carriers impose restrictions on their clients ability to spoof CallerID, such as requiring them to register the numbers they want to spoof in advance, and prove they have a right to use those numbers in outbound calls (such as a call center making calls for a client, where they legitimately need to put the client's inbound 800 number in the outgoing callerID).
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Mod Plus a billion! Why the hell does number spoofing still work? Something is very broken in a system which allows this.
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Caller ID spoofing works because PABX systems regularly have different outgoing numbers to the most relevant incoming one. When someone calls you from a large company, it's generally useful for their direct number to show up, not the one for the PABX.
Number spoofing, in the sense of spoofing the real originating number, doesn't work and never has. The telephone company knows what number a call really originated from, even if the caller ID doesn't match it.
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that doesn't excuse spoofing different area code at all.
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So force the real customer name and number in in addition to the one the PABX sends. Then just *something to never hear from them again.
Call From Newton, KS (Score:2)
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2) People have been saying this exact same thing for 30+ years, yet the robocallers are still here.
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Yea but with more cell phones and less POTS, you're more likely to see the number via caller id and so ignore the call. With POTS, you don't always have the option to see the number, and may have to pay for the privilege if it is even available.
[John]
Overpriced phone companies do not help[ (Score:2)
Why can I not do a black ( or white) list of callers on my cell phone?
Even if they charged for it, this would be useful.
Fricking ripoff cell phone providers.
Follow the money (Score:2)
Rather than try to use technological stopgaps, this should be treated as a law enforcement issue. The purpose of these robocalls is to get people to pay money to the scammers running the operations. Follow the money, and you find the scammers. The FCC should get a surveillance warrant ahead of time, then call up pretending to be a normal customer interested in whatever product or service they're hawking, and pay with a traceable bank account. Find out where the money is going and you've got your perps.
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Rather than try to use technological stopgaps, this should be treated as a law enforcement issue. The purpose of these robocalls is to get people to pay money to the scammers running the operations. Follow the money, and you find the scammers. The FCC should get a surveillance warrant ahead of time, then call up pretending to be a normal customer interested in whatever product or service they're hawking, and pay with a traceable bank account. Find out where the money is going and you've got your perps.
I've always thought it would be interesting if people could request a fake CC number to use with these bastards. One that will appear to process correctly on their end, but will really trigger alerts and automatic backtracing on any attempt to actually use it. Once the CC processor has the financial info for the scumbags, turn it over to the authorities to get them shut down and their financial assets seized. Hit them where it hurts, the pocketbook, since that's the only thing they'll really notice.
Of co
Shouldn't this software be at the telco level? (Score:3)
I don't want to run fucking antispamware on my phone.
Telephone exchange operators should be running this software and doing some basic sanity checks on calls entering their networks from the outside of them.
Individuals or businesses abusing trunk lines should be barred from future service. CLECs and other carrier-like entities who permit abuse should lose network access as well.
What boggles my mind about all this is the carriers standing around with their dicks in their hands with a "gee, there's nothing we can do..." attitude.
The FCC should impose fines on the carriers, too, and then we'll see how quickly they can fix this problem.
anti-spam for phones (Score:5, Informative)
Can't wait until Symantec, Kaspersky, etc. sell competing anti-spammer packages for phones.
My google voice number discards spam calls all the time. Including political calls.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235637/google_voice_spam_filter_blocks_unwanted_calls.html [pcworld.com]
Best thing ever.
Whitelists and blacklists? (Score:2)
Simple Turing test is best (Score:3)
Why do we need a technical solution for that? (Score:2)
Crude ACL (Score:5, Interesting)
I run a telephone network in Canada, and I have somewhat of a Crude "ACL" for a system-wide blocklist. I have been using it for years, and it's pretty effective though not very efficient to manage.
I monitor incoming trunks and alarm on spikes. When I get a spike from a robodialer, I look up the number online to see if it's listed as a scam or generic robo call. If it is, I simply add it to my "ACL," and all further calls coming into my system are rejected with a short message. The message states that if they would like to phone anyone on our system they need to first call our main business office (the only number they are allowed to dial) and explain who they are.
I have a large list of obviously fake numbers that I reject (all zeros, 01234567890, 1111111111, etc )
Occasionally I will have a collection agency that phones in and complains that they are a valid business, and that they should be let through (using a number such as 1-000-000-0000. I explain that there is no valid reason why they would need to spoof their number, and that they should dial as PRIVATE or BLOCKED if they want to proceed. I simply do not allow them to phone in.
I'm not totally sure on the legalities of this, but customers love it, and I enjoy the satisfaction of blocking a tonne of calls. I have no way of dealing with companies that spoof local numbers, but I can at least block all of my exchanges as they would never be coming back in over the same trunk group as these robo dialers anyway.
This is one of those projects that I have slowly tweaked over time, but I am considering writing scripts that will go out and crawl those common telephone complain sites to build a list on the fly every week and add those numbers to my 'ACL.' It would be nice if there was an up-to-date 'spamhaus' equivalent for phone numbers.
say something memorable (Score:2)
I get at least two or three calls a day on my employer-provided cell phone from someone who wants to lower my credit card rates. You have to press "1" to talk to someone about it. If you complain to them or ask who they're calling from they instantly hang up. Unless I'm very busy I always put the phone on speaker and press 1. Then I say hello to the human, and wait for them to say something. If there are other people in ear shot I'll take the phone off speaker and and stage-whisper "die in a fire!" into t
Who'd 'a thought it ? (Score:2)
" ... Serdar Danis and Aaron Foss will each receive $25,000 for their proposals, which both use software to intercept and filter out illegal prerecorded calls using technology to 'blacklist' robocaller phone numbers and 'whitelist' numbers associated with acceptable incoming calls."
Wow !! Blacklists and white lists!! Whoever would have thought of that ?!
Serdar and Foss? seriously? (Score:2)
Someone named Serdar came up with a way to cut spam?
Someone named Foss submitted a closed algorithm?
Is it still April 1?!
Did this one compete? It's pretty effective. (Score:2)
Sample (MP3) - http://www.itslenny.com/recording.php?file=a8928ae6ef5256cced20b8ae7cfbfb56 [itslenny.com]
.
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Your proposed solution will not stop robocalls because you are not using a host file
FTFY
Re:Where's that checklist when I need it (Score:5, Insightful)
(x) it doesn't make the return from doing illegal activities negative
(x) it doesn't make the people who deserve to go to prison go to prison
Re:Where's that checklist when I need it (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet those are the least interesting, most annoying calls I get. Actually, those are the only robocalls I get. I can't think of a single person that I know that has a neutral or non-negative stance towards political robocalls.
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You mean you've not gotten the fog horn, "the FBI reports... ", or "This is your second and final warning!"?
Lucky bastard.
Re:Where's that checklist when I need it (Score:4, Interesting)
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a good number of robocalls are from your elected representatives or those trying to get elected. why?
That's self correcting. Eventually they'll figure out it loses votes.
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No it isn't.
Election before last, some PACs were using these to sound like the party they opposed, and had very unconvincing arguments to prevent impressing those they didn't turn away from their opposition. I know around here the Republicans used this tactic quite... liberally. However I have friends in other regions where the Democrats used it... so it really isn't tied down to one party, either.
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They already do.
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a good number of robocalls are from your elected representatives or those trying to get elected. why?
That's self correcting. Eventually they'll figure out it loses votes.
Nope. Both major parties make robocalls, therefore they are both equally annoying. As long as this equality is preserved, the annoyance factor is canceled out and has no effect on the vote. Except, perhaps to increase voter apathy...for all I know that's the real reason for the robocalls: to prevent people from caring enough to vote.
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Half the robocalls I get have no caller id or bugus caller-id.
Here's a better Idea: If you actually HAVE a non bogus caller-ID, go out and arrest someone!
Robocallers that hang up on you... (Score:3)
What's with robocalls that hang up on you if you answer and don't leave a voicemail message if you don't answer. I get at least one of these per day. What can they possibly be trying to determine from that - whether I'm home?
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Maybe Trying to determine if you are an answering machine or a fax?
Or maybe they are your wife's boyfriend. (Just sayin...)
funny, the caller ID shows my number... (Score:2)
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Actually, he does, but you don't. Certain types of robocalls are illegal if they use a prerecorded message, but legal if a person is doing the talking. Like the other guy said, they call a lot of numbers at the same time, but since there are not that many people available when calls are answered, some of the calls just get terminated when answered.
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(x) It has no impact on political robo-calls, which are the vast majority of robo-calls made and are unsurprisingly, completely legal.
No, they aren't. Most robo-calls are commercial scammers: Rachel from Cardholder Services, fake cruises, etc. Although I could understand how you, like me, have difficulty telling the difference between a scammer and a politician.
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Your proposed solution will not stop robocalls because...
It doesn't throw the parasites who installed the robots in prison then throw away the key.
The USA has more people in prison than any society in history but they're the wrong people.
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1). it fails on callers who don't have caller id sending on.
of course on network level that still is there so on that level I suppose they could do that.. but if they were going to do that I'd suppose they would already have.
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See, you have to nip these things in the bud. Use $5,000 of that award to send someone to get your head (or your boss's head). :)
You're not going to easily outsmart my simply not answering the phone if the number isn't in my contact list. And even if you did, it would only work once as I'd immediately blacklist the number.
[John]
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This doesn't seem like a time to be stingy. Better get both heads, just to be sure. Be sure to have the hitman interrupt right as they are sitting down to dinner and play the obnoxious "THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING" horn noise before finishing the job, of course.
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And here we have it folks, the real reason that Slashdot should not let people log in using Facebook or Google credentials.
Pure, unadulterated evil.
Right here on Slashdot.
Mark my words, it will make the Endless Summer seem like a spring picnic.
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All that needs to happen is to allow users to store and blacklist numbers right on their god damned phone. It's absurd that I have to contact AT&T any time I want to block something, and I have a limited quantity of numbers that I can be blocking simultaneously.
Robodialers aren't like email spam. It's not like you can just toss up a new domain, or route your traffic through a massive bot-net of not-blacklisted zombies. You have to buy phone service, and you can't easily change numbers. Individual bl
Re:Like the pirate VS the DRM wars.. (Score:4, Interesting)
So shall the dialer VS the anti-dialer war continue.
My company makes an auto-dialer product used by a lot of these contact centers. We will just outsmart whatever technology sits between us and the callee. That said, some tech-savvy people may be able to beat us, but the general population won't.
Your candor is impressive. Most people who attract the loathing of virtually everybody for a living are a trifle more reticient about it.
Re:Like the pirate VS the DRM wars.. (Score:4)
That said, some tech-savvy people may be able to beat us, but the general population won't.
You mean tech-savvy enough to look up your Facebook account and administer said beating? That's not a particularly high bar...
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Yeah, it seems the only chance they'd have of making money on it is fraud. And since any reasonable person would know that, wouldn't that mean the manufacturers of auto-dialers are therefore intentionally participating in conspiracy to commit a crime? That argument was used successfully already... [slashdot.org]
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I live in Europe (France) and I don't receive robocalls. I don't even know why. Might be a good idea to check what is being done on the other side of the ocean.
Well that's an easy one. The minimum wage folks that run these call centers can barely speak English. You expect them to be versed in another language?
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I live in Europe (France) and I don't receive robocalls.
I live in Europe (UK) and I do receive robocalls, spam SMS and domestic spam email. All of these things are illegal here - most of the robocalls are from UK numbers (which suggests that at least the telco they are using is probably based in the UK) and from people with british accents (suggesting they are domestic); most of the spam SMS is from UK numbers, some of the spam email is from reputable british businesses.
Whilst I don't claim you could completely stop all of these things, the fact that the regula
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Like so many things in life, you can throw all the money you want at it; but until you solve the search problem it's mostly futile.
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But the search problem is not in fact a problem unless you believe TV crime dramas ("just keep the caller on another 45 seconds so we can triangulate!") If the FTC *really* wanted to solve the problem, they would just require the phone carriers to deal with it. They can already easily detect a recorded message as well as log the source of the call. Sure, there are technically ways of making that harder to do, but for the most part it's not worth the effort or expense just to try to sell you a new roof.
T
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Since these things are typically some recorded message, blowing whistles is pretty pointless. Just do answer the stupid phone.
[John]
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Damnit:
sed -e "s/Just do /Just don't/g"
[John]
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I had this idea once not that long ago.
You tie up the robo callers with robo answerers.
Specifically, it is a computer controlled answering machine. (Finally, something to use those old pci phone modems for!) When a call goes through the preprogrammed number of rings, it answers, like a normal answering machine. Then it sits there on the line issuing perfect silence. It waits for the caller to speak. If the caller speaks first, it presumes that this is a real human calling, and issues the recorded answering
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Do that and they'll call back daily. Do that to enough nuisance callers and your phone will never stop ringing.
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Isn't blacklisting / whitelisting a bit of an obvious solution?
Yes, it is.
I'm sure someone could have come up with that without opening a competition.
This is the FTC we're talking about. If they weren't wasting money on astonishingly stupid stuff they wouldn't be a proper government bureaucracy. They have standards to uphold.
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how about the phone company just tells up front the originating trunk? that would be a good start.